Maple's Pirate Treasure Hunt! Part Seven

Well Maple found out that people have actually been reading about our hunt for treasure and that they seem to like it. So she insisted on being more involved in the actual posting process. Which means that as we were picking photos to be included in this post, she kept saying "And that one. And that one. And that one."

So we have way more pics in this post than the others and we made a couple slideshows for ease of use. It's all the same outfit -- Maple just liked the way she looked in all of these photos. Le sigh.

Today's outfit is an amalgamation. There is your big word for the day. Her blue tie-dye jacket is from Karito Kids Piper's "Meet" outfit. Her shoes are Lira's normal Wellington boots (which as you can tell Maple favors). And the rest of her outfit is from Target.

Target now carries a "PlayWonder" or "Play Wonder"?.... line of 18" dolls, clothing and accessories in addition to their Our Generation line. Everything we saw in the store actually says Madame Alexander on the labels, so you can pretty much guess which company is actually making the toys.

There were a lot of outfits in the (third) Target we went to in order to find these clothes. We bought two outfits and meshed the pieces together for Maple. Her purple tie-dye tank top, purple skirt, gray zebra leggings, and hairband are all from these outfits. We'll talk a little bit more about the new line tomorrow and then post more about the outfits we bought later on.

As you can guess, we did manage to get out of the maze of bushes that was "Smuggler's Cove." After wandering aimlessly around some more, Maple remembered that her cellphone has GPS in it. So we just told the phone to tell us how to get home. It took awhile, but we got there. And once again, Penny seemed unconcerned that we were home so late. :-/

The hint we found in the last post said:

Begin at Fort Black

Go 50 paces Northwest

Until ye find 

The Ruins of Ol' Seawall

Follow its path

As far as ye can go

But beware

Fate is a tricky lass

It may take more than one journey

"What's that supposed to mean?" Maple asked.

"You probably don't really want to know," I answered.

The next day we did as the hint said: found the seawall ruins and walked the length of them -- which was a rather painful walk in scrubby plants and on a slippery slope of sand. We didn't see a single hint. So we walked all the way back along the wall, carefully looking on top of and under every stone. Nothing.

And then it started to rain. So we had to call off the search and return home.

It rained all the next day. We stayed inside and tried to do an iron-on project. "Tried" being the operative word. We'll post about that event soon.

On the third day, the skies cleared (somewhat) and we tried again.... like the hint told us to. I think this whole thing is just designed to make us walk a lot.... Here are more three shots of Maple posing along the wall and a slideshow....

Eventually I found the hint laying gingerly on top of a stone.... 

Towards the end of the wall, of course.... 

That was not there the last day we looked.....

Maple informed me that she wasn't climbing up the "hill of muck" to pose with the hint and that I had to bring it back down to her. Yay.....

Two pics of Captain Maple with her hint and a slideshow.....

Today's witty dialogue probably would have been us arguing about her posing at the bottom of the sandy hill instead of closer to the actual seawall ruins and where I found the hint. But I think we were too tired from walking to argue. Or perhaps we are just getting along better? Nah..... that can't be it....

Stay tuned for Part Eight of Maple's Pirate Treasure Hunt! 

Only two more parts to go!!! 

Will we find the treasure???

Oooo, the suspense!!!

p.s. The blue jacket is amazing and seamstresses should really
think about making them to sell in their shops. :D

The Inevitable MyAG Pink Post and Meet KK Pita!

In our efforts to review and photograph as many AG outfits as we can here at The Doll Wardrobe (especially for people looking to duplicate/personalize them) we bought the two pinkest outfits on the face of the Earth. Yikes! - I know. But there was a method to our madness. ;-)

Today we have pictures of Kanani modeling the MyAG Sweetheart Pjs and our Karito Kid Pita wearing the MyAG Campus Casual outfit. She isn't wearing the purple shoes because they don't fit on her feeties....

The Sweetheart Pajamas are interesting because of the scrunched/ruched shorts and the slipper socks/slipper booties -- two items that we think would be fun to market in more colors and fabrics on the handmade AG market. For the shorts, the scrunch bit is just sewn into place and is not adjustable -- making a seamstress's job a little easier once the faux-ties are in place. The slipper socks are just knit fabric and fleece. You don't even need the hot glue-gun to make these shoes. And slipper socks are a big trend right now-- there are a lot of examples out there, from Mukluks and Rocket Dog, etc., to help inspire you....

This might even be a good product for knitters out there to make as they might not need to buy pre-knit fabric then. Especially for the cable-knit examples. Do they sell pre-made cable-knit? This we do not know..... Anyway, our friend over at Dynamite Threads uses sock yarn for all of her dolly knits. So be sure to give that type of yarn a try!

As far as scrunched/ruched shorts these are good for warm-ups, pjs, and swimsuit coverups... might be something cute to try as an item to sell....here are some human examples...

And the Campus Casual outfit is interesting because of the cropped sweatpants.... also good for warm-ups and pjs, as well as just a casual outfit... hence the "Campus Casual" part.... haha. Probably wouldn't be too difficult to make some of these and you could do elastic at the knees or drawstrings. Here are some human examples...

p.s. Remember Saturday March 19th is the last day to enter our two Feb/March 25th Anniversary giveaways! Enter today!

Cupcake Cutie Pie Wrap-Top Holiday Dresses

Holiday? Which holiday? Yep, we took these pictures in December as well-- four dresses that we bought for the girls to wear for the holidays. And we haven't posted about them yet. We feel... so guilty... but we are trying to make up for lost time now. ;-)

We purchased these dresses from Etsy seller Cupcake Cutie Pie, a Liberty Jane partner who is using the Heritage Doll Fashions Wrap-Top dress pattern. (Which we ♡) Go to libertyjanepatterns.com to find this pattern.

Heritage4 made the initial dress on the cover of the pattern booklet that you see above (in a wonderful fabric). Here is my bossy advice for today: Seamstresses should really try to use some striped fabrics for this pattern like she did. The dress really pops and flatters the doll because she has the stripes going in all different directions. And note how the vertical stripes in the center piece visually pull in the waist of the doll giving her that hourglass figure that AG dolls lack -- remember, finding a way to define the doll's waist makes the outfit more visually appealing.

Also, she chooses a contemporary, trendy type of fabric that we might see in human clothing (a nice sundress like this) in the mall today. Anyway point is: Heritage4 knows what she is doing -- Mimic her! Mimic her! Mimicry is the best flattery after all. ;-)

We show the holiday wrap top dresses on both AGs and Karito Kid dolls so that you can see that the dress and boleros fit them as well (although more loosely) and how tall the KKs are in comparison to the AGs. Three of the dresses came with bolero jackets and all of them came with shoes -- all of which even fit the KK feeties.

These are really well-made dresses, in great bold fabrics, and with wonderful accessories (one even came with a headband). We love the details of the contrasting fabrics for the center section which you see on three of them and the contrasting shoulder straps as well. Sometimes the main thread is even contrasting so you can see the lines of the dress better. :-) The great thing about this pattern is how you can play with the different pieces of it like this -- and Cupcake Cutie Pie has really shown us how great this dress pattern can be. We highly recommend this seller -- they have a great eye for color combinations and offer many awesome items. Check out the shop today!

The girls in their holiday attire -- Karen, Piper, Gia, and Noelle...

First slideshow...

Second slideshow...

Final pic...

If you are interested in a wrap-top dress for your doll there are several options out there now....

....from Cupcake Cutie Pie (they have more than just these sets)...

....from Angel Kisses Boutique...

....from My Precious Cargo...

....from The Dashwood Sisters....

Are you a seamstress working with this pattern? Let us know so we can check out your dresses! 

Did you decide to try "The Striped Trendy Fabric Technique" mentioned above? Let us know so we can check out your dresses!

Stay tuned for more posts everyone -- And be sure to 1) Like our new Facebook page if you are on Facebook (link is at top right of the side menu) 2) Enter the current giveaways if you haven't already done so 3) Read all the posts we have busily put on here lately (wink) and 4) Feel free to comment!

Meet Karito Kid Piper!

That's right-- we bought another Karito Kid! And back in December! Shocking! Okay... not really.... you all knew we were going to get more of these girls. ;-)

So to show you some more possibilities of the KK dolls in AG-sized clothing, we are showing Piper wearing the Liberty Jane Sofia outfit you saw in Saturday's "Purple Post" while she is hanging out with KK Gia. Our dark-haired beauty is modeling the Pippaloo purple belted dress seen in the same post.

And just FYI--- (as we have said before)-- Shirts, jackets, and dresses that are AG-sized may be a bit loose, and have slightly shorter sleeves on the Karito Kids dolls. We don't mind this-- they look good to us. But it might bug some of you out there. The skirts do tend to work really well for both types of dolls. For us -- it's the pants that don't tend to go from one type of doll to the other. But for other bits of clothing you can have fun experimenting. :-)

Without further ado, Piper and Gia....

Piper is a stunning doll... she has a kind of 'I don't care what you think of me' look on her face in most pics... but still very beautiful. We love her highlighted hair, skin tone, eye color, and freckles.

Slideshow....

p.s. Thanks for all of your great comments on the past few posts-- glad to know people are still coming here even when we don't post as often as we should! :-D

Gia in Several Ensembles

Us again! Here is Gia in a lot of stuff since we finally processed a bunch of pictures....

First here she is in the AG Berry Hoodie that we will give away in 2011 (that we bought on Cyber Monday)...

Second here she is in a purple dress from Etsy seller ArdentlyAdmire (it is based on a Heritage Doll Fashions pattern marketed by Liberty Jane Patterns).... it is a dress for AG dolls, but for KKs it works better as a tunic top. So we put the dress with the Maiden Flight KK jeans and a belt from Liberty Jane to create a unique look...

FYI- Ardently Admire has already sold 16 of these dresses in purple, blue, green and red--- they are very popular!

Next we have a really cute red plaid shirt from Ebay seller larf2009 with the KK jeans... made for AG dolls, but over the Maiden Flight black tank top it looks pretty good...

And finally the plaid shirt with its matching skirt from larf2009... we love this set on AGs and on KKs--- plus we got it for less than $12.00 !!!....

More posts to come right around the corner....

Gia and 123MulberryStreet Set

Hola! Christmas is getting closer and closer, which means exciting holiday gifts for many of you (be sure to check out yesterday's hints 6.0). Of course nearing the end of December also means that January 1st is getting closer and closer, too. These book covers of Kanani just aren't enough--- American Girl should really give us some teaser doll pictures so we don't have to hunt them down ourselves like the crazies we all are. Like a shot of a foot, like we saw with Lanie... or maybe an image of her pet... or a hand... or her shoulder with some hair. There would still be a Jan. 1st surprise.... but we would be less desperate. Haha.

Anyways, we are enjoying our time with our new Gia and we wanted to share some more pics of her. Today she is wearing the Maiden Flight KK jeans, the AG shirt from the Wilderness Outfit, and a wintry set from Etsy seller 123MulberryStreet. It came with this awesome hooded vest with feathery/furry trim around the hood, and the knit hat with ear flaps and tassels. It is an AG-sized set, but we think it still looks lovely on Gia. The hat fits perfectly and it is always good for outerwear to be a little roomy so you can fit duds underneath it. ;-)

Here are many pictures of Gia in her ensemble with Mr. Snuggles....

And keep voting in our poll to help us determine who will be the next Karito Kid to come to Badger's Wood!

Gia as Lanie; Lanie Free Shipping Ends Today!

Bienvenido a Domingo! That's probably not the way to say that.... but oh well... Welcome to Sunday! Currently American Girl is featuring a free shipping offer on Lanie and/or her starter collection. This free shipping deal ends today (Dec. 12th), so if you were going to order Lanie, do it today and save some $$$!

So as a celebration of Lanie's free shipping and a little wave goodbye to her collection... we put Gia in Lanie's Garden Outfit and Butterfly Outfit. This way we can see how Gia fits in some of the American Girl clothing and see the two outfits that come in Lanie's starter collection.

Without further ado.... Gia as Lanie with Mr. Snuggles...

And here are the slideshows... some things you will notice...

1) Many American Girl shoes do fit Karito Kids. They are a bit wide, but if they have elastic straps they can go easily on the KK feeties. AG-sized boots, flats and sneakers also sometimes fit, but they go on very tightly because KK feet are slightly longer than AG feet. So it is probably better to just stick with shoes with elastic straps to them, like Lanie's two pairs of sandals, for example.

2) Karito Kids are skinnier. This is true-- taller and skinnier. So things like Lanie's plaid tank top and her Butterfly dress fit more loosely on KKs than on AGs. But I think they can still work for them. Especially if you add something like the orange jacket over the dress. Then the looseness is really not noticeable.

3) Even though they are taller, AG dresses can still work on KKs. It really depends on the length of the dress. There is a fine line between looking like a nice dress and looking like a tunic top. But Lanie's dress looks great in our opinion. And as far as the white shorts, they fit pretty well. Having elastic in the waistline really helps! The bum region does have a bit more room than Gia needs. But we really aren't that picky. She looks good to us. :-D

p.s. Doll Diaries has the Kanani book cover images. Click here: http://dolldiaries.com/american-girl-of-the-year-2011-scoop/. But one should really give credit where credit is due. An AG Playthings member found them first. So if you are a member at AGPT, you can check out the covers over there as well, with several pages of member discussion on them. Five so far-- Haha.

What do you think of the images of Kanani? Do you like her?!?

Maiden Flight Karito Kids Outfit

Hola! Been an interesting day. Worked on packaging up the prize, but missed the boat to UPS for today. Mark it down on the to-do list for Monday. Sigh. But at least we have some fun stuff to show you despite us being slow with our chores. ;-)

If you didn't already know, Liberty Jane and Maiden Flight have teamed up to create and market patterns for Karito Kids. Which you can view and purchase by going here: http://www.libertyjanepatterns.com/. The KK trendy tee pattern is free if you sign up for the Maiden Flight newsletter. Here are the cover-art pics of three of the currently available patterns.

So lucky for us Maiden Flight decided to sell some of the clothing you see on the covers: the long-sleeve plaid shirt, black tank top, and slim-fit jeans. They showed up in their Etsy shop BrambleberryCottage. And we snatched them right up since we wanted to start showing you Karito Kids here. :-)

Here is Gia in her complete Maiden Flight outfit posing with our holiday polar bear, Mr. Snuggles, from Target. He is helping us make our posts a little festive. Haha.

And then we have a slideshow of Gia showing off different aspects of the outfit. We also received a cool peace sign necklace with the duds, as you can see...

It was nice to get Gia this holiday season as a "little" gift to ourselves. A happy end to the year. Especially since Decembers are usually just spent wondering what the Girl of the Year will look like come January. What types of gifts are you excited to get or have already gotten this holiday season???

p.s. Look forward to Gia in more posts right around the corner, including our experiments in seeing what she looks like in AG-sized clothing! ;-)

Oh and p.p.s. It seems that Karito Kids World Collection 1.0 dolls might be easier to get out of their packages than World Collection 2.0 dolls, FYI.

Surprise!

We have been monitoring the Karito Kids poll and we saw that Gia had shot to #1, way beyond everybody else. We went online to price her and found a deal at QVC for her with an extra outfit. "Eh, why not?" ....we asked ourselves.... she does seem very popular in our poll...

So..... we bought Gia and have her here to show you in this post. :-) But keep voting because we like her so much that we plan on getting another Karito Kid before next year. We want to know who else you want to see here at The Doll Wardrobe.

Gia is a cutie. At first she looked a little non-personable and smug in the box. But once you get her out in the light she is adorable.

Beware: She was really difficult to get out of the box. If you plan on giving a Karito to a child, we would recommend taking her out of the box when she arrives and displaying her under the Christmas tree or at the breakfast table as the big reveal. We wouldn't give the child the doll in the box. It was like wrestling with an alligator to get her out and took about an hour.

Her hands, feet, stomach, neck, and the back of her head are all strapped in, most with wire twisties that are rather sharp. They even press into the vinyl. Gia still has strap marks on her ankles, wrists and neck from the twisties. Those might not go away. So you think you have finally got her out and the back of her is lashed to a plastic mold thingy and you have to cut her head out of it. And then her hair was sewn to her jacket. And then her hair was sewn to itself.

Yet, she was smiling nonchalantly throughout this entire endeavor while our fingertips were marred and bleeding from the wires. Overall, you have to slice open the box completely and untie or untape about 16 different points. And when you are done it just lies there like a ravaged carcass; not really the kind of thing you can store your doll in like AG boxes. Its lifespan is pretty much spent.

So man, if you think AG dolls are tough to get out of their boxes they are sooooooo not. Try getting a Karito Kid out of her box and you will thank the geniuses who designed AG's storage and strapping-in system.

Okay I am done venting.... almost.... Karito Kids company, I hope you are reading this. Make your dolls boxes like AG and strap them in the same way. Your fans will thank you. And please, please, please stop using plastic-coated wire twisty ties! They are evil in so many ways!

I am done now.....

But like I said, we really do adore Gia. She was worth the effort to get her out and she is much happier now. Below are some pictures of her in the box and the back of the box. Chrissa's llama came the same day she did, so he made a cameo appearance. Sorry we didn't take fancier photos with our white background and lamps... but we were too excited to set all that up before taking pictures of her. Haha.

FYI: The extra outfit QVC sent is Pita's current meet outfit in the World Collection 2.0. It is the wrapped up package at her feet. (It comes with cool black boots.)

And here is Gia out of the box. Can't say we like this meet outfit. At all. I think we would have preferred version 1.0 meet outfit like you see on the book cover. But QVC sends what QVC has. ;-) Needless to say she stayed in this outfit for all of two seconds to take these photos and unsew her hair from her jacket. And then unsew her jacket from her dress... sigh.... So look forward to more pics soon of her in different clothing----- in fact it is all new clothing that we haven't yet shown you.... some is Karito-sized clothing and some is AG-sized....

And again, keep voting in the poll to determine Karito doll #2!!

American Girl Cyber Monday Order and Karito Kids Query

Today is a day for wordy random thoughts and no pictures... well some pictures, but they are not mine. ;-)

So Cyber Monday was this past Monday.... uh, yeah... we haven't had our coffee yet, so you'll have to humor us and our simplistic thought processes. American Girl usually does a big sale with 50% off or more on about 100 items. So it is kind of a big deal since you might be able to save money on things you have wanted for awhile and maybe couldn't afford. Or save money on a bunch of stuff that you probably would never thought of buying without it being on sale. Haha. We fall into that second category.

Point to remember from all that blathering: American Girl has a big online sale the Monday after Thanksgiving.

We ordered a bunch of stuff on Monday and it arrived yesterday. And in case you didn't know-- from November 30th until sometime in December American Girl is doing Daily Spotlight Specials. Less than ten items are on sale for about 30-50% off. Some savings are big, some not so much. But they do seem to be including a lot of historical books, so check it out daily if you want some books. The sale items change everyday in case you didn't catch on to that.

Point to remember from all that blathering: American Girl online has daily sales throughout the month of December.

Included in our Cyber Monday order was Chrissa's llama, which we always kind of thought of as too expensive for a stuffed llama. One could probably find an equivalent elsewhere for less $$$. But he was on sale, so we ordered him. But he isn't here yet. He is "In Progress." Weird, I know--- since he should really just be sitting in a warehouse waiting to be distributed. But maybe they put him on sale not expecting a lot of people to order him.... maybe they ran out of the little guy and are too shy to tell us? Who knows......

So we have a list of what arrived below. No pictures yet. Sorry. But we were excited to share our list since there is some stuff in there for our readers. 

The hardcover historical books were on sale for $4, so we snagged a lot of the ones that we had read from the library. Thirteen in total. Yeah, we are crazy. And yes that made the box heavy... but it is nice to have them in hardcover for our own collection....

As far as doll goodies we got...

Ruthie's shoes (they are good to have as extras, one pair for Ruthie, one for Kit)
Felicity's foal Patriot (that was a good sale-- and we actually like the foals better than the larger horses)
Addy's Ice Cream Set (always wanted this, but it is tre expensive when not on sale)
Emily's Tap Outfit (we went back and forth on this one, but it may retire soon and we didn't want to regret not getting it as we have Molly's Miss Victory costume)
Chrissa's Snow Gear
And her Swimming Warm-up Set
(Feel good about getting these on sale, since they didn't really seem worth the prices AG was asking for them last year)
Just Like You Socks and Tights set (which is probably on its way to retirement soon)

And for stuff that pertains to our readers.... here is a list of items that we are going to include here and there with our future doll giveaways.... we will have pictures of these things eventually....

A Berry Hoodie (we have pictures of this somewhere on the blog, as we already own one)
Raspberry-colored mini tote with butterflies
And three American Girl Place goodie bags with dolly tee shirts and girl's wristlet purses

So there you go, things to look forward to seeing in our 2011 giveaways--- let the joyful screaming commence! What? You won't scream until you see pictures? Awww.... well we will get those to you eventually.

Continuing the longest post in the history of posts... Liberty Jane and Maiden Flight Clothing are designing Karito Kids patterns. Now we had heard of these dolls before and their children's charity work, but we never realized that they fit into American Girl clothing until we investigated their reviews on AG Playthings. People have pics of these Kids in AG clothing. And it looks really good on them about 75% of the time. Especially if it is shorts, skirts, dresses, cropped pants or leggings outfits. Not so much with the full-length pants. Their bodies are like AGs, just with longer legs and slightly longer arms.

So we started thinking.... maybe we should get a Kid to show our readers what they look like in AG clothing, especially if seamstresses are going to use the LJ patterns to make Karito clothing....

What do you think? Would y'all mind seeing a Karito Kid on zees blog? Feel free to comment with your thoughts below. I have included images of the dolls available so you know what we are talking about. If you like a certain one, please feel free to speak up! :-)

Pita

Piper

Gia

Lulu

Zoe

Wan Ling 

Maybe we will do a poll on the side about which Karito Kid our readers would like to see featured on this blog.... polls are fun.....


p.s. Last two days to enter our Fall 2010 Doll Giveaway-- Winner will be announced on Monday! Can you feel the excitement in the air!?!