Happy St. Patrick's Day!  May the luck of the Irish be on your side on this fine day!  I wanted to quick share what else we did for our celebrating of St. Patrick's Day with the dolls.  In addition to all of the other doll crafting we did on Friday, yesterday it continued on a bit with some baking of Irish Soda Bread.

Irish Soda Bread for your dolls - This was SO MUCH FUN!!  I mixed up the dough, making a double batch of the recipe found here on Doll Diaries and the girls went to town making and designing their own loaves of bread.  It quickly became apparent that we needed to branch out and make a variety of different kinds of breads for the dolls...it was way too much fun to just focus on the soda bread!

I just loved seeing all the different variations of the loaves...so beautiful!  I helped with the two braided loaves otherwise the girls were on their own.

I used watered down acrylic paint for our bread "wash" and then had the girls wipe it off with a paper towel to make it a bit more realistic and faded looking.

So pretty!

After our bread baking the girls were a bit tired of crafting and were wanting to listen to music and dance so I made up this craft quickly for them...this is also from Doll Diaries but I changed it up a bit because I didn't want to sew.  :)

Shamrock Doll Headband - I cut out a shamrock shape from felt and then adhered it to a stretchy cord and was done!  So super easy and super cute.

That's about it for our celebrating with the dolls this year!  Now Zoey is hoping that the leprechauns will come to our house tonight so she can trap one!  We shall see...we haven't been lucky in that department so far...they usually leave quite the mess for us to clean up actually!

Happy St. Patrick's Day from all of us at AG Doll Play!

Doll Play - St. Patrick's Day Slumber Party Part 1

We're almost at the end of our spring break off from school so we had to sneak in a sleep over with Gracie before our time was up and we were back into the full swing of things at school again.  We picked her up yesterday, early in the afternoon and that's exactly when the fun began!  I first made some festive green rice krispie bars while the girls were outside playing in the snow.  They were sledding and just goofing around for well over an hour and when they came in they were ready for some hot chocolate and the rice krispie bars too of course!  After their cocoa "tea party" they played in Zoey's room for awhile and then they were ready for some crafting.  Here are the crafts that I had put together (pretty quickly) since I hadn't really planned on doing too much for St. Patrick's Day when it came to the dolls.

Doll Necklaces - a pretty easy craft to put together for the girls.  We picked out the gold and green beads from Zoey's crafting stash and also the letters needed for the two dolls at the slumber party and the girls threaded them on some stretchy cord and they were done!

Zoe and Kit love their new necklaces!  It's fun too that the two dolls have special friend necklaces now as well.  So sweet!

I had exactly two of the beads that have the hearts on them...perfect!

Awhile back I had picked up a package of green shamrocks at my dollar store and I used those to create the doll's place-mats for the party.

Shamrock Doll Place-Mats - I cut a square of patterned green scrapbook paper (from the American Crafts collection from EK Success) and adhered one shamrock to the center of each square. I then stuck mini letter stickers on each mat spelling the name of the doll that it was for.

Up next was creating some mini St. Patrick's Day cards for the dolls to exchange.

Mini St. Patrick's Day Cards - This was perhaps the easiest of all the crafts!  I cut some mini strips of green cardstock paper and folded them in half for mini cards and printed these adorable FREE mini St. Patrick's Day printables and just had the girls stick them together with glue sticks and then they wrote them out to and from their dolls.

Next up was more of a craft for the girls but they were thinking that it might serve as a decoration to entice the leprechauns closer so that we may better trap them...or at the very least get to see a glimpse of them!  

St. Patrick's Day Jointed Leprechaun - Another easy craft...I printed the leprechaun here and then cut out all the pieces and adhered them to green cardstock.  The girls colored the leprechauns and then cut them out.  We poked holes at all the joints and added some hinged brads and they were done!  They turned out super cute!

Here is a picture of Gracie's finished leprechaun.

I made some little black pots (for the gold), one for each doll using my Silhouette Cameo and made some fake "Lucky" money to entice the leprechauns closer to the dolls.  The Lucky Bucks are so cute!!

Lucky Money - I printed the Lucky Bucks here.  Cut them out and glued them and folded them over and was finished.  They turned out super cute and are the perfect size for the American Girl dolls when scaled down in your printer settings.

I can't share a tutorial for this craft but I wanted to share it anyways since it's pretty funny and cute.  I cut some little leprechaun beards using my Silhouette Cameo machine and looped some stretchy cord through it and each doll gets to wear one along with their dollar store hats. The girls kind of actually thought the dolls looked a bit creepy wearing them.  :)

I think they just look funny!

Then to wrap up our crafting for today the girls each made a little bag to put all their little crafts in for when our sleepover is over.  I got the bags at our dollar store and actually had them in my stash already so was just able to pull them out and get busy.

The girls just used stickers on their bags and were done.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of our St. Patrick's Day slumber party fun!!  We have a couple more fun things to share!

UPDATED to share a link to Part 2 of this post.  Enjoy!

American Girl Doll Birthday Party

[ Originally posted here. ]

We celebrated Zoey's birthday party with friends from school a little early this year...about a week early just due to something special we have planned for her later this month.  I started preparing for it last month here and there when I had some free moments and it turned out fabulously!!  It was so much fun seeing the girls and their dolls and their BIG smiles on their faces.  I've never braved having more than 5 girls and  it seems to be a good number so I'm not going to mess with that yet.  :)  Zoey has a couple of other special friends that don't go to her school so we're planning on some special gatherings with them on a separate occasion, which totally works for her of course!



When I started looking online for American Girl doll themed items for birthday parties, if I'm going to be completely honest, I was disappointed.  Pink, teal and green just didn't say American Girl to me so I started collecting pink and red paper and any star items that I could find.  It ended up being pretty easy!



I used a star image in my Silhouette Cameo gallery that was close to the American Girl doll logo (if you look closely you can see the star isn't exactly but it was close enough!) and went to town...I used it for my invitations, the gift bags, for decorating mini-journals and for creating decorations for the party.



I used the Silhouette again for the "Let's Party" cut out on the inside of the invite.





I had the red bags from when I was designing from Creative Imaginations, they are from the Creative Cafe line.



I made some American Girl Survival Kits which included life savors, gummy food items and band aides.





I covered the little journals with red star patterned paper found at my local scrapbook store and another cut image from my Silhouette gallery.  The little albums were found at my $ store for 3/$1.



I got a pack of pencils at the $ store too.

My mom picked up bandannas that were pink and had cupcakes on them and made bandannas for the dolls and then we gave one to each girl as well.





I found pink magnifying glasses at the $ store as well...we had a scavenger hunt so they came in handy.



Pink shot glasses work well for doll juice tumblers...



Pink frames found at the $ store too...



As well as the glow in the dark star wands which I added some ribbon to.



These were a last minute pick-up item, I found them in the wedding aisle in Wal-Mart and they had a star on the top and were pink so I had to get them.  :)



I found a free printable for American Girl bingo here and I printed 6 sheets and then matted them to make them sturdier with pink cardstock.



For our scavenger hunt I printed a list and then attached it to a bag for each girl to put their items in once they were found.  Each girl got to pick out a wrapped prize after finding their items.



One of our crafts was to decorate doll t-shirts which I found here...



Here is the loot all pictured together...everything is pictured except my binoculars that I made using toilet paper rolls which you can see in the photo below.



See my binoculars?  They are in front of the goodie gift bags...



I don't know why, but I love this photo of Zoey...it's just so unassuming and sweet.  Love her little tuft of hair that's gone free from her braids.



Here is her birthday banner.  For the red and pink banner I unrolled some packing tape and just stuck strips of crepe paper to it and I had a colorful banner.  Super easy and added a lot to the party.







Here are the girls after first arriving...



Decorating their doll t-shirts...





For lunch we had star shaped sandwiches or hot dogs fruit salad, star shaped jello jigglers, chips, celery and PB and pink lemon aide or fruit punch with star ice cubes in it.





After lunch they had some down time in the tent with their dolls looking at AG Magazines.





Next was our scavenger hunt...



The dolls had a chance to chat during this time...















After the scavenger hunt we had smore's...doll sized and regular sized of course!









The dolls just opted for a cracker...



Then it was time for gifts...










The one American Girl brand item that I did purchase and that the girls enjoyed making were the AG Cootie Catchers (also known as fortune tellers).





More playtime in the tent was in order next and some listening to some teeny bopper music.  Fun, fun, fun and LOUD!!





Before parents came to pick-up we settled down a bit and played some American Girl bingo using starburst candies as our play pieces.



What an awesome day!  Thank you mom for coming to help me with everything...



I am so happy that Zoey has such special little friends as this that she can share her birthday with.  I am beyond blessed to be her mother, it is truly a gift that I cherish daily.

And who says little girls are always proper, dainty and dignified...sometimes they just want to have FUN!