Literary Inspirations - BSC - Kristy's Great Idea - Stacey

"Stacy had on a pink sweatshirt with sequins and a large purple parrot on the front; short, tight-fitting jeans with zippers up the outsides of the legs; and pink plastic shoes."

Some things are so 80s that they should just be left there. Like a pink sweatshirt with sequins and purple parrots. And Stacey's supposed to be the grown up, boy crazy one.  Also, pink plastic shoes. Like jelly shoes? Because crocs weren't around back then and I'm blanking on what else that could mean.

Stacey was always way above me in coolness factors as a kid. I never wanted to be her because I couldn't identify with her, although I always thought she had some of the best clothes (after Claudia of course). However, I liked that she had diabetes (as weird as that sounds) because my aunt has it and it was something I could understand as a child. The boy crazy thing, not so much. I never could understand how Kristy's brother Sam, a freshman, was so into a seventh grader. But hey, Stacey was grown up. I'm pretty sure I was still playing with rocks in seventh grade.

Literary Inspirations - BSC - Kristy's Great Idea - Mary Anne

"I glanced at Mary Anne. She and I were still in our school clothes....Mary Anne was wearing a skirt and saddle shoes. Mary Anne's hair was, of course, in braids."

Poor Mary Anne. Her crazy dad made her keep her hair in braids and wear little kid clothes because he had issues after his wife/her mother died. For the first couple of books Mary Anne gets the short end of the stick when it comes to fashion descriptions. In fact, I think they mostly gloss over her and her pleated skirts and saddle shoes. I live for the day where I get to that book where she chops her hair and goes to the mall and tries on all the clothes that "new Mary Anne" would look great in. (Also, how do I remember that?!?! I haven't read that book since 4th grade - I don't even know which one that is!) But for now, it's simple shirts, skirts, and braids. Hang in there girl!

Literary Inspirations - BSC Kristy's Great Idea - Claudia

"Claudia answered it again, this time wearing a baggy yellow-and-black-checkered shirt, black pants, red jazz shoes, and a bracelet that looked like it was made from a telephone cord. Her earrings were dangling jointed skeletons that jumped around when she moved."

On to the fun outfits! We covered Kristy first last week in honor of her being president of the BSC, but Claudia is vp, so she's up next. As I said last time, Claudia is my favorite for a variety of reasons - mainly her sense of style and her affinity for junk food. My kind of girl. For some reason though, this outfit seems tame. I seem to remember really insane combos like mismatched shoes on purpose and stuff like paper mache snakes braided into her hair. Or something like that. Maybe in the next book...

Literary Inspirations - BSC Kristy's Great Idea - Kristy

"I glanced at Mary Anne. She and I were still in our school clothes. I was wearing jeans and sneakers......and I was wearing a blue hair band."


And we're back with another nostalgic run of the Literary Inspiration series. I had so much fun doing the American Girl books a few years ago that I decided to turn to another one of my favorite childhood series - The Baby-Sitters Club books!

Did you love these as much as I did? They were apparently very polarizing books in the 3rd and 4th grade, and you either loved them and pretended to be the characters or hated them. Clearly, I loved them. It was my dream to be Claudia because she had the best outfits, was super artistic, had her own phone in her room, and had junk food hidden everywhere. The fact that I wasn't asian or the least bit artistic was apparently not an issue, and I was determined to be just like her. Only maybe with better grades.

One of the best parts of the books were the outfit descriptions. All the main characters got one, and if you were really lucky, sometimes there would be two or three outfits for one of the girls. Usually it was Claudia or Stacy, which is fine because they always had the best outfits anyway. And even though I want to start out with one of their outfits, I'm going to start at the beginning with book #1 - Kristy's Great Idea, and the founder herself, Kristy Thomas. Right now the plan is to do a set for each girl as described in the first book and then move on to the next book. I know there are like 200 of these things, so I have no idea how long this will last (or how many of these books I can find at the library).  But we'll try for the first 4/5 books and then see where we're at.

Guest Posting over at Library Educated

Hey, remember when I used to do Literary Inspirations? Yeah I miss those too. But my fantastic friend and book diva, Wesley over at Library Educated, asked me to guest post over on her blog today and we're talking about Brave New World.

We talk about caste systems, indoctrination, and how to make an all green outfit not look like a terrible St. Patrick's Day mistake. And make sure you check out Wesley's blog for tons of great book reviews and more intelligent posts than you get here.

Modern American Girl - Changes for Molly

Well, sadly we've come to the end of our American Girl journey. I've had such a blast doing these, and I hope you've enjoyed them! I'll have to figure out what to do next - any suggestions are welcome!

Molly, Molly, Molly, you tried so hard to be what you thought was "pretty" that you made yourself sick and missed the whole dance. But it all turned out in the end because you got to be the first person to see your dad when he came home from the war. As for this set, I was thinking about doing a fun raincoat, but I love this yellow blazer, so we're going for a slightly different interpretation. Red wellies are a must, as is a fun umbrella!

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Modern American Girl - Molly Saves the Day

Now, for my favorite book in the entire American Girl Series. Molly's camp was seriously the coolest thing ever. They played capture the flag on islands! People decided to let a bunch of 9 and 10 year old girls paddle canoes around to an island, throw bugs on each other, sit in poison ivy, and generally have the best summer ever, and I wanted in on that! I loved summer camp as a kid, and Lindsay and I did rock the canoe race, but it was nothing like this. This was the camp of dreams. So this is what I would wear to go camping and win the most epic game of capture the flag ever, complete with a D-day re-enactment.

Also, how much more American can the cover of this book possibly get?

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Modern American Girl - Happy Birthday Molly

Ok, cute dresses, chocolate cake, birthday crowns, British friends, and puppies. This is the best birthday ever!

In this book, Molly's birthday is coming up and she wants her dream party (which is basically chocolate cake and princess dresses because she's 10 and that's exactly what I wanted when I was that age) but suddenly all her plans are thrown into disarray when an English girls comes to stay with them and wants terrible things like tea and weirdo British food for the birthday party.  So here's where Molly and I differ, because personally I think that would be AWESOME. But maybe I'm biased considering I regard England as my second home. Still, Molly - you crazy. Also, I miss York.

Also also - no matter what decade you're in, birthday crown are a must!

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Modern American Girl - Molly's Surprise

It seems strange to be talking about Christmas in August, but this was another Molly book that I loved. There was intrigue and hiding presents! And snow! And a Christmas morning broadcast from her dad who was in the military overseas! Even when I was younger I thought it would be so cool to be sitting there opening presents on Christmas morning and then holy cats! Your dad is on the radio! That's like being famous back then.  And another big deal for 8 year old me - THEY GOT TO HOLD REAL CANDLES IN CHURCH!  At that point in my life I had never experienced a candlelight service, so they fact that they just apparently handed out fire at Molly's church made me really jealous.

In other news, it was really difficult to find a green velvet dress that wasn't a renaissance costume. Which is awesome, just not what I was going for. So black velvet it is. With black tights and Mary Janes, because I don't know who Molly thinks she's fooling - she's from the midwest and it's December. There's no way she's actually running around bare legged.

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Modern American Girl - Molly Learns A Lesson

You know those random facts or quotes you read in books when you were younger that you still remember? This book has one of those for me. To this day, without even thinking about it, I can tell you that eight multiplied by seven is fifty six because Molly got it wrong.  I used to desperately hope that some day in grade school math class the teacher would have a quiz and ask what 8 x 7 was, and I would instantly yell out "56!" blowing everyone away and making them think I was an undiscovered math prodigy.  Alas, that didn't happen.

I promise I'll stop using plaid for Molly. I ended up using it last time because I couldn't find any good argyle that I liked. But I think it's different enough here. I also really like that dress.

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Modern American Girl - Meet Molly

We're already at the end! I can't believe there's only 5 more Modern American Girl sets to go. I'll have to think of what to do next. I'm thinking either Boxcar Children or Chronicles of Narnia - 1 set for each character. But I'm open to options and requests!

Ah Molly. I had mixed feelings about her as a kid. I loved her stories and her as a character, but she didn't have the pretty dresses and hair like the other dolls.  It's funny, I actually loved her stories more as I grew older and became more of a World War II buff. In fact, I happily re-read these all in college when I took a WWII history class.

 I decided to make Molly a hipster. I don't know why, it just sort of happened and I kind of love the idea. An American 40s hipster. Who wears stars and stripes (ok so that was really because the Olympics are starting tomorrow, but hey it works). Or maybe she's a Captain America fan girl. I was thinking about doing a hula costume since in this book they dress up for Halloween before her brother Ricky soaks their costumes with a hose and ignites a whole sibling rivalry ending with a shower of underwear, but I decided against it. Sigh, these books are great.

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Modern American Girl - Changes for Samantha

How awesome is this coat? Unfortunately it's Burberry, so it's millions and millions of dollars. Or something like that - either way, this lady isn't buying it anytime soon so instead I'll have to drool over it in this set.

In the last of the Samantha books, she gets to be really awesome and sneak Nelly and her sisters out of an orphanage and into her uncle's house. I thought the whole thing was pretty cool - hiding people in upstairs bedroom, sneaking out of a scary orphanage under the eye of the mean headmistress lady, AND buying real roasted chestnuts from a street vendor. This was huge. I mean, chestnuts roasting on an open fire? But in real life? How awesome is that!? Anyway, now that cloaks/capes/caplets are back in, I may try to make a version of this to wear around and be awesome.

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Modern American Girl - Samantha Saves the Day

This post had pretty good timing this week with the 4th of July being yesterday, wouldn't you say? True, this isn't exactly patriotic (where's Molly when you need her?) but it's still nautical themed, so uh close enough right?

In this book, Samantha gets to be pretty awesome and actually saves someone's life. I never exactly understood why she wore a white long sleeved dress to climb around an island in, but times were different back then. I thought this book was so cool - they went to a hidden island and explored, but then almost died in a boat accident exactly where her parents had died. I don't think I fully realized that until I was a bit older but wow, how's that for scary? But they made it through and saved the day, so it was all ok.

On a happier note, I found this dress and thought it was too perfect to pass up for this set. I still don't think I'd choose a white dress if I was going to be in a rowboat and exploring, but let's just say she's in the Hamptons and was wearing her swimsuit and just threw this on as a coverup. That's believable, right?

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Modern American Girl - Happy Birthday Samantha

I feel like I keep saying this, but here is another one of my absolute favorite American Girl books. It was full of girly goodness. Garden birthday parties with lemonade, ice cream and petit fours, real New York ice cream parlors, and a cute puppy - it's no wonder I loved it! Plus you found out just how awesome Cornelia was by being a leader of the local suffragist movement.

For this set, we're trying out the peplum trend. This outfit ended up being kind of a mix between garden party casual and New York chic. I know the rosette doesn't exactly match, but it was specifically mentioned in the story so I thought I'd add one. Also, puppies.

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Modern American Girl - Samantha's Surprise

We missed a few weeks of these due to all the wedding madness, but now we're back with another one of my favorite books. I still have dreams of celebrating a Victorian Christmas and doing the stuff mentioned in this book. Building a gingerbread house? Making cool presents for people? Decorating the house with hand made decorations and the tree with real candles? I think there was sleigh riding and caroling involved? Sign me up! I also liked how Sam was all "Ew, I hate Cornelia because she's ruining my Christmas" and then Cornelia turns out to be pretty awesome and buys her the doll that she was secretly hoping for.

This outfit set is a bit simpler than other ones, but I like the details on the dress and think it holds its own well enough. We're also going with some deco inspired jewelry even though technically that wasn't around for another 15-20 years. Eh, on the other hand, this is today and we can mix eras if we like.

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Modern American Girl - Samantha Learns a Lesson

Ok,  I've rewritten this post 4 times today, and it just refuses to save or post. So let's try this one more time, shall we? I remember 3 things that stood out in this book as a kid. 1. If I would have lived back then I might have worked in a factory and then got my hair stuck in a machine and died. 2. She had some mad public speaking skills for a 9 year old. But then again, she went to some uppity all girls fancy pants school. Though now that I think about it, most schools in those days were probably uppity all girls or all boys schools. 3. SHE PASSED NOTES IN SCHOOL THROUGH A SCROLL IN HER DESK!! This was by far the coolest thing ever.

I also really like how she made everyone think that she was going to talk about progress and how great factories were, and instead was all "Factories suck! Down with the industrial revolution! Bring back Romanticism! Give me Coleridge, or give me death!!!"  Or you know, something like that. I like to think she grew up, joined the suffrage movement, went to college, and became an English Literature major with an emphasis in Romantic poetry or something.  But in the meantime, she's all class with a fascinator because they are awesome. 

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Modern American Girl - Meet Samantha

So now we're on to Samantha. She was the very first doll I had, and I loved her story. She was an orphan who lived with her super rich grandmother (who she called Rosemary for some reason) and was trying to be raised as a lady but she just wanted to have fun. My kind of girl. I was originally going to have her as a super rich New York upper east ender, ala Gossip Girl, but then I realized that I've only ever seen like 2 episodes of Gossip Girl so that was going to be difficult. But then I decided I was going to base her on Kate Middleton, because Rosemary was very strict and old fashioned and that kind of reminded me of the Queen (I guess? Somehow?). And everything just fell into place after that. So Sam is going to be refined and proper for the moment, but we may get a little rebellious later on. Also, do you know how hard it is to find a plaid dress like the one she's wearing that doesn't look ridiculous? So I just avoided the plaid completely. We'll have plenty of that with Molly - I've already decided to make her a hipster.

Modern American Girl - Changes for Addy

And so we finish up with Addy. I love this green coat. If you're going to go with a pea coat, you might as well pick a fun color, right? I feel like this is a good outfit for walking around the city. In the last of the Addy books, she is finally reunited with the rest of her family. It's bittersweet, however, since her elderly uncle had died on the way to Philadelphia and her aunt passes soon after they find each other.

The more I look at this outfit, the more I like it. Aside from the coat, I'm also really liking the blue bag and blouse. But since it's almost summer, we'll file this look away for a few months!

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Modern American Girl - Addy Saves the Day

Just call her Addy Walker, American crime fighting hero!

I really only have two things to say about this look/book. 1. Addy gets to fight crime and help save the world! Or at lease her church fair. She not only saves the day by chasing after the bad guy (or girl in this case) who stole their money, but she also is reunited with her brother in this book, meaning only her sister Esther and her aunt and uncle are still missing.   2. This outfit was based almost exactly on an outfit Cassie wore one time, which I obsessed about for weeks. Her shoes had little cherries on them, but I couldn't find ones that looked right. Still, Addy's looking pretty fabulous here with her straw hat and whistle accessories. Not that you'd be doing much running in these shoes - book Addy was much more sensible and wore flats. That's ok though, I still like the red pumps!

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Modern American Girl - Happy Birthday Addy

I'll be honest, I don't remember much of this book. I keep forgetting to pick up the series from my parents' house, so I'm going off 8 year old Sarah's memory (which is terrible). I remember that Addy's dad was with them at this point because he couldn't find work, and later made ice cream - I don't think the two were connected though. I also remember she learned double dutch, thanks to some help from an elderly woman (who google has told me is named M'dear) who was blind and taught Addy to listen to the sound of the ropes. I remember trying the same thing many times after reading that and still failing miserably double dutch. Though who are we kidding, Addy ain't playing double dutch in those shoes! And if you're wondering about the feathers, M'dear gave Addy some canary feathers for her hair at the end of the book as a birthday present. I thought that might be a little weird today, wearing your pet's feathers on your head and all, so we went with some fun earrings instead.

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