Hello, my name is Vera Rose and I am a Prima Dolly London Blythe. My mom has actually changed my name so many times because she said she just couldn't find the perfect name for me. She has finally settled on Vera Rose....for now. LOL! I love spring and my favorite color is pink...can you tell? I love wearing hats, just like the one I'm wearing now that my mom made for me. Oh, and the wrap bracelet that I'm wearing came from the wonderful and sweet Jenn and her etsy shop, called SoulsFireDesigns! (Thank you Jenn!!!) I love flowers, rainbows, butterflies, and taking walks around the garden while sipping on pink lemonade.
I think one of the best discoveries I ever made was back in 2003 when I accidentally stumbled upon a doll forum (called Dollytime) while trying to find the identity of an old childhood doll of mine and saw these big eyed dolls with a big head called Blythe. I thought they were very freaky looking dolls at first, but the more photographs I looked at, the more they intrigued me. I was amazed at just how photogenic these dolls were. After a few months of wanting one, my fiance bought me one for Christmas. He got me a Fruit Punch Blythe, which is the one I told him I wanted, and once I got her out of her box prison and held her in my hands, I was totally hooked! I knew I had to have more of these girls!
I've been into the hobby now for 9 years and I currently have 19 blythes and I love each and every one of them. I thought I'd start introducing each of my girls in different posts. I'll start with my very first blythe doll, Bianca.
Bianca Clarice
Hi, my name is Bianca Clarice. I am a Fruit Punch Blythe. I'm a bit of a punky girl with lots of attitude! I love fashion and shopping is my favorite thing to do. I enjoy lots of different types of music, but I'm a rocker at heart. My favorite rock group is Aerosmith. I love motorcycles and want to own one someday. I love to travel and I want to see the world!
The second craziest vacation was last year's vacation. Instead of heading to a beach, we decided to split a cabin in Pigeon Forge, TN with my brother and his wife. Now, Recie and I have been to Pigeon Forge before and we had a good time and my brother and I have been almost every summer of our childhood because that is where our parents always took us. We've never stayed in a cabin before so we thought it would be a fun and different experience. Different was correct. My brother picked the dates to go and lets just say he picked the worst possible dates ever. When we arrived, a car show, called the Classic Rod Run, had just ended, but most of those people stayed because starting that Thursday was the Fall Rod Run. Traffic was absolutely terrible and by Thursday of that week, it took 2 hours just to go from one end of Pigeon Forge to the other. We actually had to look at maps and find alternate routes just to get around the traffic. We didn't get to walk the strip because this car show brought some weird folks. It was as if every redneck south of Tennessee who's name would've been Bubba, Cletus, or Clem was there, straight from the trailer with their confederate flags proudly flying from their pickup trucks. For those that don't know, I'm in an interracial relationship and a lot of folks from the south don't approve of that kind of thing. Yes, racism is alive and well and I see it every single day. We definitely got some mean stares when we drove past these folks who were sitting along the strip in lawn chairs. It was very uncomfortable so we just avoided going down the strip as much as possible. The way people are today, you don't know what might happen and it was best to just avoid any negative or dangerous situation if possible.
Even Dollywood was a disappointment. I remember the park being so much fun as a kid, but not only was the park just about deserted (meaning there wasn't a lot of people there at all), but most of the people that were there were elderly and they would just stare at Recie and I and whisper among themselves. It was so funny that I just smiled at them and kept on walking. It was as if we were the talk of the town or something! The roller coasters were disappointing. They were very rough and jerky. The only one we really liked was called Mystery Mine and although it was a little jerky also, it was a lot of fun. We also found that a wooden coaster, called Thunderhead, was a bit fun if you rode it in the front. We usually ride coasters in the back because to us, that is the best seat on a coaster, but the back was so jerky and bad that the front was the best seat on that ride. They had a new swing ride called the Barnstormer that was a ton of fun! And there was a family boat ride, called Riverbattle, that we just had a blast with. It was an interactive ride where you could shoot the people on the boat with a crank powered water gun and they could shoot back at you with crank powered water gun on their boats. We had a lot of fun shooting people and getting them soaked and then when we'd ride, those people that we soaked payed their revenge on us and soaked us back. We had so much fun and laughed so hard. We did thoroughly enjoy ourselves and we made the best of it. I thought that perhaps Dollywood was so desolate because we went in the middle of September, but my parents went there last July and they said that it wasn't very busy then either. Perhaps the economy has something to do with it, but in my honest opinion it's because the park isn't all that. This year they are opening a new winged coaster, so perhaps that will bring in more people.
The cabin we stayed at was very cute, but the walls were so thin you could hear every noise made in the cabin and every morning around sunrise, there were a couple of squirrels that would jump on the tin roof and run around up there and wake us up. They would be chirping and having a good time. LOL! All we could do was laugh about it. One morning I heard a noise outside and later that morning when I took Diamond out to potty, I noticed the trash can lid was on the ground and the trash bag was out of the can and ripped open. Apparently a black bear had decided to see what goodies was in the trash that morning. The trash cans were mounted on a pole and they were elevated off the ground, but the lids had teeth marks and holes on them where bears had attacked the cans before. LOL!
The highlights of this trip were seeing the black bears along the road while riding the trolley to Gatlinburg, eating at Bennitts Pit Bar-b-que (they had the best bar-b-que I've ever had!!!), hiking the trail to see Laurel Falls, which I've wanted to see since I was kid, having fun with Recie on Riverbattle and the Barnstormer at Dollywood, and having picnics at the Chimney's picnic area with Recie and Diamond. Unfortunately, the Great Smoky Mountains is not dog friendly and there were only two trails in the entire area that would allow dogs. Dogs were also allowed at the overlooks and at picnic areas but that's it, so Diamond didn't get to do a lot of activities with us last year on vacation.
Our last day, on our way back from Laurel Falls, we made the mistake of trying to take the regular way into Pigeon Forge and traffic was at a complete stop way before you even get into Pigeon Forge. We took the Galinburg bypass and about a mile after passing through the tunnel, traffic was at a complete stop! It took us over 2 hours just to get into Pigeon Forge and to a street that we could turn at and take a back road to go around the traffic. Recie doesn't like traffic and he was pretty upset that we had to sit in traffic that long. It was horrible. It was definitely a memorable vacation, but despite all the crazy things going on that week, we did have a good time. :)
Most of our other vacations have went smoothly in past years, but there always seems to be something funny or crazy that happens sometime during the trip. I hope you enjoyed reading about the two craziest vacations I ever had. :)
Recie in front of Laurel Falls.
Recie and I posing for a photo at Dollywood.
A mama bear in a tree and her baby right above her. Do you see the baby?
Another gorgeous day in the 80's today. It makes me long for vacation. We usually go to the beach for vacation. I don't know if anyone else has this problem, but we always have National Lampoon moments on vacation. Seriously. I think I will make a two part post telling the stories of the two craziest vacations we ever had. It makes for some fun reading. LOL! I am in no way complaining because we always make the most of whatever happens while on vacation, but the two vacations I'm going to talk about just had so many things go wrong or awkward that I can't resist sharing. :)
Back in 2004 my parents won a trip to Cancun, Mexico and they didn't want to go because they didn't want to fly, so they gave the trip to Recie and I. We arrived at the airport 2 hours before the flight was supposed to depart. We were at the cafeteria watching the planes and listening for our flight to be announced like all the other flights were. We were supposed to fly from Roanoke to Charlotte and then from Charlotte to Cancun. We noticed that there was nothing announced in a long time and I started to get worried. It was my first time flying and because it had been years since Recie flew, it was sort of like his first. Neither of us knew that there were seats to wait at the gate, so we were waiting at the cafeteria. Well, we finally heard our name announced saying it was our final boarding call! We rushed through security and when we got to our gate, it was just in time to see our plane leaving. We had missed our flight!!! We went down to the counter and the lady was very rude with us saying that it was our responsibility to get on the plane and that we'd probably have to pay for another flight. I told her that we were waiting to hear that our plane was ready for boarding and we never heard anything. She made some phone calls and sure enough, the intercom system had went down and they were having problems with it. She then (kindly) booked us another flight. This time we were supposed to fly from Roanoke to Philadelphia and from Philly to Cancun. We waited another 2 hours and then we found out that the Philly flight was delayed due to very bad storms. So we had to have our flight re-booked again! This time we'd fly from Roanoke to Charlotte, from Charlotte to Houston, and then from Houston to Cancun. After waiting 2 more hours at the airport, we finally got out of there. When we got to Houston, we almost missed that flight because our plane was late getting there due to flying around storms and then we couldn't find our gate. Nobody at the airport wanted to help us. We'd ask employees there and they would just point us in the direction we were supposed to go, but when we went the way they pointed, it led us to a parking garage. Finally when we had about 10 minutes before our flight was supposed to leave, we found someone who took us to our gate. We actually had to go through the parking garage to get back into the terminal where our gate was. We would have never found it by ourselves. It was crazy!!!! We were supposed to originally get to Cancun around 5pm but we didn't get there until around 12:30am!!! LOL! We were supposed to have an oceanfront room but instead we had a"supposed" side view room that faced a water treatment device and it made noise all the time so we couldn't leave our balcony door open without hearing a buzz. If I looked hard to the left, I could see just a glimpse of the Caribbean from our balcony. :(
We were so tired when we arrived that all we did was go straight to our room and go to sleep. The next day is when we started having a good time. The Caribbean Sea is gorgeous and I even saw a sea turtle come out of the ocean one night to lay her eggs, which was the highlight of the trip for me. The resort was nice and was an all inclusive resort so all of the food and drinks was included. But I have no desire whatsoever to go back to Cancun. The locals would come and try to sell you stuff on the beach and if you weren't interested or if you told them you didn't bring any money out there with you, they would try to bargain trades with you. Also, on the trip from the airport to the resort, we thought we were going to die because the driver drove like a freaking maniac. In fact, it seemed everyone was driving very fast and crazy! It scared us so badly that we never left the resort for the entire trip. (We were there for 5 days/4 nights but we only really had 3 good days due to the fact they count the day you arrived and the morning you departed as days.) On the morning that we were supposed to come home, the shuttle service took us to the airport and a guy came and just took our bags from us (without asking) outside and wheeled them into the airport. He then wanted a tip, but we only had enough money on us to buy a small snack or drink at the airport. We didn't need to carry cash with us because the trip didn't cost us anything and if we wanted to buy a souvenir, we just used credit. He was very upset that he didn't get tipped for carrying our bags in, but we never asked him to nor did he give us a chance to tell him no. The flight from Cancun to Philadelphia went smoothly until it was time to land. We hit an air pocket that made the plane drop what felt like 1,000 feet! It scared me to death. I will tell you this my friends, I have no desire whatsoever to fly anywhere ever again. If I can't drive there or get there by boat, I don't need to go there. LOL!
Here is a photo of Recie and I goofing off in front of the Caribbean Sea. See how beautiful the water is and how white the sand is! It was just gorgeous and I am glad we had the opportunity to see it.
And here is the highlight of my trip....the sea turtle that came out to lay her eggs. I felt truly blessed to have witnessed this.
As of last Friday, I'm now officially unemployed. I am enjoying the time off and am getting lots of spring cleaning done. I'm also catching up on some much needed sleep. I am finally getting 8 hours of sleep, whereas before I was running on anywhere from 3-5 hours most days, 6 hours on a good day. I didn't realize just how sleep deprived I was. Working the nightshift for over 7 1/2 years will do that to a person. When I do start looking for a new job, I want to find something with decent hours for a change. Because of severance and vacation pay received, I won't be able to get unemployment benefits for at least a month, so I'm going to enjoy that time off before having to start looking for a job.
I did manage to get a photo of my little Irish girl, Autumn, in the St. Patrick's Day dress I made for her.
I was all dressed up in green as well, as you can see from this photo. This was just a quick photo taken by my fiance. I wasn't wearing any makeup and I didn't have my hair fixed, so please excuse my appearance. :)
I want to start working on a new dress for my girls later today. I am going to try to make a sundress. I'm not sure how good it's going to turn out, but hopefully it will turn out decent. I don't have a pattern for one, so I'm going to try to design my own.
Ugh, so for the last couple of days, I've been dealing with some computer issues. I was fortunate to save all of my important files, photos, videos, and music to a couple of flash drives before it completely crashed on me this morning. I had to reboot the laptop back to factory settings, but the good news is that I am back online now and my computer is running better than ever!!! Wahooo! What a pain this has been! I had antivirus software on my computer so I don't know if I got a virus or if it was malware or what. Whatever it was wouldn't let me get into anything Google at all yesterday. After the reboot I've had no trouble logging in and going to Google sites.
Anyway, I've only got three nights left to work at my job, unless things change. There has been no word from the new owner at all, which makes me believe he isn't concerned if people stay or not. There are only three people who are defiinitely staying (if the new owner offers them the job and hires them) and one who doesn't know. Everyone else won't be coming back, myself included. Since he has not talked to any of us and acted like he wants us (plus it is doubtful he would keep our pay the same), I have made up my mind not to return. He hasn't offered me the job and there are only a few days left before he takes over. I haven't even met him yet. So when I sign my termination papers and receive my severance pay on Friday, I am going to go file for unemployment and start my journey of finding a new job. And I'm going to enjoy the time off in the process. I've been working nights there for over 7 1/2 years and before this job I did shift work for 7 years. I am ready to find a job with normal hours. Now I'll have a bit more time for my blythe dolls and to try to get some spring cleaning and yard work done. I hope I can find a job that I'll like. It will probably be a while before I find something. I don't care what the government says, the economy is still bad and I don't see where it is improving much. :(
I have not been sleeping well at all lately because of stress. I think I have been averaging around 2-3 hours a day. That is not good. I'm so tired right now and my upper back and shoulders are so tense and achy. I'm getting ready to go to bed right now, but I wanted to make a quick post in my blog since I am back online. :)
Thanks to all of those that are following me. I truly appreciate it! Until later my friends!
So I was on Facebook this morning checking the home page and I came across a video post from Busch Gardens Williamsburg. It was about their new roller coaster opening up late this spring called the Verbolten. The Verbolten is the coaster replacing the classic suspended coaster they used to have there called the Big Bad Wolf. I must say that I was sad to see them tear the Big Bad Wolf down and I miss hearing them tell me "Thank you for travelling at the speed of fright" as the coaster drifted out of the station. (If you are interesting in seeing what the Big Bad Wolf ride was like, here is a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F6LiJA3a44&feature=fvwrel.)
Anyway, I have to say that I am very excited about the new ride, Verbolten. I can't wait to see what it looks like when they are finished with it. I just hope they have it up and running before our season passes run out in July. Last year it took them all summer to get their new drop tower ride, called Mach Tower, up and running and I'm hoping that is not going to be the case with the Verbolten.
As if you haven't guessed it, I LOVE roller coasters. I have loved them since I was a little girl and that love has just grown over the years. I wish I could be one of those roller coaster enthusiast people who travel to different amusement parks just to ride the coasters! I had someone ask me once if I'd seen the Final Destination movie scene with the rollercoaster, which I hadn't at the time. They said that once I saw that, I'd probably be afraid to ride them. Well, I finally saw that scene the other day and all it did was make me want to ride a coaster! LOL!
I've been to many theme parks in past years: Cedar Point, Kings Dominion, Magic Kingdom at WDW, Animal Kingdom at WDW, Universal Studios, Univeral Studios Islands of Adventure, Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Lakeside (which no longer exists), Dollywood, Opryland USA (which no longer exists), and SeaWorld Orlando. Out of all of them, my favorite one is Busch Gardens located in Williamsburg, VA. The place is just beautiful. Each section of the park is based on a different European country. There is England, Scotland, Ireland, New France, France, Germany and Oktoberfest, and Italy. My favorite roller coaster there is Apollo's Chariot. It is such an awesome hypercoaster and the best seat is in the back of this coaster. In fact, I was engaged on that roller coaster!!! It is a funny story. It was April 15, 2007, which is my birthday, and Recie, my brother, his fiance at the time (they are married now), and I had planned to go the BG that day. It was overcast and they were calling for rain. I was hoping the rain would stay away, but it wasn't looking good and when we arrived it was just barely trying to sprinkle. We decided to ride Apollo's Chariot first, because it is the best ride in the park. As we were going up the big incline for the first drop, Recie pulls out a ring box and opens it! I was in total shock because I was not expecting it at all!!! Of course I said yes and put the ring on as soon as I could because we were almost at the top of the hill and I didn't want to lose the ring. LOL! As we went down the 210ft drop, it started to rain....and rain hard!!! It was raining so hard that the drops of water hurt smacking us in the face. We couldn't do anything but just laugh. It was awesome. By the time we got off of the ride, we were soaked! We stayed at the park anyway, regardless of the rain and rode the other roller coasters, too. I think it is one of my most memorable experiences there at the park.
Here is a photo of us on on the ride when he proposed. See how wet we were? Of course we were all laughing and having a great time. From left to right: me, Recie, William, and Stephanie.
Somehow my brother talked our mom into riding Apollo's Chariot later that year in October for Howloscream. The look of terror on her face is just priceless! She hadn't rode a roller coaster in years, and definitely not a steel hypercoaster like this one is. From left to right: Stephanie, William, Mom, and me. Notice we are all wearing some orange for Halloween.
Here is a youtube video of Apollo's Chariot. (How these people film while on the ride and not get caught is beyond me because they don't allow you to film while riding the coasters....)
Anyway, Busch Gardens is a great park. Every year (for the past 21 years) it wins the title of "World's Most Beautiful Theme Park". They have a lot of fun and intersting rides. The second best coaster there is the Griffon. The new drop tower they opened last year, called Mach Tower, is extremely fun also! Needless to say, if you are looking for culture, good food, and really fun rides, I highly recommend Busch Gardens Williamsburg. Their website is http://seaworldparks.com/en/buschgardens-williamsburg and it is fun checking out the different ride videos people have posted on youtube. I can't wait to visit again this spring. Our season passes for both Busch Gardens and the water park they own called Water Country USA runs out on July 2nd. I do hope they have the new Verbolten open before then!!!!
I decided to sit down late this morning and make a St. Patrick's Day dress for my blythes, since St. Patrick's Day is this month. Making clothes for my girls seems to help me forget my troubles for a little while. I love St. Patrick's Day for some reason. Perhaps it is because I have Irish in me (as if my last name doesn't give it away LOL!). From what I was told, my dad's side of the family is Scot-Irish, and on my mother's side of the family there is Irish and also Monacan Indian. I don't know what else is in my genetic background. One of these days I'd love to do research on my family and see just where we came from. It would be so interesting! I started once on ancestry.com, but I found out you have to pay to do any real research so I didn't continue.
Anyway, here is a quick photo of the dress.
I'll take a photo of it on one of my girls one day. What do you think of it? I need to clip a few hanging threads yet, but otherwise I think it turned out okay. Unfortunately, I ran out of green thread and had to use white thread in a few places, but once it is on the doll, you won't see it. It took me forever to make. I don't know if it takes other people hours to make a dress for a blythe doll, but for me it does. I have not mastered the art of making clothes for blythe yet. I make a lot of mistakes and usually I have to keep trying the dress on a doll and make adjustments as necessary. The dress isn't perfect, but my girls seem to be happy with the clothes I make for them and that is all that matters. :)
This reminds me....a few years ago, I bought an Irish Claddagh ring from a jewelry store online because I've always wanted one. It is such a beautiful ring and I just love it. Just for fun I went back to that website to look at their other Irish themed jewelry the other day. I couldn't believe just how expensive the ring that I have has become. I'm glad I bought mine when I did. When I bought it, I paid $139. To me this was very expensive and it was the most I've ever spent on jewelry for myself. That exact same ring is now $279!!!! Wow, it is amazing just how expensive the price of gold has become. Hmmm, I think people that invest in gold may be on to something....
Well, it's almost spring. In the mornings I hear a chorus of song birds singing that can only mean that spring (and warmer weather) can't be too far away. Not that it has been a bad winter by any means, especially when compared to the last few years. This winter has been fairly mild and with hardly any snow. In fact, we have had only had two significant snowfalls....one in October which brought us 3 inches and we were sure that was a sign of a bad winter to come, and then just a couple of weeks ago we had 7 inches dumped on us, but by the next day almost all of it had melted! We've had average temperatures this winter in the 50's with lots of days in the 60's and even a couple that reached over 70 degrees! Anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm not a winter person at all. I love warm weather and I can't wait for spring. It seems this is the time of year when spring teases you.....warm one day but then cold the next. It's as if winter doesn't want to let go and tries it's best to hold on. Of course just because the first day of spring is this month doesn't mean that we are out of the woods yet. I remember that one day in April, several years ago, it was a beautiful warm day that was in the low to mid 80's. My fiance and I was outside shooting basketball in shorts and short sleeves and just enjoying the warm day. My mawmaw calls me and said, "you know they are calling for snow tomorrow don't you?" I just laughed because I though there was absolutely no way we would get any snow when it was over 80 degrees outside. Well, sure enough, we woke up the next morning and it was snowing!!! It just goes to show you how crazy weather can be.
This year, spring brings uncertainty to me. I discovered that the company I work for is being sold to someone else. This means that if the sale goes through, we will receive severance pay, unused and accrued vacation time pay, and we will have to sign termination forms. It is highly probable that the new owner will want to keep as many of us as he can to run the place, but it is rumored that he will cut our pay and make us start over with vacation time. This is what he did at the other properties he bought and it is highly likely that he will do the same here. If this happens, I will not be able to work for him because we bought a house that put me over 40 miles away from my job (that's over 80 miles each day!) and to work there for less pay would no longer be financially beneficial to me anymore. We were told that we could file unemployment with our soon to be previous owners, and that is what I'll probably have to do. Once I sign the termination form, I'll be unemployed. It is a very scary and stressful time for me. I'm trying to look at it though as the beginning of a new chapter in my life. I do feel like all things happen for a reason. I'm hoping that something good will come out of this. There is a slight chance that the buyer may back out of the sale, but we don't know what will happen. Right now, we haven't been given much information. Hopefully we'll know something soon. I'm guessing the new potential owner will come in and talk with us when it gets close to the sale closing date and try to get us to apply with him. It will be interesting to see what he has to say. I don't think I'll continue working there though. We'll see. All I can do right now is take it one day at a time and try not to worry about it.
Usually spring is such a happy time for me, but this year I can't seem to look forward to it as much as I usually do. They say spring is a time for new beginnings, and this year it seems that it may be just that for me. It is exciting in a way, but very scary also!
