Natural Hair Styling for your Child's American Girl Doll: Yarn Extensions

My daughter has been wanting an American Girl doll for the entire year. It was the only thing she asked for for Christmas. She only gets one present, so she made it easy for me this year. Or so I thought. I had been tossing around the idea of adding an American Girl hairstyle feature on the blog since she first mentioned she wanted one. I've styled doll's hair before, so I knew what I was going to be getting myself into. Still, having ordered the doll a month in advance and styling a bit every day, I still found myself up until the wee hours of Christmas morning finishing this look. I think it was somewhere around 3:30am when I finally finished the extensions. I didn't style the hair until later that day, after I finished my daughter's hair.

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Papercrafting Christmas Ornaments for Gifts or Decor #Crafts #Spellbinders

We normally like to give out gift cards to special people who help my daughter throughout the year, but this year we decided to make some homemade ornaments to go along with them. We made them for my daughter's first grade teacher, the principal at the school, and her piano teacher. These are a fun idea if you're looking for to spruce up the regular gift card idea, or if you're looking for a fun craft to keep the kids busy over winter break.

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DIY Hello Kitty Snowflake Window Clings #Crafts #HelloKitty

My daughter really wanted to share a little craft that we've been working on as we're decorating for Christmas. As most of you know, my daughter is a huge Hello Kitty fan, so we've taken this age-old technique of making homemade snowflake window clings and stepped it up a notch by adding Hello Kitty, herself, to a few of the snowflakes!

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Celebrating 6 Years with a DIY Rainbow-Themed Birthday Party

Another birthday party come and gone. Whew! Having taken my daughter to Disneyland for her birthday last year I had completely forgotten how hard it was to throw together a birthday party between Thanksgiving and Christmas. However, there's nothing like having a kid who's old enough to help out, especially during Thanksgiving break. There were no, "Mama, I'm SO bored," during the holiday because we managed to keep ourselves pretty busy putting together all of the homemade items for her birthday party that week. When the day of her party actually arrived, I only needed to assemble her push-up cake pops and decorate. Yay for pre-planning!

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Triangle-Part Yarn Extensions Tutorial and Style Options #NaturalHair #Hairstyle

If ever there was a hairstyle that incorporates a ton of other stuff we've already blogged about, this is it. Seriously, I think I've covered quite a few different techniques in this one, so if you're interested challenging your skills and know-how, this will likely do it. We have yarn twist extensions, flat rope twists, piggyback rope twists, and triangle parts, not to mention knowing how to cornrow (for the style shown above). Yep. I'm super happy with style and it's going to offer us all sorts of flexibility for the next month, especially when it comes to styling for Christmas. If you have questions about why and/or how we use yarn, or need any additional information on yarn extensions (including the pros and cons of doing them), we've got a slew of posts covering them.

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DIY Rainbow Birthday Party Invitations #Crafts

It's that time of year again! Nope, I'm not talking about the holidays, I'm talking about my daughter's birthday. She's turning 6 this year and I have to admit I'm super excited about that, in large part because that means she's old enough to really pitch-in when it comes to pulling her birthday party together. This year (like her previous birthdays) she chose a theme based on her Halloween costume. So, after having a snow princess party for her 3rd birthday, and a Hello Kitty birthday party for her 4th birthday, she's doing a rainbow party this year. (She went to Disneyland for the first time on her 5th birthday, so we didn't have a party that year.) We're still pulling the rest of the homemade decorations together this week, but the invitations have been completed and we posted instructions below.

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