Christmas is coming

We are seeing lots of visitors coming around and hope you are coming up with lots of ideas! This Christmas the only thing we are doing is outfits since we are saving for new new girl of the year. We have found a few awesome things thrifting and plan to post a Christmas picture of the treehouse, just you wait it looks amazing and it was under 5 dollars to do.

All you new to American Girl moms take a deep breath and just enjoy the process, open your eyes to a new world ha! I see things perfect doll size all the time but we have so much stuff. Remember your girls/boys will love it all.

Ready for an American Girl Halloween!

We stocked up on fall and Halloween supplies early at the dollar store, and boy was I glad we did. When we went back for more leaves they were all out! It is pretty fun to decorate the treehouse since right now it lives in our living room and well, it's become a decoration in itself! 😀 total cost to decorate was 7.00. Pumpkins were picked up last year for .10 after Halloween. 

We've already stocked up for Christmas since they seem to sell out of the good stuff early! 

We finally got all our doll swap goodies from our American Girl message board and what a delight they all were! Our favorites were the mask,bag and knitting needle!

New to American Girl?

So much to post about, so little time

The things we have coming up:

Customizing a doll

Doll makeovers 

Halloween decorating 

Our latest thrift finds 

We still love our tardis 

Skrafty Minecraft American Girl school

This is the Minecraft AG school we are doing this summer.

My daughter decided to try this. She is in love. So far she has learned so much about Kaya. As you know historicals are her favorites and minecraft is her favorite game how could we go wrong? If your daughter loves both its a cheap, easy way to get them to read and learn while playing on the computer. At the end of the four weeks of Kaya I will come on and talk about what she did over the four weeks. So far I am going to give the program a 4 stars, it would be 5 but it is hard to get in contact with anyone who runs it. Well worth the money though!

This week we are finally going to finish the bed we started months ago (schools finally out!) and I think we might try our hands at trying to make some Fourth of July outfits for the dolls.

We are now up to 23 dolls so we need some updated pictures!

And we have some new accessories to show off as well.

Hope summer is going awesome for you!

Oh the things we have coming!

Follow our instagram!

The more I get into the photography side of doll collecting the more I want to take pictures all the time.

And that can be overwhelming for a blog. So we decided to start an instagram and stop posting doll pictures on my personal instagram, not many people get the doll obsession and let me tell you, if I have to hear one more time " Another doll?!" I might explode.

So, if you are on instagram please follow us, the button is on the right in its own little box. haha.

Making fun with off brands.

While we have amassed a fairly large doll collection (ok super large by most standards) all of our accessories and clothing are either made or bought off brand.

This camper is made by Our Generation which is a Target brand. It was 60.00 new although. if I remember correctly I either had gift cards or it was on clearance to make it much less. You can click on the picture to see the detail.

The jeep being driven by Isabelle (GOTY 2014) It is also a Our Generation item and runs about 34.99 but it is easy to find it on sale. The camper comes with a connector that goes on the jeep for hitching the camper and jeep. It was a pain to put on but worth it.

I know I still need to do an intro post with all our dolls. The dolls here are Hannah (JLY) and Isabelle.

For the price I think both of these are better priced than the AG stuff. Probably not as well made as AG things but the price tag makes it more affordable to those of us who have a budget.

Random things and my favorite part of the doll house.

We will pretend this is a good picture.

When we knew we would build a doll house (by converting their closet,for the record it was a terrible idea) We searched high and low for thrift store finds to make it a home.

My favorite find was this Pottery Barn medicine cabinet. It makes for a perfect hutch. The table and chairs were a throw together at the last minute thing.

But notice that the medicine cabinet really looks like a hutch. The girls love it and it is so well made. It is still my favorite thing about the house.

I have done no sewing and no creating lately. We've been so busy. I have that poor bed from this post still waiting for me to do. In my defense we are busy planning the new doll house! This should be interesting!

JILLS STEALS AND DEALS

I was able to get a Caroline and a Rebecca yesterday. SCORE. We are one doll away from having all the historical dolls. I personally didnt have any of the troubles others did. I just added to my cart and waited when it told me to wait.

I think starting next week we are going to introduce the dolls. Right now they are all living in my dining room hutch and  hopefully we will get their rack made and them put up.

Oh, I did it.

Most AG Moms know the obsession is a little bit our girls obsession and a lot our obsession.

For me last year right before Ivy retired I asked my girls if they wanted her. No-one did... except me.

And well, buying a doll for me seemed a little silly. Ok, a lot silly. But I was so sad when she was gone. I wanted an Ivy. We have a Julie and oh, she needed that Ivy! Come on the 70s were MY time. 

So here we are all this time later and I have scoured for a cheap Ivy. I didnt really care if the girls wanted Ivy, *I* wanted Ivy. I didnt even care if it was the Ivy look alike. I wanted her. 

I'd missed out on a few Ivy's on criagslist and lets be honest, I am far too cheap to pay over 150 for her. I already had her meet so I didnt even care if she was naked.

And then my husband sends me a craigslist ad for Ivy. I scream at him to email about her. Cue heartbreak to learn we are second in line. First person passes.. SHE IS MINE!

Wearing Samantha's BeForever meet which my girls were more excited about.

Isnt she pretty?

An update to fixing your dolls hair.

In October I did a post where we rehabed Elizabeth's hair. Her hair was a hot mess! It was dry and in the parts that were not dry it was frizzy. You can see the before pictures here.

Recently, I was emailed and asked how her hair was holding up all these months later, so this morning I got her out and took some pictures. (I did brush prior)

She has the ponytail bump because her hair had been in a ponytail. But look! Still shiny and still pretty. Honestly the steps were so easy.

Wash with baby shampoo

Condition

low hot iron on wet hair

a tiny bit of conditioning spray.

 Elizabeth was a doll that we bought in a lot. She ended up being free after all the things I sold and she has had a haircut. Someday if we ever sell her she will get a new head first. I have had a few emails asking to see all our dolls, and how we got them so dang cheap! So, that will eventually be a blog post.

She is wearing Caroline's birthday dress which was a gift from the Ag Playthings Christmas swap.

How I made Amy Pond

Amy Pond started off completely different. I had a picture of her and I tried to make the outfit as close as possible to it. This was the original picture I was going off of.

And our original Amy Pond. A dear friend's daughter is also super into AG so she bought this outfit for her. It gave me a challenge. Two weeks before Christmas I needed to dress Amy.

This was during my process. I found her action figure and wanted to make it look like that. Ignore the shoes in this picture her cowboy boots had not yet arrived and I needed to see how she looked. I never did get her belt painted brown but my daughter does not seem to mind at all.

Amy Pond was originally Saige. We picked Saige because of her red hair and what we thought Amy Pond would have looked like at 9! 

Her jacket, tshirt,skirt, belt and boots were bought from a wholesale distributor. The skirt is denim, the jacket is a faux leather. We also had a friend knit her scarf because, well, scarfs are cool. (just like bow ties!)

While I loved the first outfit, I have to say this second outfit came out better than I expected for the time frame I was working in and the look I needed. My next outfit for her will be the police uniform.

Thanks for looking!

And so we built a tardis

It all started with an idea. Why not make our Dr Who obsessed girl some custom American Girl dolls and a doll tardis for Christmas? It snowballed from there and now we have our very own Dr Who, his companion Amy Pond and a tardis living in our living room., 

First let me say that while we thought this project would come out cheap, it came out far from it. In fact the tardis alone came in 100 more than we wanted BUT in our defense.. it is so awesome and was worth every cent.

We started with this:

Of course it had to be scaled down to be semi doll size.

The build took five weeks and was built by my husband and his boss. Both love workworking and both say this was the hardest build they have ever done.

It didnt look like a tardis for awhile and that freaked me out.

Pretty soon you could see things coming together.

About this time we were getting closer and closer to Christmas and I was freaking out.

Then I saw this and it started to look like a tardis. Between this picture and completion was a week. Then I saw this:

And all that time came together. The tardis was almost perfect. We still need to order prints for the inside.

The Doctor and Amy Pond will forever be riding in this tardis. And now we have the motivation to make custom dolls of all the Doctors.

Tardis Supplies.

1 - 4x8 sheet of plywood

4 - 8ft 2x2

1 - 8ft 1x10

4 - 1/2" hinges

8 - 12ft lattice trim wood 

4 pkgs 3/8" x 1/8" basswood

1 custom made door handle

1 quart of Sapphire Lace paint 

4 sheets 10" x 14" x1/8" Plexiglas 

4 pieces of approximately 2 1/2" x 18" white translucent Plexiglas

Decals were ordered from: http://stickershock23.com/

Arduino  for sound

I will do a blog post later about the clothing and dolls. I have to say I love the tardis. I think they did an amazing job and it is built to last. If you have any questions just ask!

My next project.

I was at Goodwill the other day and found this bed from Ikea. I paid way too much for it (12.00) but we have no Ikea close and so I bought it. ( Normally I do not spend that on things for the doll house!) I plan on trying to get measurements off of it to make more since we are getting tools soon.

It needs a mattress, bedding and a paint job. I plan on using scrap fabric and leftover paint. I don't want to put anymore than the 12 I have into it already.

I will also have an update soon on the tardis which will have SOUND soon. So excited.