Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Rainy Day Paper Dolls

      It seems like only yesterday when my now eighteen year old was cutting her own 'rainy day' paper family from old J. C. Penny catalogs. I was rummaging through a set of children's books in our bookcase and what do you think a found? An entire catalog family fluttering about from the pages. I picked them up and felt tears form in my eyes. How I miss my children's childhood innocence. I hope that many of my readers here will make just as many happy memories with their little ones on rainy days, printing, coloring and cutting away.

Winnie the Wonder Cuts, The H. C. of L.
      "I'm lonely," said Winnie, one wet autumn day. "This staying indoors is not much fun. I've dressed all my dollies a thousand times o'er. To do it again would be such a bore!" Just then she heard voices, though no one was seen. They seemed to proceed from a new magazine. A newspaper loudly its many leaves fluttered; a catalog also, she thought, gently muttered. "Here's 'Papa' and 'Mamma' and Johnny and Ned, and Agnes and Alice and Baby and Fred! Imprisoned we are, and will be for years, unless you'll release us, with skill and with shears." "I'll do it!" cried Winnie--and then, not in vain, she fell to her cutting with might and with main. "Papa" was an ad of some ready-made clothes, and "Mamma" was wearing some beautiful hose. While Baby and Agnes and Alice and Fred, young Johnny and Edward (the last with a sled) were easy to find if you knew where, in a catalog given to "best" children's wear. "Oh, lovely!" cried Winnie in accents of glee. "I've got, all at once, such a fine family! They'll want many things so I mustn't be stopping. The rest of the morning I'll spend on their shopping." So she got them some suits, all ready to wear, and raincoats and hats and wavy false hair, and chairs made of willow and brass beds and tables, and lampshades and candlesticks, toy dogs and sables. She found them a bathroom with fixtures complete, and elegant shoes for each pair of feet, pianos which sounded the mellowest tones, and beautiful, diamond disked new graphophones. She bought Chinese lilies, in nice shallow bowls, and stockings all filmy, without any holes. She got for them drinking cups, autos and collars--but she spent not a dime, nor even her dollars! Thought all she procured in a manner so rash, she managed to lose not a bit of her cash. The rain it kept on and just wouldn't stop, but Winnie was dampened by never a drop. "This shopping by scissors is certainly wise, and I'm glad that the merchants 'most all advertise. Their talk of 'cut prices' is perfectly true. I cut both the price and the article, too. My paper dolls now have all that they need, and the morning has passed with the pleasantest speed. And the best of it all is no rent need they pay. In the leaves of a book I'll just tuck them away!" from an old New York Tribune

More Related Content: Just a few charming paper characters for you to collect:

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