Did I ever have fun planning this party!!! It all began when I discovered this cute hot choc. doll set on Zulily. If you haven’t yet discovered Zulily, you may want to check it out. So anyway, I found this adorable set along with some very cute Valentine’s Day themed outfits and decided I wanted to host a party for my daughter, Kyla and her cousins. Well one thing led to another and this was the end result!

You are about to be bombarded with an overload of pictures. Sorry, not sorry! I have a passion for parties, but usually am lacking the time needed to put stuff together. Because this is kind of my “off” season for photography, I had a few days to put this together and set up. I seriously think I could almost start a party rental business with all the stuff I have in storage!

I invited all the girl cousins that had American Girl dolls, so Kyla was joined by Kylie, Brooklyn, & Colette. This greeted them upon arrival.

Each girl had a gift bag at their doll’s seat. I had the idea to somehow have their dolls at the table with them, and thought attachable seats might be just the thing! So I drew up a pattern of sorts and put the idea to Brandon. He LOVES working with wood and immediately jumped in, willing to make them. So Rodger and Brandon headed off to Lowes for materials, and through a bit of trial and error (the first sample was not exactly what I envisioned!) came up with this cute little doll seat, just right for attaching to the table. The girls were thrilled with the seats and of course got to keep them as well!

Table decor. So fun to pull it all together.

The first thing we did was open the gifts…

They each received an adorable owl nightie for their doll, as well as a complete outfit… white shirt with a red heart, red tulle skirt, sparkly leggings, and snazzy gray fur boots. All were wonderful finds on Zulily! It was then time to dress their dolls for the party!

I placed note cards at each of the table settings and for the first activity, I had them write “love notes” to each other. Thought it’d be fun for them to look back when they’re older and see what they wrote about to their cousins!

After finishing their notes, it was time to decorate sugar cookies . I found a delicious recipe from Pinterest. Figured it would be easier and less messy to have the cookies already baked. Kyla helped me cut them out. Each girl got 1 very large heart to decorate and then there were multiple other sizes for them to work on as well.

After cleaning up the decorating mess, it was time for lunch. And it was slightly delayed since the girls were having such fun with the cookies!

While Kyla, Kylie, Colette, & Brooklyn played with their dolls, Amanda, Jen, Heather, Kiara and I enjoyed snacking on all the goodies and visiting. It was such a pleasant way to pass an afternoon! Rodger & Brandon were attending our church’s Men’s Retreat in Michigan for the weekend, so us girls had the house to ourselves. We decided it’d be fun to have a Valentine’s party for the girl cousins each year, so we shall see if this becomes a new tradition! Minus the American Girl theme though. I was just so delighted to find those cute sets for this year. The hot chocolate doll set included both red & pink plates, spoons, & mugs, as well as 2 strawberries, 2 sugar cookies & 2 cake pops. I left the pink stuff in the boxes for them. And the hot chocolate was removable so it turned into a plain mug as well. We just didn’t have this kind of thing when I grew up!

So, so fun! And now I’m spending the week eating WAY too many sugary party leftovers! Oh dear.

– Susie