EVERY CHICK NEEDS A GROOVY PAD

When Echo, my faux-American Girl doll, entered my life on Christmas, I knew immediately what I would be receiving for my March birthday.  A doll that fab has to have a cool bedroom set to reside in and since I'm notoriously hard to buy for, I knew my family would be more than happy to let me pick out these accessories myself.  (Yes, this will be for my 44th birthday.  No, I don't think that's strange at all.  Well, maybe I think it's a little strange, but the 70s bits you can buy for this doll are so...so...groovy that I just don't care if I look like a freak with arrested development.)

Groovy, but...ouch!  The price!

While I'm willing to pay the relatively steep prices they want for the record player and tape recorder or the lunch box set, I bristled at the $125 they wanted for the doll bed.  Granted, it has those cool love beads hanging down, but I still thought there had to be a cheaper alternative.  A quick Google search and I found numerous sites with do-it-yourself American Girl beds that probably wouldn't have stretched my limited abilities with nails and carpenter's glue. 

Sitting at my mother's kitchen table having lunch, I glanced to my left and saw her collection of little pitchers on this battered, wooden two-shelf unit.  I immediately said, "I think that would just fit my doll."  I happened to have the doll with me (I was harassing my sister about making Echo a poncho) and sure enough, the shelf was just the right length for her to lie flat and just wide enough.  My mother graciously dumped her pitchers elsewhere and I carted it home. 

Marcia, Marcia Marcia!

I gave the thing a couple coats of white semi-gloss and then went in search of fabric.  My sister assumed I'd want it to be all Brady Bunch girls-inspired.  I've mentioned many (many, many) times that as a kid I was absolutely obsessed with having their bedroom.  Those funky 70s flowers on the wallpaper!  Ah, heaven!  However, Echo is going to reside most of the time in my family room and, most of the time, that room is decorated with my gorgeous retro decor in the avocado-tangerine-marigold color scheme.  I needed fabric that would scream 1972 but that didn't clash with the other chotchkies in the space.  We can't clash.  That would be tacky.

Hobby Lobby let me down, but I found just the thing at JoAnn's:

I knew I had a winner when I showed it to my mother and she literally recoiled from the pattern.  I was hoping to find fabric with owls, but anything with the birdy motif was either the wrong color or too nursery-oriented, or the owls were strange and bug-eyed and not groovy at all.  Mushrooms were almost as good.  And the fabric goes perfectly with my mushroom sign and my mushroom mug...

I'm not a fan of the sewing machine.  I can knit for hours on end, but put me in front that damn Singer and I'm ready to beat myself over the head with it.  I spent all of Friday evening, into the early hours of Saturday, working on the bedding.  Then I got up Saturday morning and spent another hour and a half tweaking it some more.  I have some OCD tendencies and like Monk the detective, I can't stand things that are crooked or asymetrical.  The canopy kept coming out uneven and the bedspread billowed out instead of draping nicely by the sides.  I finally solved the latter by just tucking the whole mess under the mattress.  It's not like the doll is really going to use the bed.  And, no, I don't intend to sit around playing with her.  Even as a child I wasn't wild about dolls.  Loved my stuffed animals, but dolls usually ended up with their heads shaved or on my dissecting table.  (I just had to know what the inner workings of Baby Alive looked like.)

I made quick work of the mattress by using four folded cloth diapers from the basement, formerly my children's burp cloths.  Much easier than trying to cut a piece of foam with an electric carving knife.  The pillow is just stuffed with a wad of fiberfill.

And the result?  Voila!

I'm a lousy photographer with a mediocre camera.  I swear it actually looks pretty cute.

Caught in the act.

I have to say I'm pretty pleased.  Even my sister admitted it looked better than she thought it would.  I mean, she thinks the fabric is horrendous and vomit-worthy, but it totally is the look she knew I was going for.  Unfortunately the doll and her bed reside on a long mission cabinet in the family room, just in front of this window-like opening that goes into the kitchen.  The cats frequently use the table as a springboard to leap through the window and I have this strange feeling they'll constantly bump that bed and ruin the symmetry of the fabric.  I'll probably spend half my life straightening the canopy and making sure there's equal white space showing on each side.  Thank God the motif in the fabric wasn't in straight lines or I'd need some new medication.

The only question now is the love beads.  Do I add them so that it more closely resembles the real thing or would adding beads to the wild fabric be overkill?  The one thing I don't want to be is tacky.

It's Not Kitty Carryall, But...

I have been coveting my daughter's American Girl doll.  Not the doll itself but the fact that there exists a 70s doll with such groovy accessories that I drool each time a catalog arrives.  My daughter has the 1930s Kit doll and Kanani, the doll of the year from Hawaii she picked out on our trip to the American Girl Store in Chicago.  They both sit on her dresser shelf.  I mean, they just sit there, gathering dust.  I thought that was a shame when I could easily change Kanani's name to Marcia Brady.  My daughter suddenly decided she liked her dolls when I showed a keen interest in one of them.  I had my mother sew a fab dress for "Marcia" from the material of one of Foghorn's toddler dresses (a gaudy flowered pattern Carol Brady would be proud of) and left the newly attired doll on the shelf.  It was less than an hour before Foghorn appeared downstairs, eyes full of fire and demanding to know what this was doing on Kanani.  I said, "Her name's not Kanani.  It's Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!  And she's mine."  That dress was whipped off so fast it was just a psychedelic blur and my hopes of taking over her doll were dashed.

I don't really want the 70s American Girl Doll.  I can think of lots of better things to do with $100.  I do, however, desperately want those accessories.  How I long to have that little record player and tape recorder and bed with the beads hanging around it and the tiny plastic terrarium.  If I can't live in the real Brady Bunch house, I want it in miniature.  Well, my yearning apparently was heard by Santa because on Christmas Eve my sister presented me with this little beauty:

She's an American Girl-sized knockoff from JoAnn's.  She has the long 70s hair and it's reddish, which I much prefer to the genuine blonde Julie doll.  The outfit was crocheted by my sister from a vintage pattern meant for a Barbie-sized doll.  This means my sister did math to adjust the pattern to fit my new toy.  You have to understand, my sister is a complete loss with numbers.  On several occasions she's attempted to open the wrong hotel room door because she got confused about the number to her own.  It's a kind of numerical dyslexia.  She also can't add or subtract easily, as evidenced by the befuddled look on her face when trying to calculate the tip on a restaurant bill.  Very similar to the expression I saw on a chimpanzee with a Rubic's Cube on Nova.  Anyway, she successfully redid the outfit and I'm only minorly miffed about the yarn.  No, I'm not bothered by the colors.  They are just, just...groovy.  My umbrage comes from where she acquired it.

Who wouldn't love these?

Every fall we celebrate Aunt Nancy Day (or now known as Uncle Chester Day).  In 2012 my mother and I took her to lunch and an excursion to the James Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio.  As an extra little gift, I knit her a collection of dishcloths in the 70s avocado and tangerine colors that she loves loathes so much.  Yes, the gift was designed to make her scream and writhe in pain.  I thought about writing a blog post on "101 Ways to Torture Your 70s-Hating Sister" and this would have been in the top ten.  They were handmade, so her conscience wouldn't let her just throw them away.  They were, to her, too ugly to use.  So, they sat...for over a year...untouched and unloved.  Until she got the last minute, bright idea of the faux American Girl doll and quickly unraveled all my hard work to make my doll's dress.  I must say, though, the outfit is just...just...groovy.  Then again, so were the dishcloths.

The most obvious choice for a name for my doll would have been Marcia, of course, but some reason that didn't seem to fit.  I bounced around various other Brady Bunch or Partridge Family character names, but nothing was quite right.  She needed a hippy-sounding name.  The Mark Lindsay song "Arizona" kept going through my mind.  My sister asked about the name of the runaway in the Patridge Family episode where they sing "Point Me in the Direction of Albuquerque," but it was something ordinary like Maggie.  Then I thought of David Cassidy singing "Echo Valley 26809" (with a brief flashback to the concert where he almost took my cellphone for the spoken portion of the song, but some other bimbo shoved her phone right under his nose while he was reaching for mine and ruined the whole thing...not that I'm bitter).   Foghorn is furious, but I think the name Echo totally suits this doll.  My daughter, may I mention, also hauled my doll around all Christmas Eve at her grandmother's, insisting it was hers.  Fat chance.  And I want my flower power dress back from Kanani.

Echo got her first accessory the day after Christmas when I sat down with Foghorn and her awesome Shrinky Dinks jewelry set full of yellow smiley faces and peace symbols and flowers.  I made my new best friend a necklace which says it all.

MY BFF - CAROL BRADY

I recently read Life is Not a Stage, Florence Henderson's memoir of her years in show business.  Regular readers of this blog know I have a slight 70s obsession.  I'm wild about all things Partridge and Brady and owl-ish and Mystery Machine flowery.  Well, I read in Carol Brady's Florence Henderson's book that she reads all the e-mails sent through her website and responds.  I didn't quite believe that, but I went ahead and sent a message anyway, telling her about my obsession with love of the show and how my daughter and I watch the show regularly together and what a fan I am.  And this came in yesterday's email:

Oh...my...GOD!  Carol Brady wrote to me!  I showed my daughter and bounced in my seat and forwarded it to my mother and sister and then read it a couple more times.  Ranks right up there with touching David Cassidy's hand.  Later Foghorn came in to ask if I wanted to watch The Brady Bunch.

"You mean watch my best friend?  Of course I wanna watch!"

"Mom!" she squealed.  "She's not your best friend."

"She wrote to me!  Right here!"

"She wrote you three lines."

"Nope,  nope.  We're besties.  BFF's.  Me and Carol Brady," I chirped.

Foghorn rolled her eyes and then said in her most condescending tone, "Mom, you really need to grow up."

Whatever...  Even she can't piss in my Wheaties today!  I'm in some groovy, bell-bottomed 70s heaven and feel like I'm floating six inches above my green shag carpet.

** NOTE:  Over the years I've been asked what I said to Florence Henderson to make her "laugh out loud."  In my email to her I wrote that I had been impressed by her work over the years but especially when she went on Dancing with the Stars (in her late 70s, no less).  I then said, "I mean this in the most loving and respectful way but you've got balls!"  Apparently she liked that.  R.I.P., Mrs. Brady.

CAROL BRADY WOULD BE SO PROUD

I've mentioned before that I have this 1970s obsession.  I refuse to listen to those who say my admiration for David Cassidy resembles Fatal Attraction or that I'm somehow weird for wanting to name my children (or dogs) Greg, Marcia, Peter, Jan, Bobby, and Cindy.  And so what if every time I go to King's Island I pretend I'm sitting in the seat Keith Partridge occupied on the carousel?

For someone as obsessed interested in 70s decor as I am, the last few months have been very lucky.  I stumbled on this hideously beautiful owl string-art picture at an antique store and my sister gave it to me for Christmas.  (Although she thinks the picture is disgusting, she still laments that she didn't see it first as it would have made a stunning surprise present.)

Well, last week I celebrated my birthday and my sister managed to round up a few more 70s goodies to add to my family room (which is not a monstrosity, I don't care what she says).  Makes me wanna pull out some bell-bottom trousers and listen to Bobby Sherman...

My sister (known to the Inmates as Uncle Chester) found this lovely
bit of vintage needlework at an antique store and my mother
whipped it up into a pillow.  Nothing says class like tangerine and marigold...

Despite her aversion to the colors, my sister crocheted this owl
and managed not to vomit.  (She gives the details, including a link
to the free pattern here.)

Tupperware!  She rounded up a new-in-the-bag
set of spice jars in green, orange, yellow, and brown, as
well as two Tupperware hostess books from 1970, the year I was born.

Look at the gorgeous bath set that lucky
hostess could have gotten!  And I'm wild
about that little Tupperware container key chain.
I had one when I was 12 and came home from school
to discover there was nothing but the lid hanging from
the chain.  I've mourned it for 30 years...

Oh, how I wish I could go back to my Grandma's Tupperware
party in the early 70s and get my hands on THOSE.

Another antique store find -- a book on 70s decor and architecture.
Most of the rooms are either in my classic brown/yellow/orange/green
color scheme or look like the side of the Partridge Family bus.  Heaven...

Foghorn is wild about building fairy houses out of sticks
and moss and stones in the woods.  She was SO excited
when she found out I was getting a 70s-themed one.  The house came from
Hobby Lobby, with the accessories painted by Chester.

My own bird bath with an owl on top...  Yes, there is a fowl-ish theme here.

A table and benches in my colors and a yard decoration
with a disco ball on top.

Despite my preteen son's behavior of late, which involves a lot of daydreaming about when he moves out and asking me, "Doesn't it bother you to be the worst mother in the world?", his gift proves I must be doing something right.  His father took him shopping and he bought me yarn.  Yes, the boy knows my other obsessions as well, but what is truly impressive is the one skein of multi-colored acrylic he picked out:

The Vulcan later told me that The Professor spotted that skein in the store and said, "Hey, that's Mom's 70s colors" and plucked it right up.  Makes my heart swell...


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