thegroovydolls

[thegroovydolls]

Lovely Raquel 🩷🤍

[thegroovydolls]

Josefina couldn’t help feeling excited because she heard music. She quickened her steps. The music was faint but clear, floating up from the village. It seemed to urge them, Come along! Come along! Soon they were all walking so fast they were practically dancing. The sound of the music mixed in the air with the scent of burning piñón wood. 

[thegroovydolls]

Just a little peek into the packing peanuts… 🥰🥰

[thegroovydolls]

Btw CYO has all the outfits and and hair styles available for the Kaya face mold now

[thegroovydolls]

Cute displays from the DC Store + Julie

[thegroovydolls]

My collection has officially doubled! It’s just been Julie and Ivy for awhile so looking over at my shelf and seeing four dolls is kind of crazy for me.

I found a tinsel haired Kirsten for a great price and got her as a birthday present for myself. I’ve been wanting a Pleasant Company doll forever and she’s so sweet!! She was in amazing condition for the price as well, I can’t believe how well taken care of she was.

The other new arrival is Melody! She was a surprise birthday gift from my parents. We were all in DC last week and stopped in the AG store (which was amazing! It was my first time going). She was such a surprise and means so much to me, both because I’m happy my parents support my doll hobby and because they’re the reason I love Motown music so much. My parents both grew up listening to Motown records and played their favorites for me constantly when I was a kid.

Also my mom loved walking around the AG Store. Her favorites were Claudie and Evette ❤️

[thegroovydolls]

I think this is so neat and to all my trans followers - if you ever need help remembering just how valid and real you are, please look at this!

Happy Trans Day of Visibility to you all, trans people have always existed and will always exist, you're valid and loved and completely accepted with me and I support and love you to the moon and back and beyond.

[thegroovydolls]

Happy Birthday, Addy!

The 9th of April is a special day for Addy. On the day the war finally ends, she decides that it’s finally just the right time to celebrate her birthday. 

Addy doesn’t know exactly what day she was born. “I was born in the spring. My momma know that much,” she says to her new friend, M’dear. She listens closely when M’dear suggests that Addy choose a special day, a near-perfect day, to be her birthday. 

April 9th certainly is special, but it isn’t a perfect day. M’dear says, “I’ve told you I’ve been around a long time, and I never saw such a thing as a perfect day.” If it were perfect, Addy admits to herself, then her brother Sam and sister Esther would be by her side, celebrating with her. But she knows it’s the closest thing to perfect that she’ll ever see, at least until her family is reunited.

Addy carries this banner and lantern into the streets to celebrate the end of the war. Now that it’s over, Addy has hope of reuniting with the rest of her family. She waves her banner high for everyone to see.

I made Addy’s banner for her, based on the one from her retired collection. I cut a piece of canvas and hemmed it, then sewed a sleeve for the dowel. I used a fine-tipped Sharpie pen to write the text, and used a paper stencil of the heart to make sure that the stars were lined up cleanly. I went on to eBay to look at auctions of the original banner and get an up-close look at it, to make sure I got all the letters, numbers, and stars exactly right.

This banner is also seen on the front of her book, and in the interior vignette illustrations.

For her lantern. I painted a piece of paper, folded the paper in half, cut slits on the fold, and then unfolded it and glued the edges together. I placed another paper cylinder inside, then made a strap by which it could hang from the dowel.

After everyone finishes celebrating in the streets, all the residents of the boarding house come inside to eat cherry pie and ice cream. Even Sunny comes to the table to sing hello! Mrs. Golden pulls two cherry pies from the pie cabinet, and Poppa serves vanilla ice cream to everyone. A few weeks earlier, he found an old, damaged ice cream freezer and fixed it up just in time for this celebration. 

I made Addy’s ice cream freezer with a few very simple materials; you can see how I did it here. You can read how I made Sunny and his cage here.

(If you’re wondering why there’s one slice and a whole pie, it’s because Mrs. Golden made two pies. Addy’s slice is what’s left over from the first one!)

I made the cherry pie by rolling out a crust made of baking soda clay, and laying it in this mini aluminum pie tin. The top crust is also clay. The filling is red seed beads mixed with red paint and some cornstarch to give it thickness and to stick together. 

The slice of pie is painted clay. The scoop of ice cream is a ball of clay that I poured white paint on and let harden. Then I flecked it with black paint and placed it onto the slice. The pie server is a piece of aluminum pie tin that I cut into the shape and glued onto a piece of wooden dowel. 

After everyone is finished eating, M’dear has a gift waiting at the table for Addy.  

It’s a painted tin with something special inside.

This is a small mint tin that I painted. I found a listing for the original tin on eBay for an up-close look at the design, and replicated it as best as I could. I used acrylic paints and a tiny brush, then varnished the whole thing.

There’s a note inside. 

Underneath the note is a whole heap of benne candy, which M’dear always shares with Addy when Addy does her homework in M’dear’s room. Benne candy is a sweet brittle, made with hardened sugar and sesame seeds. 

I made these from clay that I rolled thin with a rolling pin, let dry, and then cracked into small pieces. For the seeds, I used the tip of a pin dipped in white paint and held it at an angle to make a seed shape. 

M’dear has one final gift for Addy: two of Sunny’s feathers tied with a white ribbon, which Addy tucks into her snood. “Let these remind you to always let your spirit sing out,” M’dear says to her. 

“I will,” Addy promises. “I will.”

[thegroovydolls]

Happy birthday, Addy!

Addy is joined in her birthday celebration by her best friend Sarah, her canary friend Sunny, and her little sister Esther, who wouldn’t have been present at her tenth birthday party but would certainly be there for her 11th birthday!

[thegroovydolls]

I would pay good money for a continuation of the American Girl books where Kirsten, Felicity, Kit, etc. are grown up and navigating their time in history as adults.

[thegroovydolls]

Happy birthday, Addy! 💕🎂🎉

[thegroovydolls]

This is my favorite American Girl illustration.

It communicates so much about Kirsten’s personality. She’s totally absorbed in her inner world, focused on her doll and the prospect of leaving her. She’s sad, she’s focused, she’s making the moment count. She holds her doll gently but firmly and addresses her like a real person. To her, leaving Sari is as serious as leaving behind a family member.

It’s just that that conveys the essential mission of Pleasant Company and American Girl. This portrays play as something far from trivial, rather as a part of childhood that is essential, precious, and eternal. This illustration treats girls and their dolls with the seriousness they are owed, and it says to us; dolls are real, dolls are family, dolls are loved.

[thegroovydolls]

Julie and I got dressed up for Easter yesterday and made a Watergate cake! My family doesn’t have many holiday traditions, but it was fun visiting with my extended family then going over to my parents house to bake.

A Watergate cake is a boxed white cake with pecans, coconut, pistachio pudding, and lemon lime soda. As the story goes, it was originally published in the late 60s as a simple recipe for pistachio cake, but soon after the Watergate scandal was republished as a Watergate cake since it was “covered up [with icing] and full of nuts!” The name stuck and made the cake even more popular. I thought it was delicious and the pistachio pudding took my mom right back to her childhood. She also swears that the infamous 7Up Jell-O salad is a hidden gem, so that’s another 60s/70s dessert I may have to try out soon.

Here’s a piece of the finished product! I hope everyone is enjoying the beginning of spring 🌼

[thegroovydolls]

Week of Pesach, 1915

Rebecca and Ana are snacking on some matzah, courtesy of a free printable from Lee and Pearl! It's intended as an iron-on transfer, but I don't know where my materials for that are so I printed the image and glued it to some felt.

[thegroovydolls]

julie at the art museum

[thegroovydolls]

Happy birthday to Addy Walker!!! Here on this blog we stan Queen Addy.

[thegroovydolls]

Happy Black History Month! Introducing,

Tamany Greene

Tamany (she/they) is a 10 year old nonbinary girl living in Pittsburgh in 1989, with her parents and older sister. Tamany is Autistic and otherwise physically disabled due to being born prematurely with heart defects, and uses a walker.

Tamany is an imaginative girl who loves fantasy movies, her favorites being The Neverending Story, Labyrinth, and The Dark Crystal. Fantasy gives her a place to escape from the ableism she faces, and the general medicalization of her life- in fantasy worlds anything can happen, and she can do anything. She isn't stared at and whispered about by strangers in the street, isn't constantly being poked at in doctor's offices and physical therapies, she can be whoever she wants and be loved, be a hero.

[image description: Tamany is outside in front of snow and cedar trees. Tamany is a Black doll with brown eyes and long dark textured hair, with rose gold glasses. She is wearing a navy blue hat with a pink flower, and a yellow, purple, pink and turquoise fleece jacket over a red American Girl shirt, and black pants. ]