Come Meet Kohanna

My favorite doll related Christmas gift this year was from my best friend! We have a habit of giving each other dolls and doll related items and this year was no different.  Among my gifts there was a tall, skinny package and when I pulled off the paper I saw:

This pretty blue box!

Merry Christmas!

Sneak peek of my favorite Christmas gift!

From my doll (and human) family to yours, we hope you had a very Merry Christmas and we'll be seeing you soon!

Felicity's Christmas Gown

It's Christmas Eve and time for my final holiday outfit review! Of course I saved Felicity for last so let's jump right in! Here she is in her blue Christmas gown:

Samantha's Cranberry Party Dress

I realized today that when I said I was going to do these reviews I said there might be 4 because I didn't want to do anything on Christmas day but that was on the 20th......soooo apparently I can't count. There will be 5 after all!

Today we are talking about Samantha's Cranberry Party Dress. It didn't register with me till just now but this is Samantha's first feature on the blog! It's a great dress for her premier post and here it is:

Josefina's Christmas Dress and Mantilla

Just a few more days till Christmas and I'm going strong on these reviews! I'm a little proud of myself. Today I want to talk about Josefina's Christmas Dress and Mantilla set. I don't know why but AG's website they have her in her fiesta dress for the holidays. This is her official Christmas outfit though and she looks stunning in it:

Molly's Christmas Dress

Today was a particularly dim and gloomy day here at my house. I'm not complaining because I love storms, but it did rain all day and that made taking good pictures for today's holiday outfit very difficult! But we persevered, used artificial light and (with help from my very nice husband) we got enough pictures.

Molly's Christmas dress is probably my favorite outfit in her collection. I remember thinking it was very pretty when I was a kid and I always wanted it even though I didn't have her. I thought the velvet looked soft in the pictures and I love that dark shade of green. I bought this dress in St. Louis a few months back and here is it on my Molly:

Addy's Christmas Dress

I really thought about doing a 12 days of Christmas thing but I really don't have 12 days of Christmas/doll related things to talk about. This month and especially this week have been super frustrating. Unfortunately, I really haven't been motivated at all but I did take pictures of Addy in her dress for a review this week and I think that I'm going to do a 5 days of Christmas thing! Or maybe 4. I'm not sure if I'll want to do something on Christmas Day or not. We'll just see how this goes!

Moving on now.

Addy's Christmas dress is tied for my favorite AG holiday outfit of all time. I think it is by far the most visually interesting because there are just so many fabrics and colors and textures! Here it is:

So much going on! I love it!

Cozy Sweater Outfit

When I bought Lilly and Jade after Christmas last year they came in some not very nice outfits. Neither had shoes, both outfits were either torn or stained and both were smelly. Luckily at the time I lived in a city with an American Girl store so after they arrived I went and bought them each one outfit. Jade got the Cozy Sweater Outfit. It looks like this:

It comes with a pink sweater, grey leggings, dark pink knit boots and a headband.

Baby Crissy

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I got to spend mine with my mom and since I'm not going to be able to visit for Christmas I brought all her gifts with me. She was going to wait until Christmas to open them but that didn't happen and so I get to share with you the big thing that I got her!

Last year my mom mentioned sometime before Christmas that she would love it if I got and restored a Velvet or a Baby Crissy for her. I didn't! Instead I got her a Ms. Beasley doll. (Someday I'll have to tell you the story of my mom's Ms. Beasley but not today!) This year I decided that I would look for one of the dolls she had mentioned. So I went on e-bay and found a Baby Crissy I thought I could pretty easily fix and within a few days she arrived! If you don't know much about Baby Crissy you can read about her here.

I didn't have much time to fix her up so I got to work right away! Here she is almost fresh out of the box:

I have to say I was shocked when I opened her box! Baby Crissy is HUGE! I guess I wasn't paying attention when I read that she is 24 inches? I was expecting like a cabbage patch doll size not actual baby size.

Let's Talk About Marta: Part Three

I'm going to finish this up quickly I said! Yeah a week later and I'm finishing it the day before Thanksgiving. Go me! Anyway! Welcome to the last post about the creation of my very first custom doll Marta! If you haven't already you might want to read parts one and two before going on to this one. Now without further ado:

Let's talk about Marta: Part Two

In Part One I told you all about why the doll that became Marta was purchased. This post is going to be all about how I finished my Felicity and where the name Marta comes from. So let's jump right in!

Let's Talk About Marta: Part One

This blog is mostly meant to be a record of my doll collection. So today I want to talk about my first ever custom doll and I want to do it now while the details are still pretty fresh in my brain. If you can call almost a year later "fresh." Anyway, if you click on my AG Dolls button up at the top of my blog you will see Marta a little bit past half way down the page. She started out life as a Felicity but before we can talk anymore about Marta and how she came to be, we have to talk about MY Felicity. The doll I've had since I was in second grade and that is why this is going to be a multi-parter!

Fairies of Cottingley Glen: Hob

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that I recently purchased something from my childhood and that I was excited to show her to you all. Well she arrived last Saturday and I've spend this week taking lots of pictures (I mean it there are a TON of pictures in this post!) and totally falling in love and now I'm finally ready to share her with you guys! But first a little back story!

Some of you may recognize this picture:

It's of Frances Griffiths and the famous Cottingley Fairies. To make a long story short in 1917 nine year old Frances and her sixteen year old cousin Elsie took the first of five photographs showing the fairies that lived in their garden. The pictures were examined by experts and came to the attention of many important people including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who embraced them as the real deal. Eventually the girls admitted that the pictures were faked using cutouts from books and hatpins but they maintained that they really did see the fairies!

So what do these two girls have to do with what I bought? In 1997 a movie was released telling the story of Elsie and Frances. It was called FairyTale: A True Story and released with it were a series of ten fairy dolls. Today I want you to meet Hob:

Yay Halloween Clearence!!

While I was in Walmart today I decided to take a look at their Halloween clearence and I found all sorts of fun things for my dolls! Check it out:

 my HAUL

I got three mini hats, three sets of wings and five clip-on hair pieces for a little over 20 dollars. Not too shabby! Also I'm sorry about the picture quality in this post! It was dark inside my house today.

Doll DIY: Winter Gear!

So I'm pretty handy with a crochet hook and whenever I take the wigs off dolls I'm working on, I don't really like to leave their poor little heads naked so I put on this:

Molly modeling my hat a few months back!

It's a beanie I made forever ago! The point of this story is that my best friend has four modern dolls and I decided that I should just make hat and mitten sets for her dolls as well as for my three! I finished up her sets this week and as her birthday is today actually, I mailed them Monday. Today she got them so I feel like I can show them off!

All the hats

Josefina's School Outfit (Indigo Skirt and Camisa)

Today I want to take a quick look at Josefina's School Outfit. It was one of the first things I bought Josefina and it's still one of my favorites!

Dressing Your Doll on a Dime: The Conclusion

Welcome to the final post in my Dressing Your Doll on a Dime series. If you haven't yet you can read the first three parts here, here, and here!

This has been a surprisingly hard post to write. It's not that I don't know what to say. It's more that I have TOO MUCH to say! So I'm going to break this down into a few categories. We'll go with packaging, outfit quality, shoe quality, accessory quality and price.

Doll DIY

In August Doll Diaries featured a couple of crafts (as part of their Camp Doll Diaries activities) that I thought looked really easy so I decided to try them out. I did this all over the last couple of weeks and today you get to see the results!

The first was a DIY doll sundress that you can see instructions for here. Basically it's just dyeing the Springfield Collection's white nightgown. I decided to do a blue dress for myself and a red dress for one of my best friend's dolls, so I ran down to Michaels to get supplies:

The supplies for the red dress

Dressing Your Doll on a Dime Part Three: The Springfield Collection

Welcome to Part Three of Dressing Your Doll on a Dime! You can see Part One and Part Two here and here but, today we are looking at the Springfield Collection, which is available at Michaels and online here. Let's jump right in!

I have a quite a few outfits from the Springfield Collection:

They are inexpensive, they fit fairly well and they have some pretty cute outfits! Because I have a decent selection I'm going to review three outfits today.

Welcome Home Ivy!

At the beginning of September I took a trip to St. Louis and I got to visit the AG store there with my mom! I bought Ivy and today I'm going to show you her de-boxing and her welcome home!

These first few pictures come from the hotel the night I got her!

Ivy in her box. See it says Ivy!!

Dressing Your Doll on a Dime Part Two: My Life

Welcome to part two of Dressing Your Doll on a Dime! Last time we talked about the Target brand My Generation, and you can find that post here. Today My Life As (I forgot the As in my first post! whoops!) is up for review! Before we get started I just wanted to say that this brand shouldn't be confused with the My Doll's Life website and shop. They are not the same thing! I may actually review online purchases in the future but for now I'm sticking with brands you can go get at your neighborhood store. So let's get this show on the road!

My Life As can be purchased at Wal-mart in the toy section. It is a registered trademark of Wal-mart so as far as I can tell there is no website or really any other information about this brand. They have a pretty nice range of outfits, accessories, and dolls! And here is their clothing display:

All the piiiiiiiiiink

My collection is complete!! Or is it?

In a previous post I mentioned that the biggest goal I have for my doll collection is to have an example of every face mold AG uses/has used in the past. It's a really good way to get some diversity into my collection and I'm kind of fascinated with the molds anyway. I think it's amazing that AG has so many different dolls (though not as many as you would think) and yet only eight face molds.

Anyway! I completed my goal and now here is my complete doll mold collection!

Dressing Your Doll on a Dime Part One: Our Generation

Welcome to my first post in a multi part series where I'm going to take a look at three brands of the more inexpensive 18in doll clothing available on the market! I'll be examining one outfit and at least one pair of shoes each and comparing the brands to each other.  I'm going to compare Target's Our Generation, Walmart's My Life and Springfield Collection!

First up is Our Generation (brought to you by Battat) and you can check them out here. Their website is actually very nice and shows a pretty impressive range of really cute outfits and accessories! One thing that I really like about this company is that they use eco-friendly packaging and I will talk about that in depth here shortly. But first here is what their clothing display looks like at my neighborhood target:

Man someone needs to face those shelves!

Trip to St. Louis AG Store!

Last Friday I left home and made the 5 hour (and some change) trip to St. Louis to meet my mom and brother for their Japanese Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Since we were going to St. Louis and I live nowhere near an AG store now; I told my mom we had to go! So we did! (Friday night) And it was awesome!! 

Here is the front of the store!

front of St. Louis store

Amelia's Party Dress

I mentioned in my post about Matilda's Ball Gown that I also bought a dress for Amelia and that I would talk about it at a later date. Today is that day! So here is what I think about Amelia's Party Dress:

Here is her dress in the box the day I got it:

I really like that Amelia has her own color scheme and design to her boxes by the way.

Amelia - Your Victorian Girl

The second doll released by A Girl for All Time is Amelia, Your Victorian Girl! I bought her with amazon gift cards saved from Christmas and my birthday. Plus I got free shipping because I bought her through amazon! Go me!

Without further ado here is Amelia Elliot!

Matilda's Masked Ball Gown

Around Easter A Girl for All Time had a coupon code, so I felt like it would be a good time to get a couple of things. I got Amelia her party dress (to be featured in a future post) and Matilda her ball gown! It's my very favorite!

And here it is!

Miss Matilda

I love this doll and this company so it's very hard for me to figure out where to begin with this post. I guess I should explain a little bit about myself? I really like history and I'm kind of obsessed with Tudor England in particular. Queen Elizabeth I has been one of my role models since I was young, I can name all of Henry VIII's wives in order and I'm kind of a big Anne Boleyn fan! Seriously The Creation of Anne Boleyn is one of my new very favorite books! I also really enjoy genealogy. I have a weird fascination with family trees and old names and things like that! So the awesome people at A Girl for All Time have hit SO many of my interest buttons!

About a year ago I was on a doll blog I like and I saw a review for this gorgeous doll named Matilda from a new doll company and I fell in love! Not only was Matilda beautiful and unique but she was also from Tudor England! Her story takes place around the rise and fall of Katherine Howard. Where does the genealogy fit in? All of the dolls that A Girl for All Time has made/will make belong to the same family and in fact are descended from their first doll Matilda Marchmont! You can read all about that here and be sure to check out the family tree.

I really really wanted Matilda but I was waiting a bit. I showed her to my mom and talked about her some. I was pretty excited because they are awesome dolls but still I was going to wait till I was done with my list of AG dolls that I wanted. But my mom had another idea! She talked to my best friend to make sure that it was Matilda I wanted and then she bought her for me for Christmas. I was completely shocked!

Yesterday I took a few pictures of her for you all and now after that huge wall of text up there I'm finally getting to them!! After the jump :P

Molly Finished

I had my doubts about this one. BIG doubts. I almost didn't even try, but she's done and she looks amazing!

I thought about how I was going to do this reveal and since I made a numbered list on my first post about her ( here ) I decided that I would just follow that list and tell you all about what I did!  (click on the pictures to make them bigger)

Veau

I have been resisting this kind of doll for a VERY long time. I LOVE monsters and witches and vampires so trust me Monster High has been calling my name for a very long time, and I have resisted! But then Bratzillaz showed up on the market and, unlike Monster High dolls, they have inset eyes! That is so cool but still I resisted!

Then they came out with the Switch-A-Witch sets! I think they are super cool and they have one with sparkly silver eyes. Really? Must you test me so universe? But still, I resisted! I stayed strong!

Until last weekend, when I went to Walmart and they had the one I most wanted on clearance for nine dollars. NINE DOLLARS. So I bought her!

Well there goes my self control! Meet Veau*:

I'm sorry I suck and I didn't think to take a picture before I tore her open so here is an official one from Amazon!

Kit's Coat

American Girl is having a pretty good sale at the moment on a few select items! I managed to pick up Kit's coat for $18 and a Christmas present for someone else. Now normally things like coats and nightgowns are at the very bottom of my want list but I couldn't pass this up. Yesterday everything arrived!

American girl describes it as a double-breasted wool coat. It feels pretty wool like to me; either way it has a very thick and sturdy feel to it!

The back.

A Molly update

I'm keeping her! I can't help it, she's totally won me over even with all her faults! (Read all about her arrival here) So I'm looking for a leg and I'm working on her wig and removing her neck stains. I think I can live with everything else!

So what has she been up to?

Sitting on my bookshelf in the office waiting on her wig!

Meet Laura

Laura arrived at my friend's house today and she loves her!! So I can show her off to you guys! Aka this post is mostly just a Laura pic spam!

(To see Laura's journey from a torn up Elizabeth till now you can go here Part one, and here Part two. )

Are you ready?

Molly has arrived!!

I was not expecting Molly to show up today but when I got home from running my errands this box was at my door!

Kaya

Before I start I want to say thank you to everyone reading this! I've gotten a few really nice comments about my last post and I really appreciate all the support! You guys are great! Now to the post:

One of the goals for my collection is to have at least one example of every face mold American Girl has ever used. I'm actually one doll away from achieving that goal but I probably won't get that doll until Christmas or after!

Anyway, a few months back I got Kaya. Actually I got an amazing deal! I found a Kaya and a Samantha for sale together on ebay! I later sold the Samantha, since I already have one, for the same price I bought the both of them for so basically Kaya was free! Win!

So here is how the two of them arrived in the box:

Sweet Caroline

Well my project is done!

(If you would like to see all parts of this project you can go here Part 1 here Part 2, and here Part 3. )

And I am very very happy! But first I need to back up and tell you about the arms!

I got the arms I ordered in the mail on Saturday and can I just say that even I think that sounds really weird. Yeah! I got arms in the mail!! Anyway the seller had them wrapped up really well and she even put this cute sticker on them:

Project update! Wigs!

To see the previous entries about this project you can go here Part 1 and here Part 2 Also I forgot to mention this in my other posts but if you click on the pictures they get bigger!

This week I got the wig for Doll A (the one I'm keeping) and so I put it on! Like most thing in customizing dolls gluing on a wig sounds easy but it's a pain!

just a quick hello!

This weekend I traveled to Columbia and Kansas City to visit some family! I had a really great time and luckily I got to stop in to the American Girl store briefly to pick up a few things! But you guys are only going to get to see one of those things for right now! The others are for my project dolls and you will get to see all of that when they are done!

Everyone has probably heard that Molly and Emily are being archived this year so with the urging of my husband I picked up Molly's Polka-Dot Outfit! Now I don't actually have a Molly yet, I want a white bodied Molly and I'm waiting till I find the right one, so this outfit is going to be modeled for you by Lilly!

The Eye Swap (Part 2 of my newest project)

So in part one of this project I introduced the girls and told you what I am doing with them! You can see all that here : Part 1

WARNING: If you don't want to see dolls with half their wigs off or without wigs entirely or without eyes you might want to skip this post.

This is all about the eye swap....I did not walk away from this unscathed. List of injuries! 1. I cut my fingernail about halfway down to my nail bed.  2. My legs were covered in bruises and 3. Well this:

Eye swapping is HARD. I decided to do the boiled water method but first the wigs had to come off!

Project, thy name is frustration Part 1

The dolls for my latest project arrived last Saturday! YAY! So I immediately got to work.

My first job was just getting them out of the boxes! This is Doll A:

I must be crazy

Okay.....here we go....

This blog is primarily for myself and also so I can stop terrifying my step-dad on facebook. I'm sure he'll appreciate it! I find myself needing a good way to keep track of everything so I thought I'd give this a try. Why not!

I collect American Girl but I'm also interested in other 18 inch-ish dolls! I currently have 13 American Girl dolls and 2 A Girl for All Time dolls and a couple on the way. I'll go through all of them at a later date. My dolls have mostly been e-bay and rummage sale rescues and that's what I really like to do! I really like to find and fix up old dolls and give them a new life! Some I keep, some I give to my best friend and some I put up for auction!

Right now I'm waiting on the dolls for my next project to arrive! Hopefully I'll get them in a couple of weeks and then I'll explain everything I'm going to do! I am really excited about it!

Well I think that's about all I have to say right now. This is a work in progress so please be kind? Thank you!

I'll leave you with a picture! This is a before and after of a previous project!