Maggie's Memos: A 2 Year Celebration...or How I Ended Up in This Stupid Frilly Dress Again...Part 2

All too soon, Thursday arrived.  There I was, standing in a crowded doll room with 7 other dolls, stuffed into an itchy plaid dress with a skirt wide enough for a human.  Well...almost. :}

At least I didn't have the undignified addition of glitter (aside from my ridiculously sparkly red shoes).  I'd come close to being forced into the sparkly Belle dress.  Which.would.have.been.horrendous.  Thankfully, I was able to unearth this plaid dress that the Hathaway sisters normally share and was also able to convince everyone that it was fancy enough for the dress-up party. 

Everyone had come right on time.  Mama had moved in just enough furniture, so there was plenty of room for all of us.  Tess had taken care of refreshments.  Soda, cupcakes, and ice cream were available for all of our guests.  (Hey, don't knock it, okay?  Health food is not usually a high priority for dolls.  And come on, if you didn't have to count calories or worry about body fat, would you really opt for that salad over the cheeseburger?)

Rachel had the misfortune of wearing the shiny blue dress that I'm usually stuck with.  Amazingly, she didn't seem to mind it.  Her sister Jenna looked like something out of one of Tess's Jane Austen books.

Emma, of course, was dressed in her Emma Woodhouse dress.  Hailey was wearing the newish white colonial dress that looked hot and uncomfortable (to me, at least).  Charlie had decided on the green dress with golden swirls, but had insisted on wearing her cowgirl boots, as usual. ;)

Hayden had also selected a Regency dress.  Honestly, it was a little scary being in the same room with that many Jane Austen dresses.  I was worried I'd gotten sucked into the pages of one of Tess or Emma's books!

Tess caught my eye and waved to me from the spot where she was serving refreshments.  I waved back.  I'm sure you won't be surprised by the fact that she had also selected "Regency attire", as she loves to call it. :{  I have to admit, that feather makes me smirk every time I see her wear it.  There are some things I will never understand, Regency fashion being one of them.

Tess came over and joined me.  "I think everyone's had something to eat now," she informed me, looking over at our guests.  "They all seem to be having a good time."

I nodded.  "Do you want to call the meeting to order, or should I?" I asked, even though I already knew what her answer would be.

She gave me an embarrassed little smile.  "You can do it."

Everyone was so busy talking that it took a while to get their attention.  After a few failed attempts, I was able to quiet everyone down.  They all turned to hear what I had to say.

"Thanks for coming, everyone," I began.  "As you know, Monday was the 2nd Blogoversary of our blog.  Tess wanted to celebrate by having this party, but we also wanted to get some ideas from all of you."

I turned to Tess.  "You're on," I whispered, grinning.

Tess cleared her throat nervously.  "We want to have a giveaway, but we're not sure what we should use for the prize.  Any ideas?"

"You guys could buy something," Charlie suggested.

I shook my head.  "We're pretty broke, so we're trying to avoid that, if possible."

"Does Mama have anything in her gift drawer that would work?" Rachel asked.

"Possibly," I mused.  "We'll have to check with her."

"I have an idea!" Emma said excitedly.  "We could each choose something from our own personal collections to donate to the giveaway.  Then, whoever won would have a little bit from each of us."

Tess beamed.  "I love that idea, Emma!"  Then she glanced around shyly at everyone else.  "But would that work for everyone?"

There were nods and generally positive comments from everyone.  

"Okay, I'll check with Mama on the gift drawer idea," I announced.  "In the meantime, please check and see what you have to donate.  We'd like to get the giveaway announced as soon as possible.  If we gave you until tomorrow to get everything to us, would that give you enough time?"

There didn't seem to be any objections.

"So, Friday it is.  We'll do a giveaway post on Saturday morning."  I gave everyone a smile.  "Thanks for your help!"

"I have another idea," Jenna announced boldly from the back of the room.

Everyone turned to see what she had to say.

"It's not about the giveaway," she clarified.  "But seeing everyone dressed up like this gave me the best idea ever!  We could form some sort of club, and have meetings where we dressed up and pretended to be fictional characters from literature."

"A club?" I asked weakly.  All I could think about was the "dressing up" part.  I had planned on ditching dresses forever after tonight!

Jenna nodded.  "There are plenty of characters to choose from.  Just think how much fun it would be!  We could discuss our favorite works of literature, or plays or movies, or whatever we wanted to!  Oh, and we could call ourselves..."  She paused a moment, scrunching up her brow in concentration.  Then a bright look came over her face.  "We could be the 'Literary Ladies Society'!"

Hayden clapped her hands.  "I love it, Jenna!  That sounds like so much fun!"  Of course, Hayden would approve.  She and Jenna had been like two peas in a pod lately.  Between Hayden's imagination and Jenna's love of the stage, they were perfect friends for each other.

Tess was getting excited now, too.  "I'm sure there's a way I could incorporate it into my 'Tea with Tess' posts I've been meaning to get back to."

"I don't know," I said, trying to sound like the voice of reason that didn't want to spoil everyone's fun but had to bring reality to the situation.  I'm not sure if I succeeded.  "Would that work with our schedules and everything?  And what if we couldn't get to our dresses in time?"

Charlie gave me a funny look.  "What schedules?  We're dolls."

Thanks for nothing, Charlie.

"And the dress problem could be solved easily enough," Emma added.  "We could keep our dresses out so we didn't have to wait for Mama to get them out for us."  She turned to Hayden, who was standing next to her.  "Just a suggestion, but in that dress, you make a perfect Catherine Morland."

Hayden looked excited.  "Oh, wonderful!  I was trying to decide on a character.  Since I have a Regency dress, a Jane Austen heroine would be perfect, and Catherine is my favorite."

And from there, I lost total control of the situation.  Everyone started talking about the "Literary Ladies Society" and how much fun it would be to dress up.  Even Rachel looked pleased.  Traitor.  

I was beginning to wish we'd never had this party.  Stupid, Maggie!  Why did you agree?!  I mean, being supportive is one thing, but wearing a dress repeatedly was NOT part of my original plan!

Well, that's all I have time for now.  We'll have our giveaway post up sometime tomorrow.  And I've heard nothing but LLS stuff since last night.  Half of them have already chosen their characters and figured out where they're going to keep their dresses, so I'm sure that very soon Tess or Emma will put up a post about it.  I'm hoping that maybe I'll get lost in the shuffle and not have to participate.  I know.  I'm delusional.

The obligatory group shot.  Meet the members of the new "Literary Ladies Society".  At least, 7 members.  I'm planning a move to Antarctica soon.

Maggie's Memos: A 2 Year Celebration...or How I Ended Up in This Stupid Frilly Dress Again...Part 1

As everyone has probably guessed by now, Tess and I have had some difficulty coming up with inspiration for our 2 Year Blogoversary celebration.  Hence, the total lack of interesting posts, even though we're celebrating a pretty amazing milestone.

It all started last weekend.  Rachel and I were hanging out in our temporary room (which would explain why I was living in a room with Tangled and *shudder* Jane Austen posters).  We were in the middle of a very interesting conversation about something regarding the Avengers (surprise, surprise) when Tess walked in.

"Um, sorry to bother you guys," she began, looking embarrassed, "but, Maggie...could I talk to you for a minute?  It's about our Blogoversary."

"Sure," I said casually.  It cracked me up how Tess was always so timid coming into a room, like she had to apologize for existing.

Rachel got up from her seat.  "I think I'll go see how Jenna's doing," she said kindly.  "That way, you two can talk without being disturbed."

Tess smiled her thanks as Rachel left the room.

I patted the place next to me on the bed.  "Climb on up," I offered.  "I'm too comfortable to move."

My friend quietly took a seat.  "I've been thinking a lot about our Blogoversary and what we should do to celebrate it," she began.

"Please say you're not thinking of a blog party," I quickly interrupted.  "I just don't think we can pull that off this time around."

Tess looked disappointed.  "Oh, uh...no.  No, that's not what I was thinking."  She instantly ran out of things to say.

I realized with a slight twinge of my conscience that I probably had spoken too soon.  Tess was a horrible liar, after all.  But why didn't she stand up for herself and admit that was her idea?  More and more in the past few months, I had realized just how different Tess and I were.  I hated trying to figure out what she really meant when she was too afraid to tell me.

I sighed.  "Look, I'm sorry.  Were you thinking about a blog party?"

Tess adjusted her necklace nervously.  "I did have an idea for one, but you're probably right...it's not enough notice."

"Did you have any questions or a theme figured out?" I asked, trying to encourage her.

She shook her head.  "It's not a big deal.  I didn't have many of the details worked out."

And no matter what I tried, I couldn't get any more out of her.  Everyone thinks of me as the stubborn one, but Tess can be stubborn too.  It's just a different kind of stubbornness.  She's so worried about offending someone or getting her feelings hurt that she completely shuts down.  

"So, any other ideas?" I asked, determined to let her talk before I interrupted again.

She finished fiddling with her necklace and moved on to her hair.  "I'd like to...to do a giveaway of some kind, but I'm not sure what the prize should be."

"That sounds like a good idea," I agreed.  

She looked relieved at my comment.

"Tess, I'm not the Big Bad Wolf," I said.

She scrunched up her eyebrows in confusion.  "What?"

"You're acting like I'm going to yell at you if I don't like what you say or something," I protested.

"I'm sorry," she apologized.  "I just wasn't sure what you'd think, and..."

"Look, it doesn't matter what I think," I insisted.  "I mean, sure, I have my opinions, but it's not like you can't have any ideas of your own."

Tess sat quietly for a minute, as if she was trying to come up with the right thing to say.  "I guess I'm just not used to talking to you anymore," she admitted uneasily.  

I raised one eyebrow.  

"I mean," she continued, "that you and I have kind of gone our separate ways.  You're always with Rachel, talking up your action/adventure stuff, and I've ended up spending more time with some of the others.  It's been a long time since we've just sat and talked."

I realized that this was true.  It wasn't really intentional on my part, and I still considered Tess my "best friend" (although titles like that are so restrictive and exclusive, like you can't be friends with anyone else).

"I'm sorry, Tess.  It's nothing personal.." I began.

"Oh, I know!" Tess instantly agreed.  "It's just...different.  I thought I could always just pick up where I left off with you, but I'm finding it difficult to figure out what to talk about lately.  It seems like you're always into the Avengers or something else that I know nothing about."

"Well, now you know how I feel when you and Emma go off on your Jane Austen rants!" I retorted, winking to show I was partially teasing.

Tess laughed at this.  "I suppose you're right," she admitted.  

"Oh, I'm totally right.  I usually am, you know."  I grinned, and Tess grinned back.

"I did have one more idea," she admitted hesitantly.

"What's that?" I asked, determined to be supportive, whatever it was.

"A dress-up party," she said, searching my face for approval.  I willed myself not to gag.

"A dress-up party?" I repeated, hoping I sounded at least slightly interested.

She nodded.  "Mama's been talking about switching our rooms back, so I thought we could use this room before she moves all of Hailey and my furniture in.  We've got all of those great fancy dresses in our clothing tub.  We could each choose one and dress up, just for fun.  Then we could get ideas for the giveaway from everyone."

"Wow, a dress-up party," I said again, trying to think of something else to add.

"I know dressing up isn't your favorite thing," she started apologetically, "but...it could be fun."

I'm going to die...seriously.  "Why not?" I agreed a little too cheerfully.  

"Really?  You don't mind?"

I took a deep breath and told myself I didn't.  "No, I don't mind.  When were you thinking?"

"How about Thursday?" she suggested.  "That would give everyone time to get ready and give Mama a chance to move the furniture around."

I nodded.  "Okay, Thursday it is."

Tess gave me a hug and then sprung off of the bed.  "I'll go spread the word!"

I slowly climbed down after her.  I'm doing this for my friend, I thought.  This means a lot to her.  No one ever died from wearing a fancy dress.  At least...I don't think anyone ever died from wearing a fancy dress.  Hmm...maybe I should look into that for next time!

At that moment, Tess turned around to look at me.  "Thanks, Maggie," she said with a smile.  "It was nice talking."

I was able to genuinely smile back.  "I thought so too."  And I really did.  It was nice to be able to clear the air a bit.  Even if it did mean I would be wearing a frilly dress this week.

Click HERE for Part 2!

Tess's Tidbits: Two Wonderful Years

Hello everyone.  It's Tess.  I'd like to apologize for Maggie's last post.  I'd try to offer an explanation, but I think by now you know her well enough to find the grain of truth in her comments and get rid of the embellishment (for example, the part about Mama being a "tyrant"). :}

We are so grateful to all of you, our readers and followers, for making these past two years so wonderful for us.  We've enjoyed getting to know all of you through your comments and your own blogs, and we're looking forward to another year of great memories. ;)

There will be more fun to come this week, including a giveaway.  We had hoped to do a blog party of some sort as well, but that kind of fell through the cracks.  If we manage to pull it off later on this week, we'll let you know.

Oh, dear, I hate feeling so disorganized.  Mama has been rearranging our rooms several times over these past weeks, and truthfully, we're all feeling a little disheveled and unorganized at the moment.  I think when Mama's daughters are back in school in a couple of weeks, things should settle down a bit and we should have some more computer time. :)

Until then, thanks again for being such a lovely group of friends.  We'll be back soon with more fun! :)

P.S.  Do you like our new header?  Here's the old one, just so we have a record of it in the blog:

Maggie's Memos: Two Years!!

And you thought we forgot that today was our 2 Year Blogoversary!  As if we could forget a thing like that!!  Oh no, meticulous planning and great effort went into our preparations for this day.  And just because we appeared to have delayed the publishing of this post, it doesn't mean that's what really happened.

Okay, truth be told, I slept in and then Mama was hogging the computer all morning (again!!).  She's planning on cancelling Netflix at the end of this month, so she's been catching up on a few things she's been wanting to watch.  I tried to tell her we had important business for our blog, but the woman's a complete tyrant!  Don't let her "oh, I'm so nice and helpful" persona on her blog fool you...we dolls know the real story...

Oh, stinkazoid, Tess is coming...

No, Tess, you don't need to read what I've typed...Yes, I realize it's your Blogoversary too, but...

Sigh...to be continued, everyone.

P.S.  Thanks for 2 great years, and don't forget who provides all of the entertainment on this blog, no matter what Tess says! ;)

Maggie's Memos: Hi...Remember Us?

Heh heh...so it's...uh...been a bit since we've posted.  But seriously, if you'd known what we've been going through lately, you'd understand.  All I can say is between Olympics and Mama's 2 Year Blogoversary stuff and 3 crazy human girls constantly running around, we've found it a bit difficult to post.  That, and Mama's kind of been focusing on her other dolls lately.  Don't mind us.  We're just the ones that started this whole thing.  We're not important at all.  But I'm not bitter or anything.  Really.

So, we should have a "real" post up sometime this weekend, because Mama has promised to let us actually have the computer for a while.  And no, we haven't forgotten that our 2 Year Blogoversary is Monday.  And yes, we do actually have a plan for it...mostly.  So stay tuned!

That's all I can manage for tonight, but our next post will be must more interesting.  Pinky promise. ;)

Guest Post By Hayden: My Little Miss Playthings Adventure

Hello everyone!  It's me again. :)  I wanted to share a little bit about Little Miss Playthings, the photo contest held annually at the AGPlaythings site.  I was so excited when Mama told me that I would be the contestant this year!  Maggie got to do it last year, and she really enjoyed it. :)

So first off, Mama made a signature picture for AGPlaythings.  That way, every time Mama posted on a thread, people would see my picture and be reminded that I was part of Little Miss Playthings (or LMPT).  I really like how it turned out. :) (P.S.  Some of these photos might be a little bit grainy...we had to make them smaller for the forum, but I wanted them to be a little bit bigger here.  And as always, you can click on the pictures to make them larger.) :)

Each year, there are several different rounds for the photos that need to be taken, with a different category for each.  It's always really fun seeing the way the categories are creatively interpreted.  It can be really challenging if you don't have any ideas for a certain category, though! :}

The first round this year was Weather.  This is what Mama and I came up with:

We both loved the clear quality of this picture, and the way the dappled sunlight fell across the landscape and my vinyl.  Hopefully, it got the idea across of enjoying the mild, summer weather!

The second round was Contrast:

Mama and I struggled with this category.  There are so many ways this could have been interpreted.  I don't know that this photo was the most creative use of the category, but at least it turned out nicely. ;)

Round 3 was Out of This World:

As you can see, Mama and I decided to take this one quite literally. ;)  To be perfectly honest, we barely made the deadline on this one, so we had to go for a simple picture.  Mama had this great involved idea.  She was going to have Jenna and I in my room drawing the solar system.  Unfortunately, we never got around to it (that was the same weekend as Mama's yard sale and also the weekend before she left for vacation).  I'm just glad we were able to get something submitted.  I really wanted to participate in each category (according to the rules, you don't have to do each round, but the more you participate, the better your chances are of winning).

The next round was Solo, which was basically supposed to capture something we did when we were by ourselves:

I really love this picture!  And it's totally what I would do by myself...dress up and pretend to be a fairy tale character. ;)

The fifth and final round was due just this past Saturday, and was called Anything Goes.  Basically, the title says it all.  It could be any sort of picture we wanted.  This is the one that Mama and I chose:

As you can probably tell, we took this picture on my trip to the Trinity Alps Resort.  I'm really pleased with how it turned out.  I felt so dreamy sitting by that lovely river. :)

There were lots of other pictures we considered.  I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the ones that didn't quite make the cut. :)

This was the other one we were considering for "Weather".  We liked it, but we liked the one we chose just a little bit better.  It was better quality and we both just fell in love with it.  I still enjoyed this one, though.  Plus, it was really fun to spend half an hour or so picking daisies. :)

Like I said before, we really struggled with the "Contrast" round, so there were several other pictures we considered.  Mama really liked this one, but her dad thought it looked like a risque perfume commercial or something, and Papa said it made him think of Miss Piggy (not that he thought I looked fat...he just thought it looked like the type of pose she would do).  For some reason, we just couldn't look at this photo in the same way after they shared their opinions. ;)

This was the one we probably struggled with the most.  I was actually leaning towards this one myself.  In the end, though, after consulting with several others, we decided that the contrast photo we chose was a little bit better of a choice.  My hair showed up a little better on that one, plus my sleeve had a really lovely drape to it.  What do you think?  Did we choose well? (I still think this one would have worked too, personally!)

Way back in the beginning, this was the photo we were thinking about using for contrast.  But we really liked the idea of using this dress for my solo round, so we didn't want to make it less special by having the dress appear in an earlier round.  Too bad...we loved the contrast of the shade beneath the tree and the bright green of the grass. :)

There were three other photos we considered for the solo round.  This was the first.  I have to say, I really liked this one (plus, as with the weather picture, I had a lot of fun while Mama took pictures!).  It does definitely show me doing something I would do by myself.  In the end, though, the pretty dress won out. ;)

It was really hard to leave this photo behind.  I love the coloring and the pose and everything about it!  We really felt like the one we chose gave a better idea of me playing and imagining, though, while this one could have been for a historical photo shoot or something else.  I'm glad we at least get to share it with you now. :) 

This was another one we considered using for "Solo".  Interestingly enough, we also thought about using it for the "Weather" round.  It was a pretty picture and a cute idea, but we felt that the pictures we choose in both categories presented a clearer idea of what we wanted to communicate. 

And finally, this is the other picture we thought about using for the "Anything Goes" round.  It was such a tough choice!  Many of you who follow Mama's blog will recognize this as the picture she used for her header for a while.  I love this picture a lot, but we decided to use the sitting down one instead.  I hope we made the right choice!

The results for Little Miss Playthings will be announced either this coming Saturday or Sunday, I believe, when all of the votes for all of the different rounds have been tallied.  I'll be sure to let you know how I did! :)  Thanks for letting me share a little about my time as a LMPT contestant.  It was so much fun, and I'm honored that Mama chose me to do it this year. :)

P.S.  Tess and Maggie graciously allowed me to make a new header with all of my LMPT photos on it, so in keeping with tradition, I've included a copy of the former header in this post:

Tess's Tidbits: An Apology

Hello, dearest readers!  I just wanted to apologize that it's been so long since we've posted.  As any of you who follow Mama's blog know, Mama recently returned from a week-long vacation (during which we were not allowed to use the computer).  And then, shortly after she got back, she went into a flurry of rearranging, which included some serious upheaval to our doll rooms!  We've just now started to feel slightly settled again, although Hailey and I have temporarily switched rooms with Maggie and Rachel, so I don't feel quite as at home as I could be.  Poor Maggie is completely perturbed to be stuck in a room with Jane Austen and Tangled posters! ;)  (Mama didn't want to take them down since Hailey and I will eventually be there again.)

All of that to say that we have been thinking about posting but have simply been far too busy and distracted to actually sit down and do it.  Most of this next week, we'll have to give the computer over to Mama, as she's celebrating her 2 Year Blogoversary (hurray, Mama!).  After she's done the bulk of her posting, we hope to have a post or two up for you, though.  Thank you so much for your patience.  We miss you all! :(

P.S.  We also noticed that our playlist seems to be having troubles today...Mama's is too.  We're thinking it might be an issue with Mixpod.com itself, because when we tried to get to the website to check things out, Google Chrome couldn't get us there.  We'll try to figure out the problem and get our lovely music up again as soon as possible. :)