Lia's American Girl Birthday Party!

After Lia turned eight years old last year and we hosted her Beanie Boo birthday party, she immediately decided that she wanted an American Girl party for her ninth birthday.  Since this is hand's down my favorite of all of the toys that Lia loves, I jumped at the idea and twelve months later we pulled it off with flying colors!  After perusing the Internet, I came up with a bunch of ideas on how to decorate for an American Girl birthday party without breaking the bank and made some really cute things to for it.  I decorated in the colors of red, bright pink, and white with stars, polka dots, and stripes as accents.  We also used a bunch of the beautiful bags of all sizes from the American Girl store as decorations along with lots of balloons and AG dolls.  Overall, it turned out really cute and Lia loved every minute of it.  She had 18 of her friends from school, church, and the neighborhood come over today for coloring, crafting, games, gift opening, and cake and ice cream.  Lia was showered with an abundance of wonderful gifts and I think that everyone had a great time.  Here are some pictures of the festivities...

Lia standing outside our front door before the party began holding her newest AG doll, Lea Clark, that she bought with her own money back in November.  I tied a cluster of balloons to one of the large, AG gift bags I had gotten from the store and stuffed it with red, pink, and white tissue paper.  

I also made this adorable wreath that hung on the front door.  I tied a mini Isabelle Palmer doll (Girl of the Year 2014) to the ribbon and also mod podged a bunch of cut out pictures from several AG magazines to the large letter "L" that I attached below the bow.  

Besides placing another large, AG gift bag in the entry way, I decorated our foyer table with various AG dolls and accessories.

Here is a close-up of the foyer table complete with a Samantha and Caroline doll, some furniture, pets, and pretty boxes.

This was one of my favorite decorations for the entire party that I had seen online several months ago.  I took a picture of Lia's face, printed it out as an 8x10 picture, and then taped it to the inside of her Lea Clark doll box so it looks like she is the doll inside.  Isn't she such a pretty girl?!

Although you can't see it in this picture, the two balloon clusters that frame the fireplace were attached to medium size AG gift bags.  I then made the birthday banner with vinyl letters that my friend cut out for me.  We completed the mantle with four AG dolls--three of which were borrowed from Lia's good friend, Bella.

The massive table all set and ready to go before the party started with star and polka dot balloons tied to the chairs.  I also made tissues poms to hang from the ceiling and the windows and hung red, foil stars from the ceiling, too.  It seriously reminded me of the bistro in the AG store with all of the same bright colors.

The tablescape was my other favorite decoration for the party.  I found pink and white striped wrapping paper to lay down the center of the table on top of red table cloths.  I made large pieces of confetti out of scrapbook paper and also found shiny, red, tea candles at the Dollar Store.  I filled small AG store bags with the same three colors of tissue paper and laid them down the center of the table.  I alternated the gift bags with cake stands holding red velvet cupcakes with white frosting with red sprinkles on top.  It seriously looked so cute.

Every girl got to drink out of a mason jar with a paper AG doll taped to it.  This was another idea I saw online months ago and quickly realized that we already had everything we needed except for the cupcake liners that were stretched across the mouth of the mason jars.  Lia even had the exact same paper dolls from our trip to Chicago several years ago.  The gift favor to the left of each mason jar was a miniature sized AG doll bag with an AG doll sticker and doll-sized tiara inside.  

A close-up of one of the mason jars once the red punch had been poured.  The color of the drink really made the doll stand out!

When the girls first started arriving at two o'clock, we had everyone choose an AG doll coloring picture to color.  Here is the entire gang coloring their pictures.

Lia coloring with Bella and Isabel, two friends from church.

After the girls finished coloring, we had them complete the one craft activity of the party which was making a tutu for their AG doll to wear.  My mom helped me sew 20 little elastic bands for the tutus and cut out 320 strips of tulle for this craft.  Although it took a few hours to get ready, it sure turned out cute.  Here is Lia's look-alike doll, Marabella, wearing the sample tutu we used as an example for the girls to copy at the party.

The girls working on making their doll tutus.

Another shot of the girls tieing the tulle strips to their elastic bands.

Alyssa, Bella, Lia, and Eve with their tutus in hand.

After the craft was finished, we had the girls play two different games.  The first one was "Don't Eat My American Girl Doll" which was a game that Lia requested we play after playing it at her friend, Alyssa's, birthday party.  Ron and I broke the girls up into two smaller groups which we then supervised while playing this loud and rather hilarious game.

Lia and some of her friends concentrating on one of the girls as she eats a piece of candy at a time off of the game board.

The second game we had them play was an AG doll trivia Bingo game.  Instead of just calling out doll names for the girls to put markers on their Bingo boards, I wrote 60 trivia questions that Ron read one at a time.  Every time the girls had a doll's name on their board that was an answer to one of these questions, they could put a marker down to try to get a Bingo.  Here is the group hard a work filling up their game boards.

Ron reading the trivia questions to the girls.

After the girls played three rounds of Bingo, we transitioned to the gift opening.  As always, the friend who gave Lia the gift she is opening gets to come up and sit next to her.  Here she is sitting next to her good friend, Alyssa, who lives up the hill and goes to church with us.  She gave Lia the AG mini doll, Maryellen, which Lia (and I) were super excited about!

Lia's friend, Eva, made the most adorable, homemade birthday card that seriously must have taken a few hours to make as all of the shapes in this card were cut out by hand.  Here is Lia showing off the card after opening it.

Lia reading the card from Bella--her other good friend from church that lives in our neighborhood.

Lia opening up her gift from Mollie and Gabs--the two sisters who I babysit every morning before school and who also live up the hill from us.

We managed to take a big, group shot after gift opening was complete before we moved into the kitchen.  Every girl remembered to bring a doll to the party except for one...so it was quite the impressive site when they all stood together with their dolls wearing their new tutus!

The girls were so excited to move into the kitchen and sit at the pretty table that I actually felt bad that they didn't get to spend more time there before the parents started to arrive.  I wish I had a camera with a wide enough lens to capture how awesome it looked to have 19 girls sitting around this long table.  We started off by singing "Happy Birthday" to Lia...

before she blew out her nine candles!

The girls then dined on red velvet cupcakes, ice cream, and fruit punch until the parents came to pick them up.  It was such a fun way to spend the day celebrating our own American Girl who we love and adore so much!

 Happy Birthday, Lia!