August Giveaways Start Today! Enter Here!

That's right -- we have two items to give away for our 25th Anniversary August giveaways!!! Woot!!!

But first some information:

1) We are going away for a little while, so there might not be any blog posts next week unless we can perform some magic tricks. Haha.

2) Penny is bringing Maple and I along on the trip. Maple might be in some planned photo shoots while we are away. What about me, eh? Penny says I can't go outside because I am "too special." Riiiight.... Maple probably just forced her to take photos of her instead of me.... sigh.

3) We haven't shipped last month's giveaway items yet (including the ice cream) because we are generally slow doing that. :-( So don't get too antsy winners, haha. We will mail them when we return. This is why we could never run a business very well-- we never have enough packaging here. Sigh again.

4) We are having a special Back to School gift certificate giveaway from Tracy'sDesigns1. We will post about that after we finish posting about this. :-D

Okay -- Our two giveaway items in this post are: a plaid party dress from Cupcake Cutie Pie and a pink colonial dress from Jessica's Historically Designed. The Cupcake Cutie Pie dress comes with the shoes. The Historically Designed dress comes with the pinner cap (but not the shoes). Pics and slideshows below. Mary is modeling the CCP dress, and Maple is sporting the JHD dress.

We will make some Youtube videos of these things when we return from our voyage as reminders to enter the giveaways (we just don't have the time to do that now).

Thank you to these sellers for their 

generous donations to our giveaways!

Readers -- you will be entering both of these giveaways in one place-- here at this post. So be sure to tell us which item(s) you are interested in winning in your comment.

We will run these two giveaways until Friday, September 9th. 

And we will announce the two winners on Saturday, September 10th, 2011.

Now here are the important details: You must be 18 years old or older to enter this giveaway. If you are younger than that please have someone 18 years old or older, like a parent or guardian, enter herself/himself. One entry per person please, but you can have other family members enter as well.

To enter, please write your full name and your email address as a comment to this post. It will not be published and only Penny will be able to see it. A winner will be drawn out of a hat, i.e. randomly picked. Only entries with a full name and an email address will be put into the hat. If you win, Penny will email that address to notify you and ask for your shipping address.

And be sure to tell us which items you are interested in winning. 

If you don't, we will just assume you are interested in both goodies. ;-)

Any questions?? Feel free to ask!

Slideshows.....

Enter today!!!!

Maple Insists: Doll Comparison No. 2

And of course, your Activity Four photos are due today... just plugging that again. :-)

So today we compare Mary (Ruthie), Maple (MyAG #55), Noelle (MyAG #48), Elizabeth (MyAG #41), and Stella (MyAG #25). Again, they are still sporting the braids that Maple insisted we all have. And since I didn't get to appear in most of these pics, I thought I'd just make sure my presence was known....

Maple and Elizabeth are still wearing the outfits they wore in the last comparison because we took the photos all at once. Maple's top is from Liberty Jane, and her belt and embroidered jeans are from All Dolled Up Doll Clothes. As we said before, Terrie can pretty much embroider anything smaller than 5" on doll clothing for you. So if you have a specific design or idea in mind be sure to contact her. :-) Elizabeth's outfit is from The Dolly Stand, and her shoes are from Megori Girls.

At the left, Mary is wearing an outfit from The Dolly Stand and boots from Megori Girls. Then there is Maple, followed by Noelle who is wearing a Sew Urban Designs top, L'Atelier de Sitara paint-splattered jeans, and shoes from AG. Next is Elizabeth and the final girl is Stella -- sporting a tank top, corset, and plaid skirt from Sew Urban Designs that we mix-and-matched together. The saddle shoes are just the standard ones you find on Ebay.

Faces for comparison...

Faces slideshow...

Tops slideshow...

Pants/skirts slideshow...

Thanks for looking at all the pictures everyone -- hope they were helpful!
Stay tuned for our long post of Activity Four entry photos -- that should be up either Tuesday or Wednesday, after all of them are sent in. :-)

"I'm the Queen of the World!"

Last Day of Colonial Week! Sdls275 Cloak

We are finally back! And with the last post of our first Colonial Week at The Doll Wardrobe. (We will have another one soon.) Sorry it takes us so long to do these posts, but it takes some prep work and school gets in the way. Bleh.

Today we show you Angelina in the yellow gown with the second stomacher. She is greeting Mary as she comes home wearing a brown cloak also by Ebay seller sdls275. She is carrying the copper lantern we received with the green I Dream of Jeanne Marie colonial gown. Under the cloak she is wearing Felicity's meet dress.

We have Felicity and Elizabeth's cloaks, but it is always nice to have more. They can be used for so many time periods and many of our dolls. (But not a lot of people make them.) This one is particularly nice because it has the furry trim around the hood and it is made out of a wool blend fabric to keep your doll warm.

So hopefully the lantern reminds you of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.... or at least we were hoping it would remind you of that.... heehee.

In Massachusetts in April of 1775 the word on the street was that the British troops stationed in Boston were going to march to the city of Concord to seize military supplies. A Patriot spy, Joseph Warren,  was sent to find out what route the soldiers would take so that their actions could be prevented. In the bell tower of Boston's tallest church (the Old North Church) he was instructed to hang two lanterns if they choose the water route and one if they came solely by land.

Paul Revere, a famous silversmith, and his comrade, William Dawes, were waiting for the signal on the night of April 18. Two lanterns shined in the church tower, according to the story, and it was then known the British were starting their journey by boat. The two men raced their horses towards Lexington and Concord to warn everyone on the route of the coming army. Along the way they were joined by Samuel Prescott, who rode with them and was the only one of the three to reach Concord.

Luckily, most of the military supplies were already moved out of Concord to protect them from the British, but colonials were also concerned that Samuel Adams and John Hancock, two main leaders of the Patriotic rebellion, might be captured by the troops.

On April 19, the very next day, the Battles of Lexington and Concord were fought between the 700 British troops from Boston and the Patriot militia that had been warned with the help of Warren, Revere, Dawes, and Prescott. These were the first military engagements of the American Revolution, and the first colonial victory.

So why don't we call this "The Midnight Ride of Revere, Dawes, and Prescott"? Well Revere was the only one captured, so he has a bit more of a romantic storyline. (Don't worry, he lived a long life and died in 1818.) Also Henry Wadsworth Longfellow didn't do Dawes and Prescott any favors when he penned the poem "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" in 1861. Here are the opening lines....

"Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year...."

In the slideshow below you will see an image of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, a portrait of Paul Revere by John Singleton Copley, a photo of his home in Boston (which you can visit today), and two photos of the Paul Revere statue in Boston. The first pic shows you the sculpture from the side, and the second includes the bell tower of the Old North Church in the distance.

We also wanted to talk about how in such a fancy gown, Angelina is obviously not dressed as a slave, like she was when she was dressed as Belinda. As we learned, Belinda did gain her freedom towards the end of her life. So there were "free blacks" in the colonies. They worked for actual pay and could even own businesses. But they did not have the same rights as whites. For instance, all blacks had a curfew and had to stay off the streets at night. If they were caught outside they would be arrested, whether or not they were slaves or free. It would be interesting to make a doll that is a free black in the colonial period. We think she would have some pretty fascinating stories.

So will American Girl replace Felicity and Elizabeth's time period with another colonial doll/18th century doll? They certainly did that for Samantha with Rebecca. But we still have yet to see a replacement for Kirsten. :-( But we are keeping our fingers crossed.

Last time we talked about undergarments, so we thought we'd show you the retired set for Felicity in this post (so you know what it looks like). You can find them on Ebay for a ton of money, but some companies make replicas like Williamsburg Rose and The Dollies' Dressmaker.

The original set came with panniers, a pocket, and a corset. The corset was sometimes called stays. While some women carried little purses known as indispensables it was normal to have a pocket hidden under your skirt. Your dress would have slits at your waistline through which you could access the pocket underneath. So that fancy embroidered thing in the pic below is Felicity's pocket. :-)

As our final farewell this Colonial Week, we wanted to show you some catalog covers featuring Felicity. She has been with us since 1991 and it is sad to see her go after almost 20 years of admiring her collection and her stories....

And one last picture of Ben.... I mean Ben and Felicity....

Colonial Week Day Four! I Dream of Jeanne Marie Green Dress

Hola! I'm attempting to keep this on target, but I am still slow...
Here is Day Four! Long post ahead!

Today we have Mary wearing a green dress from Ebay seller I Dream of Jeanne Marie. We've tried to win a variety of her auctions, but we usually don't win. :-( So we were lucky with this one. It came with the mob cap you saw on Angelina with her green dress, a lace fichu, and a very nice copper lantern that you will see in a couple of days here during Colonial Week.

Below Mary is wearing the lace cap from Felicity's red Gala Gown and the fichu that came with the dress. We really love the dark green patterned fabric of this dress with the ribbon and tassel accent on the bodice, as well as the lace on the sleeves. We added in a string of red pearls to complete Mary's "look." And you can see that she is posing with Felicity's guitar.

During the colonial period the guitar was one of the few instruments that women were allowed to play. People thought it looked unflattering for a girl or woman to play the violin while craning her neck or to blow into an instrument like a French horn while puckering her lips. So today we are lucky that girls can play whichever musical instrument they want to. Think of that the next time you dread practicing your music. ;-)

For the rest of this post we are talking more about colonial fashion. We begin with a slideshow of paintings of colonial women in interesting dresses. Most of the portraits are by John Singleton Copley, who was known for his skill in painting fabric in a realistic manner. The paintings show us that a variety of very high-end dresses were worn during portrait sessions. Sometimes a dress was owned by the artist and used as a studio costume, and then we see it in more than one painting.

Can you spot the dresses that appear more than once???

So if we think about the very shiny fabrics and elaborate detailing of many of Felicity's and Elizabeth's dresses that Mattel has created recently, they aren't really completely "off." Of course they are not using the silks and satins that would have been used during colonial times, but dresses were sometimes made in very bright colors, were often shiny in a lustrous manner, and were accented with a lot of lace and bows. But a girl or woman would be lucky to own one or two dresses like the kind we see in the portraits. Most of her wardrobe would have been more casual work clothing made from less expensive fabrics.

Of course we have other historical evidence of what women wore in the 1700s besides portraits--- we even have some surviving clothing which we can study. We mined the collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute to find some interesting pics for you.

Fashion in the colonies was a push-pull between English and French trends. But by the end of the 1700s the French had definitely won this fashion war and the wealthiest families in the colonies custom-ordered clothing directly from France. These French style dresses were known as robe a la Francaise, and those from England were known as robe a la Anglaise.

These types of dresses usually featured an underskirt that showed in the front and a long, skirted jacket that wrapped around it. The robe a la Anglaise had a fitted back, like those dresses worn in England. The robe a la Francaise had a looser, pleated back that dropped from the shoulders and was known as a sacque dress back, or sack dress.

Here are some Anglaise dresses...

And here are some Francaise dresses... you can tell which was more popular just by the sheer number that survives for us today... note the photos of the backs of dresses, there you can see the main difference between French and English styles.

As most of you probably already know, Felicity and Elizabeth's dolls were not really made for play. They are fashion dolls that were owned by fabric and dress shops at this point in time. They would be used to display miniature versions of dresses that ladies could order. In our slideshow below you see a real fashion doll that is owned by Colonial Williamsburg's living museum and the two AG fashion dolls.

In our next Colonial Week post (Day Five!) we will talk more about the details of colonial clothing, including the other pieces of attire ladies wore at this time: panniers, stomachers, corsets, etc. to help round out your colonial fashion knowledge. Stay tuned for more colonial fun and more handmade clothing!

Colonial Week Day Three! Felicity's Tea Lesson Gown

Sorry for the delay guys!! Life in the fast lane of schoolwork is pretty fast... Here is our third post of Colonial Historical Theme Week here at The Doll Wardrobe!

Today we are showing you Mary Royall wearing Felicity's Tea Lesson Gown and some close-up shots of the reoccurring Tea Set. Long, long, loooong post ahead!!

Dear American Girl,
If you are going to make a Tea Lesson Gown for Felicity in 2005 to go with the 2005 Felicity TV movie, you should probably have the dress in your toy line match the one seen in the movie.
   Love,
      Nora Demington ;-P

Yes, it is true that we were really hoping AG would make the movie dress because it is a real heart-stopper as you can see below.... I mean the dress ladies, the dress. Not Ben. Heehee... though he does look nice too...

Gosh the costume department really out-did themselves with that dress. And as you can see, she is wearing it during Tea Lessons...

But AG didn't give us that dress. :-( We got this one below instead.

Which is okay. But the style of the scarf-neckline, sleeves, and bodice really appears more in the 1780s/90s, like right before and around the French Revolution-- when Marie Antoinette was making this type of fashion popular because she often liked to pretend she was just a simple milkmaid down on the farm... at Versailles.... And it was popularized during the French Revolution because it was the dress style of middle class women.

Obviously the fancy fabric and floral embellishments take Felicity's dress out of the peasant-style realm and attempt to make it look more like the TV movie dress. But they really are not enough alike at all in our humble opinion.

Despite this incongruity between toy dress and TV dress, we purchased it for our Mary with hopes that she would like it. So here are our photos of her in the dress...

So what's so important about tea??? Why does Felicity have a tea set??? Well if you have read the books or seen the movie, you probably already know that learning how to properly serve tea was part of a colonial woman's training. Someone who mastered the tea ceremony was ready to run a household, be hospitable to guests, and be a proper wife.

In the colonies the tradition of drinking tea in the afternoon (with snacks) was adopted from British culture, but the English had adopted it via the Portuguese from Eastern cultures like the Arabs, Chinese, and Japanese who had been growing tea and using it during social gatherings for a very long time. The British Empire, in turn, spread its own interpretation of the tea ceremony to its colonies, including America, India, Africa, and so on.

In the colonial period, less than half of the tea coming to the American colonies was grown in India and sold here by the East India Trading Company, an English company. Two-thirds of the tea was grown elsewhere, smuggled illegally into the colonies, and sold for less than the East Indian tea. Obviously the British wanted to stop the smuggling of tea and concentrate profits into the monopoly of the Trading Company.

This led to the Tea Act of 1773 in which the Company was allowed to sell tea directly to the colonies in America without first paying taxes in England. The taxes would then be paid in the colonies, and that cost would be passed on to the colonials. They believed this new Act validated the tea tax put in place in 1767, which they did not like. Not at all.

The hated Townshend Acts of 1767 taxed a variety of products coming into the colonies, including tea. The colonists were furious that they were being forced to pay taxes that they had never voted into existence. "No Taxation without Representation" is their cry that you probably remember from history class. No one in Parliament represented the colonists' interests. These acts infuriated Bostonians (as well as other colonists), tensions rose, and when British troops were called in to enforce the new taxes... riots broke out. The infamous Boston Massacre occurred in 1770, eleven days after Christopher Seider was killed by a customs officer protecting his wife from rioters. Customs officers were the royal employees who collected the taxes on imported goods. Not a fun job at this point in time.

Christopher was only eleven years old when he was killed by the birdshot the customs officer fired through the window of his home into the angry crowd. He is often noted as the first victim of the American Revolution. His death and funeral incited the Bostonians and laid the foundation for the March 1770 riot that led to the deaths of five civilians at the hands of British troops: the Boston Massacre. This early sign of rebellion, 300-400 Bostonians rioting, would culminate in all-out war in 1775.

In 1773, the Tea Act and the taxes that came with it were ignored. Tea was not let into the colonies. Many colonials refused to accept the shipments at the harbors (it sat there rotting), or it was sent back to England once it arrived. In Boston the tea sat on ships and no one showed up to unload it. Officials refused to send it back to England, as the Bostonians wanted them to do. Tensions arose once again, and the Bostonians executed a plan to destroy all three shiploads of tea. On December 16, 1773 a group of colonists boarded the ships and threw all the tea overboard into the harbor. This Boston Tea Party smacked as open rebellion in the face of Parliament and they responded by closing Boston's commerce until they repaid the Trading Company for the tea.

And we all know how that turned out.... An interesting fact for us is that at the Royall House in Medford, Massachusetts (home of Mary and Elizabeth) on display currently is supposedly one of the original Boston Tea Party tea boxes, rescued from the harbor back in 1773. Here is a closer photo of the Royall House... couldn't find a pic of the tea box.... :-( But it is a really awesome house... so here...

Also on display is a chocolate cup retrieved during archaeological excavations at Ten Hills Farm, seen at the top right in the pic below....

Hot chocolate was a very popular and expensive drink during the colonial period, and you might remember that once upon a time Felicity had her own chocolate set, see zee pic below. It was retired in 2005, and why they did that in the year of the Felicity movie I shall never understand. If anyone knows- please enlighten us. You can find it on Ebay today (if you have extra $$$ laying around). :-)

My gosh you made it to the bottom of the post! Congratulations- please stay tuned for Day Four of Colonial Week! The fun continues!

The Return of Mary Royall

It's been quite awhile since Mary has been seen on the blog--- so we thought we'd sound dramatic and call this post "The Return of Mary Royall," to be well, dramatic..... Give us a break; it's been a long day. ;)

So we have been increasing the size of our Felicity and Elizabeth collection since we heard about the archival. We had been more prepared for the possibility of Molly's archival. So there were a couple more things we wanted to get for our colonial gal Mary Royall.

Mary now has the table and chairs (which we have always wanted and highly recommend), the Noah's Ark toy, the muff and pattens set, the guitar, and several new outfits. We took some pictures of her with most of the items, some which you can see below.

Today's pictures are of Mary wearing Elizabeth's meet dress and Felicity's Gala Gown. We didn't want to miss out on the meet dress and the gala gown because of the archival, but we can't say the colors and fabric choices are our favorites. The designs are pretty cool, but the fabrics seem quite plasticky and Barbie-esque. We were hoping for fabrics that would look more silky/satiny, like what Mary wears in her portrait by John Singleton Copley (we included that painting at the bottom of this post for you guys who haven't seen it yet).

But oh well, it was still fun to take pictures of Mary wearing these AG dresses. :)

So pictures: First, the whole ensemble and Elizabeth's meet dress. The stuffed bear is from the Marriott, where we stayed during our Labor Day weekend mini-break. We got a second one to giveaway with our Fall 2010 Doll Giveaway.

Second, the accessories.... we were very impressed with everything except the guitar (which is unfortunately plastic--- nice to look at, but we just would have preferred wood).

Third, the Gala Gown....

Last, the painting by John Singleton Copley... Mary is on the left with the hummingbird perched on her finger.

Ooh La La Couture Dress

Looking for girly clothing that is really frou-frou? We weren't, but we found some that intrigued us anyway! First we came upon this....a Kaiya Eve boutique dress....

Dear God, my eyes! The ruffles.... the ruffles are everywhere!!!!

Needless to say we didn't buy this ensemble, though I am sure little girls might be very happy to have such an outfit for their dolls. But it did lead us to investigate boutique lines of clothing for young girls and to check out what they are making for American Girl dolls. And we found these....all from "Ooh La La Couture"....

The original four outfits you see first in the slideshow, with the toile shirts attached to the petticoats, are mostly sold out and the new line with the peace signs on the shirts are what is currently available. Interested in them? Click here to visit Lil Britchin Post (the online shop where you can buy the in-stock items and look at the full Ooh La La Couture line for dolls).

So what did we end up buying? Yes, it has pink on it..... and yes, it is kind of frou-frou. But it was very entertaining in its design and we wanted to see it up close and in person. We discovered it is basically a little onesie for your doll with a petticoat thingy attached at the hip-line. And in its own way, it can be very versatile.

Here is Mary modeling the dress as is....

And here is Mary with a tricked out dress...
We added a hat, vest, belt, socks, sneakers, and a purse.....

Accessory round-up: the hat is from Seejoansew's "Squeak's Outfit," the vest is Liberty Jane, the belt is the JLY Meet Outfit headband you see in the previous pics, the socks are also from Seejoansew, the sneaks are AG, and the purse is one of those lipstick cases we found in a shop once upon a time.

Doesn't Mary look awesome???..... despite the pinkness that Penny abhors so much... Heehee. :)

Melody ValerieThe Holly and The Ivy

Yay! We actually created this post before the holidays are over! It's a big accomplishment for us since we are usually six months behind in our posting schedule... but we thought it was important to post this now since these are Christmas-themed items.

Melody Valerie's Christmas Line 2009 is the Holly Coat, which you see modeled on Mary (fka Ruthie), and the Ivy Cape, which I am modeling. Yay me!

Want some for yourself?
Click here to visit the Melody Valerie Etsy shop!

As of the moment when I wrote this post,
there were 2 capes and 4 coats left.

The Holly Coat is handcrafted with a red wool exterior, gold cotton-silk lining, and gold-plated buttons. Buttons and button-holes. Sometimes a challenge for doll clothing made from thick fabric, but here they are very easy to use. This coat looks particularly smashing on dark-haired dolls, as you can see with our Mary. Under the coat she is wearing the Melody Valerie SchoolGirl dress which we will be showing you soon in another post. :)

The Ivy Cape is made from a deep green mini-corduroy, with a silver cotton-silk lining. The off-white pearly buttons work with loops to close the cape and again, are very easy to use. I am modeling this cape over the Melody Valerie Wintry Meadows dress which you saw on my sister Ellie earlier this month. My sister and I think, personally, that the cape looks best with long dresses that go to the floor. It really adds something visually to the way the cape drapes.

We have to say this: doll outerwear is not an easy thing to create. The fit has to be just right or it will either look (a) too bulky and your AG will resemble the Stay-Puffed Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters or (b) too snug and you won't actually be able to put on any clothing underneath the outerwear. And then your doll will feel just a bit chilly. Not every seamstress can master that magical in-between zone where the outerwear fits just right, but Melody Valerie certainly has, as you can see in the photos below.

We think that the MVC Christmas 2009 Line is gorgeous and we hope that Melody Valerie Couture continues to craft outerwear in the future. Thank you MVC for these awesome and unique items!

Mary and Rebecca

The last post from me, Nora, for this week shows off both Mary and Rebecca wearing the two new colonial gowns. This time Rebecca is also wearing the new hat, which we show you in some close-up shots as well.

Check out the two stores we have highlighted this week:

The Dollies' Dressmaker

and

Heirloom Doll Designs (Ebay seller sdls275)

Sdls725 adds new auctions every Thursday evening, so keep checking back for interesting items!

Next week, posts from Marvelous Me, Nora Demington, will return to some modern clothing that Penny has been acquiring slowly but surely. Then on Friday we will announce the winner of the Doll Giveaway. Have a great weekend everybody!

Dollies Dressmaker Colonial Gown

To continue with our colonial theme for the week, we wanted to show you a new gown from The Dollies' Dressmaker website. It is being modeled by Mary Royall (fka Ruthie).

The combination of black and green, with the multicolored floral print is really quite stunning. The delicate pink and green ribbon used as trim on the gown contrasts so well with the black ribbon used as "lacing" on the stomacher. This gown comes as two pieces with velcro closings, and hence may be considered a more kid-friendly creation.

This dress is still available in the shop, as of when I wrote this post, so check it out today! On Friday, I will show you Mary and Rebecca side-by-side in their colonial gowns as a finishing touch for our colonial-themed week. See you soon!