16. backstory: youngji, the littlest ahgase

One of my favorite characterization elements to play with when it comes to my #4, Youngji Park, is the fact that she is a huge fangirl of K-pop boy group GOT7. I figured it's past time to document how that all came about and ways I've worked it into her story over the last year.

15. display: youngji's bedroom

Winifred's bedroom is my favorite display that I have designed so far, but it couldn't stay intact forever: Youngji needed a turn!

Poor Youngji isn't going to get a birthday celebration this year, but I wanted to set up her room, since I had a lot of plans for it and was really excited about it. Unfortunately work and life got hectic, so I ended up switching the rooms over much later than I would have liked (thus, no birthday pictures). 

As you can see, her aesthetic is a little bit different from Winifred's tranquil purple world...

13. display and photo story: winifred's bedroom, march 2017 | winifred's birthday, 2017

(The PJs Bree is wearing are available from HilltopRoseCC!)

Last autumn my roommate and I split the cost of a PAX wardrobe from IKEA to use as a dollhouse! We split it into three rooms: each of us use one as a bedroom, switching out whose room it is every month, and the third serves as a common room. 

Neither of us have done too much with it most of the time, since we've both been really busy. But Winifred's birthday was on March 4, and I wanted to do a little photos series on Instagram, so I decided I needed to set up her room reasonably well...

(Bedroom tour + birthday pictures under the cut!)

11. store visit and a new addition: february 18, 2017

Last Thursday my roommate went to the Seattle store to see the new release items, and was so angry upon discovering that Tenney and Logan had taken over half of Gabriela's display that she bought not only a Gabriela of her own, but also a #58.

As you may recall, I had been planning to buy Gabriela. However, now that my roommate has one it felt like having two in the house would be too many (especially since we've begun more or less seeing our collections as one giant overlapping collection) and I was able to compare her more extensively to Melody and realized that having two dolls who so closely resembled each other would be less fun for me than the chance to add a more unique doll to my collection.

It sent me back to the drawing board: I had more tax refund money than anticipated, so I could afford another doll, and while I'm very upset about the fallout from the revelations about American Girl's upcoming permapanties bodies I'm also very upset about this Tenney and Logan nonsense. I'm a believer in voting with my dollars, so if Tenney and Logan dolls are going to be flying off the shelves then by goodness I wanted to be responsible for at least one doll of color finding a home at the same time. But which one?

I've always been incredibly drawn to #62, but that would make a third Sonali mold in my collection and I didn't want to have another modern who seemed too old to fit in with my much-beloved Youngji and Winifred. I've also liked #53 for a long time, but so does my roommate's three-year-old daughter, so we already have plans to get her one a few years down the road, when she is ready to own and take care of a full-sized AG doll. (She's really good when it comes to leaving our dolls alone when she's not supervised, and playing gently with them when she is, but we don't want to have a doll that we know she really, really wants around to tempt her when she isn't ready to have it herself yet. It seems unfair.) 

My third option was #31, who I've always thought was cute in store displays but only recently began to seriously consider buying. Other points in her favor were that she's an Addy mold doll, and I love the Addy mold, and she looked like she would fit in well with Winifred and Youngji. 

So I went to the store last Saturday and considered my options...

9. backstory: how each doll joined my American Girl collection

The story of how each of my current dolls joined my American Girl collection! Featuring lots of pictures, including lots of terrible, low quality pictures taken on my former phone.

5. 2017 projects

After the last few months of crafting and collecting, I have a lot of ideas and plans for 2017, including sewing and display projects.

4. sewing in 2016

                                     

I spent years saying that I wanted to learn how to sew, but never got around to it. I took a few seminars as a child, and home ec in middle school, but had not really sewn anything since then. After I moved to the Northwest, my roommate, restringingorder , was kind enough to allow me to use her sewing machine and teach me some things. Thanks to her help, her mother's stash of fabrics, and living close to a Jo Ann Fabric store, I have gone from wishing to one day sew to having a handful of projects under my belt, including several for dolls!

2. seattle store visit: january 1, 2017

It's January 1, which in the world of American Girl now means two things: it's both the annual debut date of the new Girl of the Year, and the birthday of Civil Rights era BeForever doll Melody Ellison! Both of these factors played into my visit to the Seattle store: I received a beautiful Melody as a Christmas gift from three dear friends, so I wanted to pay some extra attention to her today, and I've been very interested in the thought of adding 2017 Girl of the Year Gabriela McBride to my collection for the past few months, so I wanted to see her and Melody together to compare them.

So my roommate (@restringingorder on Instagram), her family, her new doll, Melody, and I hopped into the car and spent the afternoon running errands, including a trip to the Seattle store! 

(Thank goodness Melody and #64 have such easy to fix hair, right? I try to never post pictures of the dolls looking so disheveled, but I was charmed by this picture, since something about the road trip hair just seemed so true to life.)