The American Doll & Toy Museum will open the first week of December!

After a lifetime of planning, it has finally happened!  more details will follow as the doll drama unfolds, but The American Doll & Toy Museum will open the first week of December!  This will be a smaller version of our collection because of space limitations, but there will be representative dolls from prehistory to the present, and a nice selection of doll houses, miniatures, toys and related objects.

Many of you also follow our main doll museum blog, Dr. E's Doll Museum, and you know that I am Dr. E and this is our unofficial name.  I started a new Facebook Page called American Doll

In and Toy Museum, and will follow up with a Twitter, Pinterest, and other social media accounts to spread the word.

We'll have a small book shop selling doll related objects, vintage paper airplanes, licensed merchandise books, and perhaps some small antiques from the shop behind us. We also have a GoFundMe Page for donations.  https://www.gofundme.com/manage/ellen039s-campaign-for-american-doll-and-toy-museum

There will be special events and give a ways.  We'll celebrate each season and holiday, too. There will be rotating displays of all kinds.

I plan on have a doll trinket to give to each visitor as a memento.

Many of you have seen  the displays of my dolls at various museums. I've collected since age 3, and have been planning this museum since grade school.  We will join a small neighbor hood near one of my alma maters called College Hill, which hosts other events and houses several antique stores, a cafe, a hometown bar and grill, a hometown barber shop, sports apparel shop and more.  We will be contributing to small business and to our community.

We welcome everyone; we aren't just for doll collectors and dealers, and we hope by embracing the general public, that we will also encourage young collectors.

Below are some of our citizens, and there is a YouTube video with more.

Doll Museum Video; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_TLGmyLKIw&t=158s

Butterflies are Free

Lately, when I go out to walk, or work with my flowers, butterflies surround me.  Usually Monarchs.  Maybe they are lost souls, or maybe they are thankful I tried to save one of their own.  Who knows. 

I really love them, and I'm glad butterflies are free.


All images public domain.

As the Green Hills Roll Along

The days may be near 90, but in the shade, the air is much cooler than it was.   Fall is near.  Cattails fill ditches along with Queen Anne's Lace; the sumac is turning colors.  Leaves are even beginning to fall and school has started.  I dread winter, but I love fall, and Halloween, of course.

The hills are still green, and the corn high.  There is no landscape like this, with weathered red barns here and there, and houses way to worn to be standing by themselves, but do.

I want to walk and walk through it all, to remember days with my family, now gone, when we went driving along the country back roads, looking for antique stores, or old barns holding sales, for tomatoes and sweet corn, and later, hickory nuts, taffy apples, and pumpkins.

No one buys me taffy apples any more.  Driving my Dad's car, I realize how much he loved taking to the road.  I do, too.  Long drives are when I can play audio books; I'm listening to The Hobbit, which I've read over and over.  It takes me back not just to Middle Earth, but to Saturday mornings when my folks would go out, and I would get up and dust the living room, and every other weekend, one of the other rooms of the house as well. I read, played Barry Manilow albums over and over, especially I Write the Songs, daydreamed about boys I kind of  liked, but would never approach, did my drivers' ed homework, and waited for my folks to get back so I could go to lunch with them and shop.  Life was pretty easy, and good. It included free meals out, my mom buying and washing my clothes, free books, antique shows, and vacations, sometimes twice a year.

It's different now. 

Memories sustain me, and flowers, and a whiff of pumpkin spice now and then.   

American Doll and Toy Museum: Doll Convention Season and Estate Sale Adventures

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Miss Charlotte Bronte meets Miss Barbara Pym: Pymian Pumpkins hold their own!

Miss Charlotte Bronte meets Miss Barbara Pym: Pymian Pumpkins hold their own!: These volunteered themselves.  They look very healthy, and I have hope.  Usually, I get lovely vines and blossoms, and then the vine wither...

Miss Charlotte Bronte meets Miss Barbara Pym: Pymian Pumpkins hold their own!

Miss Charlotte Bronte meets Miss Barbara Pym: Pymian Pumpkins hold their own!: These volunteered themselves.  They look very healthy, and I have hope.  Usually, I get lovely vines and blossoms, and then the vine wither...

Healthy Living, Eating, and Cooking, without Thinking!

In my immediate family, we were pretty healthy, and we didn't have cancer.  I am fairly healthy; it got me to thinking why?  I think it's because my mother cooked and served food routinely that is now considered uber healthy; here are some of the things she did:

• She cooked with olive oil, and used it in salad dressings.  Usually, vinegar, olive oil, a little salt.
• We ate a lot of tomatoes in Greek peasant salad, and often had it as a midnight treat.
• We didn't eat fast food; McDonald's was unheard of, and Mr. Quick was a special treat.
• She gave me pomegranates and cherries on a regular basis; we loved them in the summer.
• We always had grapes around, and oranges and apples.
• She didn't fry much; when she did, she drained the food well.
• She made soup from scratch, especially Lentil and vegetable.
• She skinned chicken and foul before she cooked it.
• Later on, she cooked with splenda and did healthy exchanges with butter  and sweeteners in her recipes.
• We didn't eat huge portions.
• We walked.
• We didn't drink diet pop.
• I loved blueberries, so she bought them and other berries.  I liked making blueberry pie.
• We ate a lot of nuts.
• She trimmed the fat off other meat, too.
• We were careful where we ate it.
• We never had alcohol around

It helped.  We weren't perfect, but by the same token, we weren't sick all the time, either.