Olivia, out in the sunshine....

I took Olivia out in the sunshine yesterday, so thought I'd share some photos of her.  My favourite colours are blue and white, and I've noticed that subconsciously, my dolls tend to have a lot of clothing in these two colours too!!!!

If it's cold where you are, I hope these bring a little sunshine to your day!  Keep safe and warm everyone!

Olivia just pops in to say Hi!

No dolly time for me at the moment, but I did take some photos of Olivia, my Helen Kish Prima Vera girlie, last weekend, so thought I'd share them.  She's such a pretty girl and likes to hang out with the Little Darlings.  Here she is with her doll who has auburn curls, just like she does!

Ten year anniversary and Olivia Kish!

Today is the ten year anniversary of us moving to Spain...and my goodness the years have passed very quickly.  It was a bit of a culture change when we first came here, a whole new language to learn, new friends to make, as well as adapting to a completely different way of life!!  And I have to say it really has been worth every moment....I can honestly say that I have no regrets about coming to live here and certainly wouldn't want to move back to the UK, although it is nice to visit occasionally....but I'm always happy to return 'home' to Spain!!

I took some photos of our two lemon trees today.  Well I say 'lemon' trees, one of the trees was in fact an orange tree when we first bought the house, but after a couple of years lemons began to appear and now it is a mixture of the two!  Weird!!!  I would say that I still find it 'novel' to just walk out into the garden and pick some lemons....!  Although we do have far more than we really know what to do with!!  And the smell of the blossoms.....lovely! 

Orange AND lemon tree!

An abundance of lemons!

I also took some photos of Olivia, my Primavera Olivia by Helen Kish.  She's a 12" tall jointed plastic and vinyl doll who I've 'customised' a little bit by adding a wig that I made from Tibetan lambswool and adding some shine to her eyes and lips.  I really think she is such a pretty doll....I have had Kish dolls in the past, but I think I like this one best of all!

Olivia on her Vespa....

Olivia by Helen Kish is the only doll I have who seems to fit this model Vespa scooter well, and even she looks a bit tall in these photos for the bike....but I've wanted to take photos of a doll riding it for ages.  But what a palavar!  I got down on the ground to be at the right level, and the dogs decided this was a fun game and jumped on top of me.  Two of them almost knocked her off the bike onto the hard tiled floor, Yoda decided to tug the wig off...she has a thing about doll wigs, and Kara just wanted to press her nose against the lens of my camera.  So I only actually got 5 photos and three of those are exactly the same!!!!!  Oh, except one has Karas tail across the front of the photo!!!

Here are the best of a bad bunch!!  Perhaps I'll try again tomorrow!

Oh what a change in the weather!

This morning we came back from the coast and although it was lovely and sunny when we arrived here in Estepa, by this evening it had got quite chilly and then we had a bit of light rain.  Our house is cold too, I always find that it takes a long time for the rooms to warm up, it's usually well into the spring before the house feels warm enough for my liking.  Being a typical Spanish house, it's not really designed for warmth, it's more inclined to keep the heat out!!!! 

Anyway, all that aside, I had a little bit of dolly play-time when we got home.  I dressed and rewigged my little 12 inch tall Primavera Olivia by Helen Kish.  I didn't like her original wig because it was a very blond mohair one and I felt it was not only too 'grown up' for her, but also rather 'brassy' so it came off.  Her default outfit was rather 'fantasy' so that come off too! 

In my wig box I found an old lambswool wig that I made ages ago for another doll.  I trimmed it a little bit and love it on her!  Such a surprise because it is dark auburn and I'd visualised her as a brunette!  She fits so many of the Yosd clothes that I have, so here she is trying on a pair of jeans with a dress I made last year.  When I looked at my photographs, I remembered a question that Dee had asked some time ago "why are all bjds so sad looking?".....well I realised that it's not so much that 'all' bjds are sad looking, it's more that I really love sad looking dolls, no matter what type they are!!!!!