Sunday, May 1, 2022

May Day!

 


Happy Birthday to me!
My birthday has been great. My birthday present to myself was to get my 'temporary' doll room set up. We had painted and restored the small front guest room, in the midst of major repairs on our home. We are currently now working on the kitchen and utility room, and will eventually get to the other two bedrooms with painting them. One of them will be my 'permenant' doll room. We will be re-decorating, etc. adding curtains, shades painting the walls and so on. But in the mean time, my dolls have been packed up for about going on two years since my husband became ill in 2019. Since his illness, we knew we needed to do repairs to the house so I had to pack up a great deal of my dolls and miniatures which have been stored in boxes. 

I decided to take them out and now display most of them in this small room that I use as an office and photo room. I started on Friday afternoon and have been working on it all weekend and it has been fun. Still not finished and I will continue until I get to a point I am satisfied with it. I am basically right now using what temporary shelving I have on hand that can be moved quickly if I need to pack them  up again.




I moved the Scarlett O'Hara Barbies and Victorian and Angel Barbies down to the bottom shelf, so the Mod Barbie foldout dollhouse could be put up at the top. I began to realize I did not have enough stands for all the dolls and one was was to sit them in chairs, props etc Poppy Parker and some Fashion Royalty dolls are on the second shelf, Vintage / Current Ken and Barbie are on the third shelf. These are the previous Crayola shelving I had. It has worked out really well and holds alot of dolls. 





On top of the dollhouse, I moved the previous collection of 'haunted dolls' and moved them into the closet shelving and moved my patio props, my homemade hot tub, grills, patio furniture to create a rooftop terrace and have seating for more dolls. I still have a ton of malibus to dress to put up here.







The Scarlett O'Hara dolls on top in their previous shelving placement





Modern and Vintage  Barbie and Kens 


Poppy Parkers 




The Tammy Family not all of them are there-







Poppy Parker Shelving 







The Fashion Royalty shelving 

And so I still have way more organizing to go. I will have more photos to show you soon. This sounds awful but I did not know what I had until I started putting the dolls on their stands and organizing them together! lol. I enjoy seeing all of them in their original outfits and with their props, it is such a joy. This was more fun than buying myself another doll because I discovered dolls I had forgot about and would have purchased again. So I highly recommend going through your collection and and if you store in bins/boxes, to shake them up a bit, relax for a weekend, shut off the internet and spend some time with them. You will be glad you did. 


2 comments:

Dorothy In PA said...

Dear Lisa, Happy Birthday! I sounds as if you selected the perfect way to celebrate your birthday.

It was fun looking at your collection. My eyes focused on a Madame Alexander Wendy doll. I collect them also.

Wishing you many more fun days in May.

Lisa Neault said...

Thank you Dorothy!
I think sometimes we as doll collectors get so excited with the acquiring/acquisition of the doll that we forget how much we might already have. I know in the past few years I have already done two deep purges of my collection because of various medical expenses at different times, and have regretted the last time I had to do it. But taking dolls out, finding stands for them, and having to physically place them on shelves makes you realize just how much you physically have and it was an eye opener for me! It also made me have fun dressing them, deciding their display and I found items I had forgot about. I didn't need more- but I did NEED stands, lol. I will be updating with more photos as I work my way through the room with better display in the coming weeks and months during the summer.