Mystery in the Briarberry Woods

   I am still alive. I've been cleaning away soot and trying to get our things unpacked from moving back from Emma's. You accumulate a lot of things in a year, and especially if you are bringing things from before the year started. I had brought a lot of things to Emma's to clean up, or save from the unheated house, and also art supplies for the various things I made while I was there. 

  I feel I am never going to get done with this, and I am feeling daunted by it. I don't know where to start. I got this fortune in my cookie the other week.

I should be, but can I?! I kept it to inspire me, but I think I need more fortunes...

  We also took a couple of days off this week to celebrate Ken's birthday. One of the things he wanted to do for his birthday was go to a bin store, because he hadn't been to one for a long time. We had a few things we needed, including some of that plastic stuff to put on the bathroom window, since the window that came from Lowe's was supposed to be frosted, and wasn't. This might not be such a big problem, if the window wasn't IN the bathtub. Anyway, so that was on our list, along with dog poo bags for my sister, and squeezable treats for her cats. Also, I wanted wallpaper, because we'll have need for a lot of that. So those were all on my list, AND WE FOUND ALL OF THEM! What are the odds of that?!  Okay. The universe let me down a little bit, because the wallpaper was ugly, but it was there! 

Today we are  still getting snow, after a pretty full day of snow yesterday. But it's warm in here now, and we know our boys are not freezing. All three spend a lot of time with us. At night they fight and drive me crazy though.

  Anyway, as I was packing up Ivy's kid books I came across a lot of doll booklets or catalogs. She has some really old American Girl catalogs, a My Twinn catalog, and some booklets that came with dolls. If anybody is interested in seeing the My Twinn and American Girl catalogs, let me know. I can photograph the pages and do a post on those. Today I am showing you a Briarberry booklet. I could have done it as a Doll Book of the Month Club post, but it goes with all the other doll booklets I found in Ivy's room, so here we are.

  Does anybody remember Briarberry? Briarberry was a line from Fisher Price in the 1990's. The line included plush, jointed bears and other animals, old fashioned looking furniture, carded fashions,  and a tea party set, etc. I always thought the bears were cute, and the furniture was really nice. The clothes were nice quality. Some of the dresses and things were made of a heavy velvety velour, as were the cushions to the kitchen chairs. The bears were soft plush, with jointed heads, arms, and legs, and plastic faces with flocking. Through the years I've had, (mostly through second hand finds), the armoire, the canopy bed, the couch/bed, the table and chairs, the tea set, the stove and accessories, and a boatload of the bears of various sizes. I'm pretty sure I sold most of the stuff, but I know I still have a canopy bed in the box, and maybe an armoire, and I came cross some bears in our stuff just the other day. There are probably more somewhere. I don't think I've ever found any of the non bear animals in the wild. They came out later, and maybe they didn't make as many of them. There was a lamb and a bunny, and a dog and a cat.

  Ivy had a Briarberry storybook magazine in her stuff. I don't remember where it came from. I don't know if it was a promotional thing handed out somewhere, but Ivy didn't have any of the Briarberry stuff except a couple of the outfits I got on clearance that she used on baby dolls. So I don't know where she would have gotten it. Maybe it was an insert ion a magazine. Possibly it was an insert in Good Housekeeping or something, because Ken's stepmom used to get that. Anybody else have one of these?

  I'm going to start by showing you the back cover, because there's some information on it. For one thing, the baby bears and the Briarberry Friends, which were the non bear dolls, were introduced in December of 1999.

  There was a website.

  Now for the story. Here's the front cover.

The story is fully illustrated with photo scenes with the toys. 

There's that stove.

  The last page is a big two age spread, so the wording is shown smaller and harder to read. So I have shown it in full, and in individual pictures of the pages.

  The story manages to showcase all the dolls and some of the accessories. Of course, it also shows a bunch of things that weren't available.

  I hope everybody enjoyed this. I have a few more booklets to show you, of other dolls available about the same time as the Briarberries. We'll see those soon. Also, there's a doll show next weekend! I need the fun, but definitely not more dolls. I'll go anyway, and try to show you some dolls, but I promise I'll ask before I photograph them!

The Doll Book of the Month Club: Twilight Tales

   This month's Doll Book of the Month is one of my childhood favourites. I still love it as an adult. The book is called "Twilight Tales".

  This isn't a Golden Book, so it's not as well known as some of those titles. This one is a Rand McNally Tip-Top Elf Book. It's by  Miriam Clark Potter, and the beautiful, soft illustrations are by Dean Bryant.

  My sister had this book as a kid, and so it was there when I was a kid. I borrowed it to read to my kids when they were little. Somehow I seem to have forgotten to return it...

  In any case, I loved this book. It's sweet, and gentle, and somehow magical in every day situations. (If you can call stories about anthropomorphic animals 'every day'.) The book contains three stories...I thought. Be careful when buying a copy of this book. I needed a copy for this post, and mine is somewhere packed away at The House of Fire. I was super lucky a couple of days ago, to find a copy at an antique mall. I gasped and snatched it up. Hey, maybe someday my sister will remember and ask for hers back. It's good to have a back up. Anyway, I laid it up when we got back to Emma's, and today when I took it out of it's plastic to photograph it...HORROR! There were only two stories! And neither of them was my favourite, the one that makes this book eligible for The Doll Book of the Month Club. I thought it must have been torn out, but no. It didn't look like anything had been torn out, and in researching I found that there are various versions of this book, with different covers, and with and without the third story. Lucky me. I found one without it. I thought this book was different when I took it out of the plastic today. Ours was smooth and shiny, and this one has a textured cover.

  So let's carry on. The other two stories are lovely. It's not that I didn't like them. I did. It's just that I loved the other story so much. The first story is "Mrs. Hen's Red Hat".

  It's about Mrs. Hen and her three 'butter yellow chicks'. Mrs. Hen says she would like to have a red hat, and her one of her chicks tells her that if she wants one, she should have one. So Mrs. Hen takes her 'golden corn money' out of the pink sugar bowl, and she and her chicks go shopping for a red hat. Sadly, they can't find one anywhere. On the way home one of the chicks points out that Mrs. Hen has always had a red hat: the red comb on her head. "But that grew on me." responds Mrs. Hen. "But it's beautiful all the same and you look good in it." says a chick. So Mrs. Hen puts the golden corn money back in the pink sugar bowl and says, "I have you and you have me, and we have saved our money." It's a simple story, but warm and cozy and loving. 

  The third story,(since I remember 'my' story being the middle one.), is "The Big Noise at Half Past Three".

  This story concerns a loud noise heard in the forest, and Timmy Squirrel being late home from school. Various animals in the forest end up at Mrs. Squirrel's house, and she invites them all to 'Have a piece of caraway cake', which has become a sort of catch phrase in our family now. Mrs. Squirrel learns that the noise was because 'the big dead tree in the forest fell over'. She gets more and more worried when Timmy doesn't arrive home from school. Eventually Timmy shows up, scolded for not coming home right after school. But then his teacher arrives, and explains that when 'the big dead tree in the forest fell over', it shook the school clock so hard that the hands moved back a half hour. Timmy's teacher, being, apparently, something of a nut case, made the kids stay until the hands said the appropriate hour again. (I think I'd be having a talk with her.) So all ended well, with Timmy home safe and sound, and vindicated about not coming home right after school. 

  Good thing Mrs. Squirrel hadn't watched a show I watched recently. She'd really have been freaking out.

  But what about my favourite story from the book? (Without my book, I'm having to rely on pictures found on the internet.) Well, it's called "Jimmy and Mr. Boo".

  The story opens with a post man coming to the door at Jimmy's house and asking for 'Master James Wilson Jr.'. "I am that little boy.", says Jimmy. So Jimmy's mother signs for a letter 'with two stamps', addressed to Jimmy.

The letter is from Jimmy's Aunt Alice, and says there is a visitor coming to see Jimmy. His name is Mr. Boo. Jimmy even gets a phone call, from someone with a squeaky voice, who says he will arrive about three o'clock.

 Jimmy eats his lunch and takes his nap, and then watches out the window for Mr. Boo. He gets excited every time he see someone coming past the house, or up the walk. Finally, a boy gets off a bike in front of Jimmy's house, and comes up the walk with a package. Jimmy thinks this must be Mr. Boo, and is disappointed because the boy 'is quite old-- almost a man. Too big for me to play with." 

But it isn't the boy who is Mr. Boo. The boy has brought a package for Jimmy. When Jimmy opens the box, there is something wrapped in blue tissue paper. Jimmy unwraps it, and it's a beautiful teddy bear, with 'a high black hat and leather shoes, green trousers, a blue vest, and a long tailed red coat with brass buttons'. There is also a card reading, 'Here I am!'. 

  This is Mr. Boo. He stays with Jimmy so long that he is no longer company, but just like one of the family. This is the last page of my book. Apparently there is a third version of the book, that includes this story, but has a different last page!

   I think I like mine better. 

   I loved the way Mr. Boo is 'alive'.  I always loved the idea of living toys. The description of Mr. Boo, and the picture of him laying in the box were always the perfect toy to me. If I could have found a bear like Mr. Boo I would have bought it for one of my kids. I did have a doll send letters to Emma the doll, saying she was coming for a visit. She was Emma the Doll's pen pal, and one day she arrived to live in 'Dolltown', (otherwise known as Emma's room.)

  So that's my favourite story from "Twilight Tales". I think you understand!  And okay, he's not a doll, he's a bear. Split hairs why don't you?

Doll Book of the Month Club: Old Bear and Friends, the Books of Jane Hissey

  I want to mention something before we get into this month's book. I didn't think to mention in yesterday's post that there was a certain appropriateness to my using Gareth World to demonstrate the bouncy house featured in it. There are a couple of reasons actually. One is, Gareth is named after Fuzzy, who had the unfortunate bouncy house experience that I told about. Fuzzy's real name is Gareth. The other reason I really didn't think about at all until a reader asked about the Kelly doll Jumpin' Fun Castle  playset. Gareth World started off as a regular Kelly body with a Liddle Kiddle Bunsen Burnie head. I have changed his body a couple of times since then, to more articulated Kelly bodies. The body Gareth currently has belongs to the Kelly from the Jumpin' Fun bouncy Castle set! So, doubly appropriate.
  Now on to this month's Doll Book of the Month Club entry. This month we're looking at a series of books, referred to as 'Old Bear and Friends'. The books are written and illustrated by Jane Hissey.

The characters are all toys, and are based on actual toys that belong to Jane Hissey.

The books concern the toys and their adventures. The stories are sweet and old fashioned.

 The toys in the stories are old fashioned too. They are simple stuffed toys. There are no plastic or electronic toys.

'Sailor' is obviously a Nora Wellings doll.

  All my kids, especially Fuzzy, loved the books and the TV show.  I loved them because they are so sweet and cozy, and the illustrations are beautiful artistically and subject-wise.

  Like some of the best doll stories, or, in this case, 'toy stories', (That's sort of a joke.), the toys seem to live alone in the house without humans, although the humans are mentioned. (Case in point, the children mentioned in the seventh picture above. The humans are never seen, not even the ankles, like in old Tom and Jerry cartoons. The toys live in a world populated only by toys.

They go on adventures, like picnics, all by themselves. They use the things they find in the house to make the things they need. The imagination of the toys making a dragon mask and costume, a cave from a blanket, parachutes from handkerchiefs, or building a boat from a picnic basket, is something kids could take a tip from.

We first became aware of the Old Bear books years ago when a relative in England sent Emma a book and tape set of "Little Bear's Trousers". We got more of the Old Bear books.

We also discovered that Old Bear had been a BAFTA award winning TV series in England. The tapes were available here, and the series was just as wonderful as the books. You can see an episode of the series HERE. There's also a lovely Christmas special you can see HERE.
  The beautiful warm illustrations for the Old Bear books were done in coloured pencil. Jane Hissey has had an exhibition of the original illustrations. You can visit Jane's website and learn more about her books HERE.
    In an interview you can watch HERE, Jane Hissey explains why she has shortened more recent editions of some of the stories. I don't think I agree with her reasoning: that parents have less time to read to their children now, and the shorter stories mean they can read more stories to their kids in the time they have. I think it may just mean parents can read a story to their kids more quickly and then quit.
  When the kids were little we read all the time. I started reading to Emma when she was just a baby. When we were reading the Harry Potter books we were so eager to see what was going to happen that we read very late into the night. Fuzz was 5 that summer. He was always a grouchy kid. He got bored when we read a long time, and would climb down off my bed, dragging his pillow after him, and  head for his room. "Where are you going Fuzz? Don't you want to hear the book?" "I'm going to bed." I also discovered something else that summer. Ivy was a baby, and for the entire first year of her life, she barely slept. She never learned to latch on properly when she nursed, and apart from causing me immense pain, she also sucked in a lot of air. She was up all night every night, with colic. Try as I might, I could not get her to latch on the right way. I was a zombie that year. But we still read, as I said, very late into the night. I did most of the reading, with Ken reading the rest of the time. There were several times when I fell asleep while I was reading. You might think the others would notice . They didn't really, because I fell asleep...but I kept reading. I did it several times, and only woke up when I came to the end of the chapter. Everybody else knew what happened in the book, but I couldn't remember a thing I had read while I was asleep. I had to re-read what I had read to them, the next day while Ivy nursed.
  I'll see you again in a few days, to show you my latest Goodwill finds.

Doll-A-Day 2019 #110: The Healthnuggles

  A couple of days ago we saw some tiny anthropomorphic bears. Today we're going to look at another anthropomorphic family. It's this little bear family.

They're called the Healthnuggles.

They're Li'l Woodzeez.

Li'l Woodzeez are made by Battat, who also make Our Generation dolls. The dolls aren't marked at all, and their clothes are only marked like this:

And the furniture is only stamped with numbers. But the bedding is marked Battat.

 

Li'l Woodzeez are obviously meant as competition for Sylvanian Families,and Calico Critters. Like those lines,Li'l Woodzeez is made up of incredibly cute anthropomorphic animals,with all kinds of cute houses and playsets. The furniture resembles Sylvanian Families furniture.

The family consists of Dad...
 

Dad is 3 inches tall.

Mom...

Mom is also 3 inches tall.

...the older kid,and the baby.

Older kid is 2 1/2 inches tall, and the baby is 1 3/4 inches tall. I'm guessing these kids weren't originally naked.

The bed obviously belongs to the older kid.

You can watch a commercial  for Li'l Woodzeez HERE.

  That's it for today. For those of you celebrating Easter tomorrow,have a happy Easter. I'll be here alone all day, as Ken has to work, Emma is coming when Ken gets off work,Ivy is at college,and Fuzzyand his girlfriend aren't coming until the evening. But when everybody gets here we will be exchanging Easter baskets,(Yes, I still make up Easter baskets for the kids,and Ken too! These days Emma and Fuzz want less edibles and Ivy wants just as much. So I replace most of Fuzz and Emma's basket budget with things,not sweets.),and we'll have dinner. Emma had her wisdom teeth removed earlier in the week,and she still can't eat spicy foods or things that take much chewing. I can't eat spicy foods because my LPR diet doesn't allow it. So we'll be having regular mashed potatoes for us,and Ken and Fuzzy will be the onyl ones to eat the curried eggs I usually make.I'm making some artichokes,which are Emma's favourites, but she's not sure she'll be able to eat them.