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!

In the Kitchen - St. Patrick's Day (or Easter) Rice Krispie Bars

Zoey has Gracie over this evening for a sleepover and we are also having a little impromptu St. Patrick's Day celebration for the dolls and the girls.  Treats were in order, so I quick made up a batch of rice krispie treats and tinted them green just for fun. The sprinkles actually made them look a bit Easter like but that was alright with the girls!

The girls weren't interested in them at all...ha..ha!

After they got done playing out in the snow they came in for a tea party of hot chocolate and a rice krispie bar.

Yum!

St. Patrick's Day (or Easter) Rice Krispie Bars

Ingredients

3 Tablespoons of butter
1 10 ounce package of marshmallows
6 cups of rice krispies
1 teaspoon of green food coloring
sprinkles (if you wish)

1. In a large saucepan, melt butter over low heat.  Add marshmallows and stir completely until melted.  Add in 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of green food coloring. Remove from heat.

2. Add rice krispies cereal and stir until coated.

3. Using a buttered spatula or spoon (or your hand and waxed paper), press mixture into 13 x 9 x 2 inch pan that is coated with cooking spray or vegetable shortening.  Add sprinkles if you wish to the top of the bars. Cool.  Cut into squares and enjoy!

Fun Find - St. Patrick's Day Hats!

I wanted to pop on here quick this morning and share a fun find that we found at our local Walgreens store.  While I was looking for some Easter themed items and decorations I happened upon some mini St. Patrick's Day Shamrock hats that are perfectly sized for you 18 inch dolls!  I thought the $1.99 price tag wasn't too bad seing as though you got 6 hats and we will pack them away and re-use them from year to year for the dolls.

Here is Kristen modeling one of the hats.  They come with elastic strings to go under the dolls chins but we opted to not use it for this photo so as to not disturb Kristen's hair style too much!  :)

Do your dolls celebrate St. Patrick's Day?  If so, what things do you plan for them?  Be sure to share with us your ideas on the AG Doll Play Facebook page!  We would love to see your photos!