One of my favourite things about the Blythe community is when people share their photos of the dioramas, room boxes, and general ‘scenes’ with the cute miniature furniture, the tiny dishes and food stuffs, and the animals. A favourite, that I do not own, is a certain Re-Ment cat in a litter box – hilarious! This love of seeing photos of amazing doll room set-ups led me down a rabbit hole of looking at miniature blogs and into the fascinating world of traditional doll houses. The 1:12 world is a beautiful and detailed place, but it is also much too small for Blythe as she is defiant at 1:6 scale – playscale, just like her fellow doll Barbie.

That doesn’t, however, stop me from being terribly fascinated with the world of traditional doll houses and all there is to learn about doll houses and making miniatures. I personally own a fair bit of books on creating doll houses and the furnishings that go into them. Much like my love for sewing patterns/books for Blythe, these books often serve more as eye candy than as how-to guides as I don’t get to the point where I want to pull out a saw and a sheet of plywood to cobble together something that resembles a room box. These books are amazing, and I am always in awe of how detailed a miniature world can be.

So while I currently don’t have the time (or funds, or space) to put together miniatures and a house for my Blythes, I do have inspirational materials on my shelf that are really beautiful. The majority of books and other resources out there are primarily for 1:12 scale world, but I figured that things can be extrapolated and still used to make things from the playscale world as the instructions for how to put something together still applies. I feel that the dollhouse books pull together many of my interests together: dolls, miniatures, crafting/DIY-ing, and a love for good photography in good books.

This accidental collection does make me very happy though, mostly because it makes me thing that such things re potentially possible one of these days!

Do you have a doll house or a room box? How much of it (and it’s furnishings) did you create yourself?

With this past weekend being both BlytheCon UK and Blythe Fest, I can’t help but wish I had the funds to travel. Not just for the Blythe conventions (although that is a fantastic reason to make a trip as well), but just to travel and see the world in general. Funds have always been the primary reason why I don’t travel as much as I would like to. Sure, I’ve gone on road trips but never for too long. I’d love to travel to Europe again (I was last in Europe in 1999 and so much has changed!) and I would love to go to Australia and Middle Earth New Zealand!

Storefront window in Hong Kong.

When one considers my current financial status, such trips are a bit of a pipe dream. Despite all of that, it would be fantastic to go to Europe again and be there when it’s BlytheCon Europe, or BlytheCon UK. Perhaps take a super long flight to Australia (all the way across the Pacific, and then south) and pop in for Blythe Fest between going to tourist attractions. I’d also just love to go back to Asia (and stop by BlytheCon Japan, perhaps?!) and go to real brick-and-mortar shops to choose a Blythe doll and buy one in person. It’s so much better than obsessively checking a tracking number when you can just hold the box in your hand from point of purchase.

In the mean time, I will stick with the local day trips and having a doll in my bag for when I go places, because you never know when the need to photograph a doll with strike!

For those that do attend BlytheCons and its derivatives, do you often stay long enough to soak in the sights? Or is it more of a get-in, BlytheCon, get-out? When I went to BlytheCon Seattle in 2014, I was unable to afford to stay longer than that one day and I keep meaning to go back down to Seattle for a weekend but just keep pushing it off (although now I have a much better excuse, because the Canadian dollar is doing so poorly against the American dollar).

Eden’s wearing: dress/Plastic Fashion, helmet/chelleshocks.

Middie Monday is a feature that is published on the first Monday of each month! A guaranteed monthly post on Blythe’s little sister – Middie! If you have any suggestions for a future Middie Monday post, please send me an email or use my Suggestions form!

A couple weeks ago I wrote about being content with the Blythes that I have, but then the promotional photographs of Melanie Ubique Girl (an October 2015 release) came up. And despite the horrible name (ubique – really???!), although “ubique” is an actual word (for the curious, it is Latin for “everywhere”). But Melanie Ubique Girl’s older sister is Margo Unique Girl and it would have been a touch more fitting if the Middie was named Melanie Unique Girl (MUG 2.0). She is an adorable doll with super cute ash blonde hair and bangs (I’m a big fan of Middie dolls with bangs). And while I may not be in the right situation to buy a new Middie right now, she is super cute and I’d love to add her to the dolly family one day! (Plus – those shoes! the socks! the sunglasses!)

Do you think Melanie Ubique Girl would fit in well with Lydia (Yellow Marshmallow) and Kitty (Jackie Ramone)? And while I really was content with the dolls that I do have, now I’m jonesing for a new dolly. Maybe it’s because she’s super cute, or because I really love MUG 1.0 (but will never ever be able to afford her or justify buying her), or because I just really miss the whole aspect of continuously and obsessively checking tracking online.

A 365 challenge does seem simple in its concept: take one photo every day. But thinking about it and doing it are two different things. Then there’s actually the act of remember to upload them. So far I’ve managed to do 30 of the 365 days with Eden. Eden’s adventures are being stored in a Flickr album on my account, if you want to follow along there.

Only 335 to go!

Sometimes I try to remember what life was like pre-Blythe for me. I got Sophie in 2009, when I was 19. I was in university at the time (I was in post-secondary for a long time – eight years!). I had hobbies before Sophie and before Blythe, but I have a harder time trying to figure out what I filled my time with.

I think part of it was because I chose to attend a university that was different from the majority of my friends from high school. Many of them opted to attend one closer to home and didn’t have as long of a commute. Looking back, I still struggle to figure out why I decided to go to that school. It was an hour and a half to two hours of public transit commute each way versus the 30 minute commute (one way) commute for another school. I was spending a lot of time on public transit, I was going to school without people I knew (granted, I did make friends), but it was hard for me at the time. It wasn’t the same when I decided to pursue another degree at another school (a little bit older, a little bit wiser?).

Blythe was a happy shining light in my life at that point, because I needed something simple, something that wasn’t complex and didn’t require as much as energy and time and attention as school needed. I played with dolls a little bit as a child, I had a Barbie, but nothing quite to the level of commitment as I somehow ended up making with Blythe.

There’s just something about Blythe that makes me smile. She came into my life at a moment when I needed a little bit of happy. Having something that I enjoy is a great thing, the beauty of Blythe is that each person sees Blythe differently. Everyone enjoys Blythe in their own way, and that’s the wonderful thing about this hobby.

The best thing I’ve gotten out of this hobby is the fun of Blythe, and the wonderful people that I wouldn’t otherwise have gotten the chance to meet and interact with. Life is better with a doll.