Now Playing: "Private Eyes" - Hall & Oates, on an 80s local radio show
Current Mood : Lucky and full of Chinese food !
Current Image Notes : Guess who got in on Beast's first photo shoot ? Hint : that's not Beast's black and white tail !
Yay me ! The latest member of our Chez Insanity family was waiting for me this morning ! Isn't he amazing ? 39 inches of sweet, adorable Beast ! What's really funny is that I can't find out anything about him ! His tag sez he's a licensed Disney product, of course, but the biggest Beast plush/stuffed animal I can find is only 14 inches tall. He's sooo huge, he can only wear a shirt that Dearest Son can't yet - it's still too big for Son !
I also found a little Happy Meal Tinkerbell toy in one of the 50c small-toy grab-bags, and snagged it. So now, only Alice, Jasmine, and Pocahontas are the only girls to not have a doll of themselves. Just gotta keep my eyes open for them, I know they're out there. All else fails, I can always make little rag-doll versions !
The rest of my day was just as fun. Beast rode along with me all morning, buckled into the passenger seat, probably enjoying the cars and sights. GoodWill yielded another French ad reproduction poster, framed, for Beloved Hubby, and one of those foam-rubber Statue of Liberty crowns that tourists buy. The Prince guy in Enchanted wears one prominently, so I thought Dearest would like to play with it.
From there, it was straight on to TRU ! They're having a ‘20% off markdown items' sale, now through 8/02, so I took advantage of it to score the Barbie Island Princess ‘Getting Ready with Tallulah' playset I've idly wanted - $12. instead of $20. is probably as low as it's gonna get. They had the same set with the IP doll, but her costume was kinda cheap-lookin', and there was nothing exceptional about the doll herself. Besides, why pay more for a doll I don't want, even if it is only 4 bucks ? I can do a lot with ‘just' $4. !
The set includes a vanity, a chair, a stool, a chest, various ‘beauty' items, a monkey in a skirt and a large screen. Yup. The screen is about the only thing I wanted. Right now, it's ‘gold' with pink flowers and the cardboard is printed with a smiling cartoon elephant and a raccoon bearing a flower. I'm not sure if ‘Tallulah' is the elephant, or the monkey. I'm gonna pop out the cardboard, use it as a template, and replace it with some nice textured paper - or cover the elephant pieces with fabric and a glue stick ! If I want to, I can even spray-paint it, to look like wrought iron. Or go all the way and make it look like an 80s changing room with neon paint splashes ! Possibilities are endless - and I've been wanting a good screen for a long time. This one is big enough to use for site photos, too !
But you know me, I hated to even spend $12. on it. Kept hoping to find one second-hand. But now I have my own brand new one, and I'm really glad I bought it. I spent about an hour at TRU, ferrying stuff to the price checkers. They're down to two Madison ‘My Scene Roller Girls', with very little Barbie stuff on clearance. Quite a lot of Bratz merch, though. Cheetah Girls were less than $6. each, even the ones that sang, so now's the time if you want them - or their clothes and props ! Nearly bought another outfit for PDorrie, but it was a Fisher-Price doll's dress, so I wasn't sure if it'd fit. And I can make it m'self, I'm just getting lazy with semi-cheap prices dangling in front of me when I have a few bucks.
I'm seriously considering saving up for the new ‘My House' Barbie set - it's a lot like the current one, but it's $5. more and has a second floor ‘bedroom'. I normally wouldn't care, and would go with the cheaper, available one, but I like the bedroom's windows. Our TRU doesn't have it yet. They had the ‘TV Chef' playset, and it's nice...just don't know if I'll need it if I'm saving up for the house. Decisions, decisions. I mostly like the ‘My House' set because it's really open - I can fit any number of furniture pieces wherever I want, it's not limited like many doll houses. The floor is wherever you want it to be, and all the walls, both sides, are useable. I'm growing to like modular doll houses !
If you're into the ‘Peek-a-Boo Cuties', the Liddle Kiddle-like dolls, our TRU had several on the shelves. They're tiny ! They had the new Holiday Barbie doll, but they've had her since before Independence Day - and Canada Day - so, nothing new. Is it just me, or does her silver skirt remind anyone else of muffin cups ? Those shiny ones that you sometimes got cupcakes in ? Hmm...
Met a nice lady a little younger than me, buying that new Millennium Falcon. She was so excited - she'd had the original ! We chatted and I gave out some info, and I swear, the guy at the register was taking notes. Well, where else are ya gonna find out that the new one has a medical bay and is six inches bigger than the vintage one ? I wished her lots of fun playing with it (she'd also bought several action figures) because she said that was HERS. Love to meet someone else who enjoys toys !
Although it wasn't on the agenda, I paid a short visit to the Barnes and Noble next door - and snagged a copy of Doll Reader. Mostly for the Matt O'Neill pajama pattern, for Fiyero. Man, the projects are stacking up around here ! There's also directions for making a doll dress out of a fancy handkerchief, and I may have to try that, too.
By now, I was getting hot and thirsty, so I lopped Hobby Lobby and Big Lots off the list and headed for Target. Nothing new in the Dollar Spot, and I wanted to get the advertised 60 pack of pencils for $2. - Beloved burns through pencils at his Shop, and Dearest needs 24 sharpened for school late next month. From there, I snagged a jar of rice crackers, and hit the register. Two sodas at home later, I realized... I'd never looked at the toy section ! Oh, well ! Beloved wants me to go back for more pencils, so I'll be there again soon.
Took a bit of a nap, got Beast dressed, and started putting stuff away. Oh, what a nice day today was. When Beloved came home, we got to talking about my yard sale haunts, and I told him I'd been looking for one of his favorite movies, Once Bitten, every time I saw a pile of dusty VHS tapes. And it'd just occurred to me to check for DVD availability ! Turns out it's out, so we ended up over at Hastings. Nope. Not in ‘Feature Films', not in ‘Comedy'. So I asked a nice guy working in the video game section - it was in ‘Horror' ! How silly ! That's not a horror story at all ! They only had a used copy, like we cared - we were glad to pay the $9.99 for it. But when we got it to the register, it rang up as $5.99 ! Lucky Hubby !
You may not know to look at me, but I'm kind of a Bruce Campbell fan. He's so goofy ! I've probably seen Army of Darkness 50 times. He kinda reminds me of Beloved. Anyway, our library had his book, Let's Make Love ! The Bruce Campbell Way, but not his autobiography, If Chins Could Kill. Well, your lucky Dorrie found a used copy of Chins for $7., so we snagged it, too. And Chinese food.
Wow. You'd think it was my birthday ! But it was a great way to send my birth month off for another year ! Goodbye, July !!
Speaking of which I need to head on down to TRU and see what they got. Maybe the knocked some prices down. Yep, I'm going be a kid next week and by toys. LOL!
