Now that Julie has her BFF, Ivy here, it was time to get the room set up so the two of them could really kick back and relax!  Check out all the photos below as some of them feature items I picked up at the American Girl store over the weekend and some are from earlier and just haven’t been featured.

The Julie and Ivy room is created by putting two American Doll Rooms together. Ivy’s bed is from Quietude Quilts and her bed cover is just a random piece of fabric we have left over from something, but it works perfect for Ivy.

Julie is super comfy in her Butterfly PJs lounging on her bed. You can see her basketball bag, fuzzy green foot rug, her room accessories and her sound accessories. She even has the American Girl shopping bag we got over the weekend. If you go the American Girl store and buy just a gift card or get something little like chocolate to go in the Bistro, they will give you one of theses super cute doll sized American Girl shopping bags.

On Ivy’s side of the room you can get a better look at the Quietude Quilts handmade wooden bed and the fun bedspread from a bandana. Ivy is wearing McKenna’s PJs and I think they are just adorable on her.

This is a closer photo of the super adorable Berry Purse and Shoes set that you can only get in the American Girl stores. The ruffled corduroy pink purse is just too cute for words. It is one of my favorite all time pieces. The set also comes with “miss-match” socks and red, pink and white tennis shoes. I love how you can mix and match the shelves in Julie’s room accessories to come up with all different configurations.

Julie and Ivy are talking about their favorite records and trying to decide what to listen to next. I vote for Saturday in the Park or something nice and relaxing like that.

The music decision has been made so now it is time to just relax, catch up on girl talk and enjoy the popcorn!

I am so glad we decided to get Ivy on Sunday at the American Girl store. She is quickly becoming one of my all time favorites!

One of our readers found these cute “laundry baskets” for 18″ dolls like American Girl dolls in the dollar aisle at Target. Too cute!!

Adorable!! I love seeing all the fun things you can find or make for dolls from unexpected items.

This is definitely the part of doing giveaways that I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the most – seeing the happy faces of the recipients of our giveaway items!! One of the winners of the American Doll Room giveaway, Geri, sent in photos of her daughter and friends having fun with their dolls. Looks like fun was had by all!

Looks like a tea party in action! Have to say the special guest Clarice (Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’s girlfriend) looks like she is enjoying her tea.

Love the bunkbed with trundle in the background and the variety of dolls at the tea party.

And who has arrived on horseback for the party?

And a view from the outside of the American Doll Room.

I am so happy to see our giveaway item has found such a fun home full of dolls and a girl (and her friends) to play with it for hours!! Long live imagination!! I’d like to thank American Doll Room again for sponsoring this awesome giveaway.

UPDATE: Scroll down for the name of the winner.

Have I told you how much fun I am having being able to share all these fabulous giveaways with you this holiday season?? Well, it’s time for another one!

Emily Rose Doll Clothes has been a long-time friend of Doll Diaries and we are excited to be able to giveaway another one of their furniture pieces for15″ – 18″ dolls to one lucky Doll Diaries reader. However, we are not in this by ourselves – Emily Rose is actually giving out three of these awesome Trundle Beds for dolls – one is being given out here, one from Lizzie at the 4EVRAGZ YouTube channel and one directly from Emily Rose at the Emily Rose blog. 

Kanani wanted to be the first to show you what you can win! This adorable pink and white trundle bed is perfect for any girls’ doll room. The bed is reasonably priced at under $40 and comes unassembled, packed flat. It’s super easy to assemble (check the Emily-Rose video to see for yourself), too. It comes with pink and white bedding for both the main bed and the trundle bed.

I’m all about space savers and efficiency so the trundle bed design is one that I just love. The bottom drawer pulls out to make a bed for your doll’s BFF or you could take the bedding out and use it for storing little things like jammies or doll shoes.

Now for my daughter Natalie’s favorite part of the trundle bed – the corkboard on the end of the bed! This is a really nice little touch and it sets the Emily Rose Trundle Bed apart from some of the others you can find. Dolls can leave notes for each other, pin up pictures of their favorite stars, or hang mementos from their adventures on the corkboard. TOO CUTE! I just love little extras like this.

CONGRATULATIONS MICHELLE! You are the winner of the giveaway.

What We Are Giving Away

• We are giving away a the Emily Rose Single Trundle Bed for dolls to one lucky winner.

How To Enter

• Visit the Emily Rose Doll Clothes website and take a look around. Leave a comment below telling us what your favorite item is – is it a piece of furniture for your dolls? How about an outfit or even one of the Madame Alexander dolls? You tell us!
• Get bonus entries by letting your friends know about our giveaway. Get one extra entry for each of the following, but come back and leave a second comment telling us where you shared it:
  • Post about it on your own blog, in a forum, tweet about it or share it with your friends on Facebook
  • Follow us on Twitter (we are @DollDiaries and @emilyrosedoll)
  • Like us on Facebook (we are DollDiaries on Facebook and Emily Rose on Facebook)
  • Subscribe to our YouTube channels (DollDiaries, EmilyRose, 4EVRAGZ)

Rules

• Leave your comment(s) no later than midnight December 5, 2011.
• Make sure your email address is right. We only use it to contact the winner and we will NEVER share it or publish it.
• If you are under 14, you need to get a parent’s permission to enter.
• We will be using the “And the winner is” plugin to select one (1) winner at random.

We LOVE seeing what our doll friends are up to and love it even more when they share creative ideas like the one Angie sent me last week. She took a computer desk (armoire) they no longer use and turned it into an American Girl Doll house.

Angie’s note to us:

My name is Angela Blake and I am the proud mother of a nine year old American Girl enthusiast.  Elizabeth received her Kit doll and bed last year for Christmas.  We were amazed by the quality they offered.  In fact, I was disappointed that we had waited so long.  I have always been fascinated with the world of dollhouses and miniatures and couldn’t have been more thrilled to share it with my daughter.   I am certain that it is the attention to detail in AG’s realistic accessories that has her playing for hours.  With Christmas money Elizabeth also purchased a cloth Our Generation dollhouse and Kitchen set for her new friend Kit.  Everything fit perfectly but it wouldn’t last.  We were heading to Baltimore in the summer and with all the luck the D.C. store was opening just the weekend before our trip.  Elizabeth had a year’s worth of report card money burning a whole in her pocket and we may have missed the grand opening but we had a blast picking out new items for her collection.  With holidays, Birthdays, and straight A’s it didn’t taken long to run out of space, which left me looking for another storage solution.

I searched and searched online looking for something bigger, sturdier, neater, and yet affordable.   I found your website and the amazing dollhouse built by the pilot.  I tried to follow the link but it ended in a dead end.  My wheels started turning.  I had already become accustomed to re-purposing household items like doilies and jewelry boxes for Kit sized fun so it was like a duh moment when I walked past the old armoire that had turned into an over-sized junk drawer.  I emptied it out and started to work.

First, I removed the backing.  Then, I started on the floor with some leftover flooring from a home improvement project.  Because Elizabeth already had enough furniture to fill it up I opted to keep the keyboard tray to provide additional room.

Next, I converted the original CD storage area into a closet with a couple of screws and a piece of PVC.  I left an opening for a door on the bottom floor because the entire backside which is now all wood doubles as a cheaper alternative to Kit’s tree house.

I replaced the above monitor storage shelf for additional storage but the girls thought it made a great bunk bed.   Lastly, I  tried to wallpaper and paint but nothing seems to stick to that slick black surface so we used wall decals and hung a few pictures.

Kit moved in and Rebecca visits often.  The kids love to play in the mansion but… Christmas is around the corner and I happen to know that storage is going to be an issue.  This remodel has given me the confidence to think bigger.  I have a master plan and would love to share it with you once it’s complete.  I hope that like the Pilot’s house I can give others some ideas.  Thank you so much for letting me share.

And more photos:

Kit’s  bedroom

A closer look in the dollhouse.

I love their doll’s kitchen!

The keyboard drawer in the kitchen pulls out to make space for the dining room table. Perfect!

And here is another look at the dollhouse Angie made for her daughter’s growing American Girl collection. What a great use of space and a neat way to store all your doll things and create a creative place to play!

As always, if you have doll storage solutions you want to share or any doll related photos you want us to feature, just email them to share@dolldiaries.com.

I have really been in the mood to sew lately, but I just have not had time! Between getting all three of my kids to their afterschool sports (yes, I have three kids – my oldest is a 15 year old boy, then my 13 & 9 year old girls), working on Doll Diaries and my other websites, and doing all the other things we Moms have to do, sewing just had to wait. I declared today Pajama day in our house and decided that everyone could sleep in as long as they wanted and we were not going anywhere – it was all part of my plot to make sure I could find time to sew today.

This afternoon I flipped through the patterns I had received from Liberty Jane Patterns and narrowed it down to two patterns – the Bubble Skirt and the Square Chair. I wanted to make the Bubble Skirt, but I need some stretchy fabric for the waistband and I didn’t feel like hunting down one of the girl’s camis that has seen better days to cut up, so I figured the Square Chair would be a fun alternative.

I picked out two coordinating fabrics from a set of “fat quarters” we had on hand and cut out the patterns. The instructions were clear and easy to follow and it wasn’t long before the doll’s new chair started to take shape! My daughter helped out by stuffing the chair’s base while I worked on the arm rest and then stuffed the arm rest while I hand stitched the base opening closed and tufted the cushion.

The chair turned out so cute!  What do you think?

Nicki was the first one of the dolls who got to test it out and she approves.

Here is another view but without the doll. I used two wooden buttons I found in my sewing box from years ago to create the tufted pillow look. I think the buttons were from my Grandmother’s sewing notions that I inherited somewhere along the way.

And here is the chair from one more angle. I really love how it turned out and would recommend this pattern to anyone who wants a quick project that is not too complicated.

Let’s file this one under things that other doll lines have that American Girl does not! We were walking through Target the other day and just had to visit the doll section (because we always do) when this adorable laundry set for 18″ dolls caught my eye.

Seriously, how cute is that?? The set includes Includes a washer, a dryer, a laundry shelf, clothes rack, ironing board, iron, 2 plastic bins, measuring cup, spray bottle, 6 hangers, 2 dirty laundry bins, 1 big basket, 2 small towels, 2 big towels, laundry detergent box, box of dryer sheets. It sells for $50. This would be such a fun piece if you were setting up an American Girl doll house or large play area for the dolls.

The photo above is from the Target web site but shows the whole set in better detail than my iPhone picture of the front of the box. Obviously it is all plastic and quite pink, but the set is so cute. I am seriously considering getting this set if it happens to go on sale any time soon.

Now if I could only teach Julie, Chrissa, Marisol and the rest of the dolls to do laundry for me! That would be awesome.

One thing Emily Rose Doll Clothes owner Lisa-Marie and I have in common is that we love efficiency! That is why when I saw the new furniture releases from Emily Rose Doll Clothes I just had to tell her how cool I thought the new Loft Bed with Storage was. American Girl dolls (and all the other 18″ dolls we have) are big and so is their furniture, but the Loft Bed combines style with function as it has 3 big bins for storage that fit right into the bed.

Lisa-Marie sent us one of the Loft Beds with Storage to review and I loved it so much I decided to use it for my very first video review! Watch my review then scroll down for more photos and details.

What a great bed!

The Loft Bed with Storage measures 24.25″ x 24″ x 11.5″ and is CPSIA safety tested and approved, and is perfect for 14-18 inch dolls (including 18 inch soft body dolls such as American Girl, Maplelea, BFC Ink, Our Generation, Gotz, Magic Attic, and more).

The Loft Bed with Storage comes unassembled and packed flat. It took me about 30 minutes to assemble the bed on my own – it would have been much easier and quicker to assemble if I would have had someone to hold the pieces.

Once the bed is set up, it makes a really nice piece for storage and play. The bins underneath slide out easily for storing doll clothes and pajamas, accessories or other doll items. The storage bins are what really make this bed! You can see from the picture of Chrissa and Emily that the bins are plenty big enough to store all sorts of doll goodies!

The canopy that comes with the bed is a soft purple material with silvery accents. The canopy can be left down or tied back and the bed really is big enough for two dolls to sleep side by side if you wanted.  It also has a detachable ladder in case your dolls want to climb in themselves.

This Loft Bed with Storage is one of those pieces your daughter will be able to use for years with her dolls and won’t ever go out of style. It is the perfect birthday or holiday gift due to its size, but at $99 it is a good value considering you are getting a piece that serves as a bed and doll storage.

Where to Buy:

The Loft Bed and Storage piece is available at Emily Rose Doll Clothes for $99.

Sonali is still in a cooking kind of mood – first she got to model the adorable American Girl crafts apron, but then we were at TJ Maxx over the weekend and found these precious little kitchen strainers for $2 and thought they would be perfect for the dolls’ kitchen! Now that we have it and I see it in scale with Sonali, I think it might be a better match for the larger 23″ My Twinn dolls, but our AG dolls aren’t picky – they are willing to share!

When I was a kid, we didn’t go out and buy furniture for our dolls, we crafted it from anything we could find around the house – a cereal box made a great bed, paper cups could be used as chairs, and the list goes on. These days you can find even more creative ways to make doll furniture from re-purposing baskets to building your own from scrap wood to all out works of art. Here are a few doll bed tutorials/plans we found that we think just might inspire you to make your own!

Let’s start with the EASY – this doll bed is made from a basket and a piece of wire garden trim. For the complete tutorial, check out Make this Quick and Easy Doll Bed from Doll Clothes Patterns.

Slightly more complex and requires grown up help, plans and instructions for this Farmhouse Bed can be found at Ana-White.com. Too cute!!

If you really want your American Girl dolls to live like royalty, check out this amazing Castle bed for dolls from Sawdust and Paper Scraps. All I can say is WOW and what a great Mommy this lucky girl has. Sandra really went all out from the detail in the steps to the realistic paint on the bed. For the how to visit Sawdust and Paper Scraps Castle Bed for Dolls post.

Have you crafted furniture for your dolls out of everyday materials? We’d love to hear about your creations or email photos of your finished projects to share@dolldiaries.com and we may feature them!