Chicago, Chicago! Store exclusives part I

We just got back from a weekend in Chicago and of course we went to the American Girl store located on Michigan Avenue. Although it took us a while to navigate the downtown streets, we found convenient parking underneath the Watertower building where the American Girl store is located.  My eight year old was extremely excited to explore the American Girl store and took lots of pictures for me to share. I thought we'd share some of the store exclusive items first, since those are what I was most excited about.

One of the items I thought was super cute was this little apron set. There's both a girl sized and a doll sized pink apron with black and white polka dot trim. I love the detail of the embroidered flowers on the pockets. The apron comes with some recipe cards and a little cookie cutter.

If you enjoyed your time in the cafe', there are items that allow you to recreate the experience at home. Here's the doll treat seat (it attaches to most tables and your doll can join you for a meal).  The flower pots are perfect for recreating the delicious mousse dessert that is served in the cafe', and off to the side of the picture you'll see the doll sized plates and cups that are used in the cafe'.  We picked up a set of these to serve our dolls in style later at home.

There are lots of cute souvenir items to bring home from your trip to the store. Here's the American Girl logo hoodie.

Here's the matching doll sized hoodie. I had to get one of these for my daughter's doll to remember our special trip. What's really neat about this hoodie is that there is a hole in the back for the doll's ponytail so her hair doesn't get too messy, talk about cleaver touches!

I love these cute little pink skorts. There's a logo star on the front and the American Girl logo on the back waistband. The skirt goes with most of the shirts and sweatshirts sold in the store exclusive section.

You can pull the look together with this matching accessory set. The purse is made from a pink corduroy material and the socks are mismatched on purpose. I love these adorable pink, white and red tennis shoes.

Check out the entire look on this model. Yes, I picked up all of the pieces to create this look!

There's also a red store t-shirt with the American Girl logo. It looks really cute with the pink skort, the white Capri jeans or the blue jeans (all store exclusive items, too).

Check out all of these adorable looks you can create! I love all of the separates and I stocked up on these items so I could mix and match and add them to items I already had at home.

Hanging Art in your Dollhouse

No doll's room is complete without a bit of art.  It's really easy to create and hang art in your doll's room.  For this project you will need a few basic supplies. First you'll need some baseball card holders. There are many options out there - your can get some clear plastic pockets that allow you to slide the cards in and out, or you can get clear plastic cases that snap together to enclose the picture.  I've shown both in this picture. Both options will allow you to change your artwork without removing the frame from the wall.  For my project I chose to use the ones that snap together because I like the fact that they look like a real frame. 

You'll also need some artwork to hang.  You can draw mini posters, print pictures, cut out artwork or pictures from a magazine, or use collecting cards - I'm using cards from the American Girl collector card series.  Finally you'll need some Command Poster strips. These are simple and inexpensive to use.

Place the card (or the artwork) in the cardholder.  Turn the cardholder over and place a Command Poster strip on back.  I used two strips on my first poster, but realized that I actually only need one to hang each poster.

Next decide where you want to hang your artwork and apply it to the wall.  Be sure to level your artwork before you apply it, because once you stick it to the wall, you'll have to remove the tab and start over if you want to reposition it.

I love how these posters brighten the room and make it look like a real bedroom!

Julie's sure to have sweet dreams with her favorite posters hanging over her bed.

Birthday Party Time!

February is a great month around our house because we have lots of birthdays! Both my youngest daughter and myself celebrate February birthdays, and so we decided to have our own special little American Girl Birthday party with the American Girl party supplies that are available at our local JoAnn's. I love shopping at JoAnn's because they always put items on sale or they offer coupons where you can decide which items you'd like to pick up for 40% off.  I collected our supplies over a few trips to JoAnn's and purchased everything 40% or 50% off!

Start planning your party by picking up some of the American Girl party invitations. American Girl has both girl sized invitations and doll sized invitations.  This way you can invite friends and their dolls. (We purchased extra doll sized invitations to throw doll parties, too!)

There are even cute decorations to help make the party room look extra special. I love this banner because it's also a craft. You can let your daughter decorate it before the party starts, or you can use it at the start of the party which is what we did. It always seems like guests arrive at a slightly different time, so as each guest arrived we took her into our party room to help us decorate while we waited for the other guests.  There are lots of other decorations for your party as well, and of course there are party table supplies to match.

The cups, plates and napkins have a cute design on them. There are also items to decorate and display  cupcakes!

This is a pack of plates, cups, and place mats for your doll. I picked up a couple of extra packs to use for playtime later.

There are lots of cute stickers and craft supplies to create just about anything you can think of!

I love the American Girl doll stickers - not only are they great for party crafts, they work well for everyday craft projects, too: decorate a journal, make cards for your friends, use to decorate bookmarks, create mini paper dolls, identify storage containers, the uses are endless!

Be sure to select a favorite craft or two to entertain the guests at your party. My daughter selected this cute headband kit. It comes with the items necessary to decorate a headband and fancy bracelet for your doll.

Each craft comes with enough projects for four party guests.

We had a hard time selecting just a few crafts, so I purchased a few extras in case we ended up with more time than I had planned. 



 All of the crafts are divided into little kits, so it made it easy to distribute them to our party goers and put them in their loot bags at the end of the party.  Speaking of loot bags...

There are even kits for the girls to decorate a party favor bag for herself and her doll.  All in all, the American Girl party supplies are lots of fun, and you don't need to wait for a birthday party to try them out. We use the doll sized plates and cups to celebrate birthdays with our dolls, and I've purchased several of the kits to use for some rainy day fun (or when the girls have a friend over and they say they're bored!)



Flora McDonald's Fancy

Highland dancers wear the aboyne costume when they dance the national dances such as the Flora McDonald's Fancy.  The national dances are "softer" more feminine dances than the Highland dances (such as the Sword and the Fling). Clarissa is wearing a pink Highland dance aboyne.  Her outfit has a pink tartan skirt that is gathered at the waist.  Her white blouse has puffy sleeves, and she wears a matching white petticoat underneath.  Clarissa's vest is made from a raspberry felt and has gold ribbon lacing up the front. There are "petals" around the bottom of the vest.

Highland dancers also wear a plaid. This is a piece of tartan material that is pinned to the shoulder of the vest with a broach and the plaid drapes down the back of the dancer. Most dancers attach their plaid to the back of the vest with some hidden safety pins so it doesn't fall off while they are dancing.

One of the things I really liked about this outfit was the color of the tartan fabric. It has raspberry pink, purple and gold stripes.  I thought it would be fun for Clarissa if she could change things up a bit, so I made her a second vest so that she could completely change her look.

Clarissa's second vest is a lilac purple color. This vest has pink ribbon to lace it up the front. Like the other vest, the plaid is attached at the shoulder with a broach (I used a button that resembles the broaches my daughters wear with their costumes). 

 This vest is a bit plainer than the other one (I accidentally left off the petals and didn't realize it until the vest was completed).  I love the way the different color vests look with this outfit. It makes it lots of fun to get ready for a dance event!

Happy Birthday!

Have you ever thought about getting someone a gift card from American Girl? I just got my first ever gift card for my birthday and I was so surprised by the presentation of it.  My husband who sent me the gift was surprised by how nice it was when it arrived as well.

The gift card arrived in a beautiful American Girl folder.  It really made the gift card feel like a special gift.

This is what the open folder looks like inside.

One the left side is a note from American Girl.

The right side contained a copy of the latest catalogue so the recipient could shop from it.  (I plan to use my gift card at the American Girl Chicago store when I visit near the end of the month). There was also a card on the bottom from my husband; he wrote me a birthday note and it appeared typed in the card. As an added bonus American Girl ships gift cards for free.

Here's a close-up of the gift card. He said there were three different cards to choose from and he picked this doll because he thought she was super cute. I agree; I know this is one card I plan to hold onto even after I use it.

Be My Valentine

I've had a lot of fun making Valentine's dresses this last week or two.  Here's a cute dress I made for my daughter's Kirsten doll.

Although this is a simple looking dress it's one of my all time favorites. I made this dress out of fabric I had found in my mom's attic a few months ago when I was visiting her. I had used this fabric myself back in the late '80s to make my own prom gown!

The dress has a taffeta base and is topped by a lace overlay. (My prom gown had a lace overlay on the bodice and ribbon around the bottom; it also had big puffy sleeves!)

Doesn't the lace make the dress look so fancy and delicate? I can't believe both the lace and taffeta still look so nice after sitting around in the attic for so long. 

Kirsten looks ready for a fancy Valentine's Day tea!

Special Dress Red Menzies

When my oldest daughter started highland dancing she really wanted a doll's outfit to match her dance costume. Luckily we found a vendor selling dance costumes for dolls at one of the events we went to.

The outfit came with a vest made of red felt, a white blouse and a Special Dress Red Menzies kilt.

The vest has silver trim and silver buttons (which are really craft brads rather than actual buttons). The blouse has one row of lace (there should actually be several to make it full) and the sleeves have a simple line rather than being gathered, puffy sleeves.

I think Daphne looks really cute in the dance outfit, and it's special to us because it reminds us of her very first dance competition and all of the fun that we had that day!

Pink and Plaid

My daughter Adeline loves pink, so I made her this simple dress for her American girl doll for Valentine's day.

The dress is made of pink taffeta and I added some cute plaid ribbon around the waist and hemline. 

Adeline wanted me to add a pink ribbon with flowers too, so I added that touch for my young designer.

We finished the outfit off with a pink taffeta cape so her doll could cover up on her walk home from the Valentine's Day party.

Valentine's Day Party

It's almost Valentine's day and we've been getting ready for a super fun party! What's better than getting dressed up in a fancy dress, decorating for the holiday and exchanging cards with friends!

We put together a great little party for our dolls and it was really easy to do.  We started with some basic supplies to create our decorations and cards.  After Christmas I found this cute little "Christmas" tree and pink tree skirt at 90% off; I thought it would be fun to decorate it for Valentine's day.

I picked up a pack of cute clothespins that were white with a little red heart on top and printed off some old-fashioned mini Valentines I had found online.

We started by decorating the tree with mini Valentines.  We cut out the mini Valentines and used the clothespins to attach them to the tree.  We even used a heart-topped clothespin as a tree-topper.

We made some cute Valentines card holders out of mini Valentines and Dixie cups.

We cut out and decorated mini Valentines.

We added heart decorations everywhere - even Kanani's hair.

Our dolls were ready for a fun party!

Kanani loved all of the Valentine's day cards she received.

Marie-Grace couldn't believe the number of lovely cards her friends had sent her.

Our dolls (and girls) had a great time both making the party and playing with their dolls.