I've been getting back into my doll collection over the last month. The fashion dolls that I had collected so far were all Gene Marshall dolls. If you don't know much about Gene Marshall, she is a 15-1/2 inch doll, and is supposed to be a movie star of the 40's and 50's and has cool clothes from those two eras. Since she's an actress, she gets to have dozens and dozens of hair colors and, of course, hair styles. I guess I never grew up lol. Anyway, I've always promised to one day give my dolls to my nieces, so I thought that, rather than have them wait until I kick the bucket, I would thin out my Gene dolls and add some other make fashion dolls. Actually, I had not bought any more Genes since 2000. Two of my nieces that are interested picked out dolls and outfits that I set out for them to look at this week. Three of my nieces are real doll lovers. Another one is not really interested and the 4th one, I have a feeling will not be interested either, she never really played with dolls, but I'm making the offer just the same. Now the two oldest of the "doll-lovers" are 18 and 21; the third and youngest is 13. (I have 6 nieces and 4 nephews) and the three that won't want dolls are 32, nearly 30 and 17. I've also given 3 or 4 Gene dolls to a friend of mine and one to my sister, 43, who loves dolls as well. Another sister of mine, Debbie, loves dolls but has her own collection going, however; I will probably eventually ask her if she wants any at this time, too.

The point of all this is 1. You can see I have a big family--ha! and 2. I had an excuse to buy more dolls (or at least that's how I reason it out). I didn't take any vacation this year or last so I figure what I would have spent on a week at the beach both times almost covers what I spent on dolls and clothing this last month. I have wanted to buy a Tyler Wentworth doll (16" tall) for about 6 years (since she came out on the market) and one of the other dolls by Robert Tonner, considered a "pal" to Tyler; Sydney Chase, and finally bought a couple of those and and one of the other dolls by Robert Tonner, considered a "pal" to Tyler; Sydney Chase. I also purchased a couple Brenda Starr dolls; one of Brenda's "friends", Daphne, a couple of new Gene dolls and an Elizabeth Taylor by Franklin Mint. It is a doll based on Taylor and how she looked when she was quite young in the movie "A Place In The Sun". Being sentimental I also bought a Little Miss Revlon doll; my first "fashion doll" and one that I got for Christmas when I was 8 or 9. I don't know what happened to my first Barbie, one of the original type, but I think I gave her to one of my sisters when they were younger. Meanwhile I frequently used to pick up Barbie dolls for my nieces to play with when they were younger and were staying overnight. I still have those and a lot of clothes in a suitcase and drag it out for various visiting youngsters like Melvina's grandchildren. I never got into collection Barbies though like I am into the larger fashion dolls. I also have just discovered a new doll, Vivian, I'm excited about that and will be getting two of the dolls hopefully some time this week.

If you would like to see doll collection; you can look at the Yahoo! albums I made (there are 4 albums available from this page, and two of them are about my dolls). The album is a work in progress so not all of the dolls are in there yet. When I get photographs taken of my hand fan collection I will post them on either this page or my Sugar 360 page.