This is Pipsqueak, Shrimp, and Lark (from left to right) – the littlest of my Blythe collection. The tiniest of the tiny – two are LPS Petites, one is a Sirenita custom Takara Petite. I really don’t have any other clothes for them – I should work on that.

And then there is Intensive Care – who is still in her box and still without a name. I should work on that as well! But to fit in with the others, I do think she needs a “small” name as well, any thoughts?

Do you have any Petites in your Blythe family – either Hasbro’s LPS or Takara? What have you named them?

It will be no surprise to you that I like cute things. Tiny shoes, pretty dresses, lovely dolls. I love them all.

I recently took the time to actually change the outfits (!) on a couple of my dolls to give them some love. I find that often times when I get into ‘busy times’ I neglect my dolls on a regular basis. This isn’t done on purpose nor with malice. When I was in school, this happened because it was because of midterms, papers, projects, clinical, or finals (so basically whenever I was in school and should have been studying). Now that I’m working, it’s because I work a lot, pick up shifts, and during my relatively rare downtime, I wind up making plans to be out of the house because I don’t want to spend what precious time I have off from work cooped up indoors. But for me, Blythe is a primarily solo indoor activity when I’m not attending a doll meet – so by making plans to be out and about, this generally, means less dolly time. And I really like dolly time.

So, I made some time to redress some dolls. Not all of my dolls get neglected – often times Prim will get an outfit change, and so will Eden. I play favourites, what can I say? And then I took some photos because pictures, or it didn’t happen.

I redressed Kindred and Belarus. I felt like these two had been wearing the same outfits for a while. I know Kindred’s been wearing this dress for over a year at least! So this is the before:

And this is the after:

Do you fall into periods of doll neglect like I do? What makes you pick up the dolls and give them some attention again? Join the conversation below in the comments!

Belarus’s wearing: dress/Puppy52Dolls (she was wearing dress/ericaduh).
Kindred’s wearing: shirt/handmade (can’t remember maker), shorts/Nostalgic Pop stock (she was wearing dress/unknown vintage).

I do not often take dolls out for photos in public. This is a rare event for me. I’ll do it at Blythe meets (safety in numbers with other dolly enthusiasts!) or if I’m in a secluded enough area where there aren’t people around (e.g. when I’m out for a hike with my sister and we’re the only ones on the trail). I don’t like drawing attention to myself and genuinely avoid taking a doll out in public where people might see because I don’t like it when people are looking at me. But I went out yesterday (with my sister) to a tulip festival and I brought along a Blythe…. And I actually took her out for photos despite there being people around (other attendees, the workers).

And yes, some people stared at me (and Prim). There were some children who made comments (one little girl got very upset and told her mom “She got to bring her dolly!” while pointing directly at me). No teenagers or adults made any comments, at least not directly to me, beyond an older woman who commented on how ‘darling’ the dress was that Prim was wearing. It might seem a little thing to anyone who’s been in the hobby for a while and routinely pulls their doll out for photos wherever they go, but this a big step for me – and I’ve been in the hobby since 2009 so it’s been a long time coming!

Primrose’s wearing: dress/Endangered Sissy.

I do not have any incoming dolls. I’m not that excited and stalking the post carrier every time they come to my door. I’ve been very busy with work lately – it’s been a never-ending cycle of work, sleep, work, sleep, work. Which is both good and bad, mostly because work is good, and it allows me to afford things like Blythe!

I have a NRFB Petite that I will be unboxing soon – I bought myself the Intensive Care Petite Blythe (she comes dressed like a little nurse!), who is themed as an animal/veterinary nurse and comes with a book. I’ll be unboxing her soon and then sharing that experience soon. I’ve been holding off on it because I really want to have the time to sit down and enjoy the unboxing since I’ve never unboxed a Takara Petite Blythe before.

I also have two books coming to me. The first is Dollybird Vol. 23, which has a feature on BlytheCon Vancouver. I didn’t know there was going to be a write-up about BlytheCon Vancouver, so I’m really excited about that. In case you’re relatively new to BlytheLife, I was one of the four organizers for BlytheCon Vancouver. It was quite literally years in the making and like a blink, it was over. We were able to make a fantastic donation to the Orphaned Wildlife Rehabilitation Society on behalf of the BlytheCon Vancouver attendees. If you’re in the Metro Vancouver area, O.W.L. is having an open house to showcase their rescue efforts and some of their resident/educational birds on April 23 & 24, 2016.

The second is a book released by someone that I met and befriended in Vancouver last August, Satomi of HANON. Luckily for me, she’s releasing her DOLL SEWING BOOK – HANON in Japanese with English translations. I’m not sure what I would do if the book was only in Japanese (it’d probably just hang out on my shelves with my Doll Coordinate Recipe books?), but I’m looking forward to this because I completely spaced on buying one of her dresses or patterns at BlytheCon Vancouver. It feels like a second chance to owning Satomi’s work.

I’m still going through all of the comments that BlytheLife received in the month of March – and there were a lot! I’m filtering out and removing all the spam comments, but it does take time. Once I’m done that, I’m going to draw a name or two for the winners of that lovely little giveaway I promised all of you. I will be sharing photos of the prize and names of winners very soon.

The last thing that I’m looking forward to is actually a couple of months from now, but I’m looking forward to July 1st. July 1st is BlytheLife.com’s birthday/anniversary. It will be BlytheLife’s 6th birthday and I have some very exciting plans in the works to help celebrate 6 years of BlytheLife. It’s kind of crazy to think that I’ve spent nearly 6 years writing about dolls. I started this website about halfway through my first undergraduate degree and since then I’ve completed another Bachelors, started working, and have seriously expanded the doll family. Speaking of which, I need to do yet another updated family photo since Lottie’s arrived.

What are you looking forward to in your Blythe life?

It’s the eleventh month of Middie Monday, which means May will be the one year mark since I started this in an attempt to draw more attention (and to pay more attention) to Middies. I’m not sure if I’m going to do anything special for Middie Monday #12 – let me know below in the comments if you think it should be something special!

In the mean time, I’ve been loving the idea of adding a third Middie to the family. I think the maximum number of Middies I would have/want would be five. Five is not an arbitrary number, if you think about it. Kitty Brighton and Lydia Melbourne take their first names from the sisters in Pride and Prejudice. As one might recall, there are five Bennet sisters, which means there are still three more names to be used (Elizabeth, Jane, and Mary). Before I started this naming scheme for the Middies, I already have a Bennett (Margaret Meets Ladybug, EBL) and a Tertiary Jane (Simply Peppermint, RBL) so I’m not sure if I’d used Jane for a Middie. Which means I have room for two more Middies.

But I recently made a big purchase that was not doll related (a big shocker, I know!), which means that acquiring a new Middie will have to wait a while. This post is a bit of a ramble about Middies, but I do love them quite a bit. I wish I didn’t though, since it can be hard to find nice clothes for them as a lot of Etsy/Artfire sellers don’t make clothes for Middies when they do for the Blythes.

A few questions for you all:

1. How did you come up with the names for your Middies? And…
2. What do you think I should do for Middie Monday #12? (And no, I will not be doing a giveaway for a Middie doll!)