Little Mommy Dolls Playdate and Birthday Party Ideas

Our now 5 year old daughter received her first Little Mommy Sweet As Me doll for Christmas when she was just about one year old and has added several more dolls to her collection since.  These 14" dolls are the perfect size for a toddler or preschooler and much more affordable compared to most 18" dolls.  In fact, if you are considering an in-store 18" doll party, but are not quite sure you can afford it, you may want to consider hosting a Little Mommy birthday party in your home.  There are lots of free printables, activities, and tips to help you plan a special day for your little girl in the DIY Little Mommy Day activity kit.

Our daughter and I were invited to try some of these DIY activities during a Little Mommy playdate.  Mattel provided my daughter with a Little Mommy doll and a Fashion Pack outfit plus another doll and outfit for a friend.  After she decided on which friend to share this exciting treat with, she had to wait patiently for the day of the playdate to finally arrive . . .

(Click any photo to enlarge)

Prior to the day of our playdate, I prepared some activities to take along with us.  Since our playdate would have likely lasted 2 hours at the most, I chose to make the Little Mommy doll birth certificate for both dolls and the Little Mommy memory game.  To make the birth certificates more personalized for each "little mommy", I printed the blank certificates on my home printer, cut them out, and pasted them onto sheets of colored construction paper that coordinated with the colors in the certificate well.  Then I printed, cut, and pasted an image of each girl's doll onto the same sheet of colored paper.  Images of the most recently released dolls can be found in the Little Mommy Scrapbook Kit, like our daughter's Little Mommy Sweet As Me "Rock Me Baby" Asian Doll.  I easily found an image online of the Little Mommy Sweet As Me "School's Cool" Doll, which would be going to her friend.

I had decided to print, cut, and paste the Little Mommy memory cards onto construction paper, as well.  If you print them out on regular white paper, then the players can easily see the printed images through the back of each piece of paper.  You can avoid this by printing the cards out on heavy cardstock.  I think the colored paper backing framed the cards nicely.  I ended up drawing smiley faces on the backs of the cards so that the girls could easily lay out the cards without any of them being upside down or sideways.  You could use stickers or glue the Little Mommy logo on the backs instead.  I also chose to print out two sets of cards since there were only 12 cards per set.

I have to say that my daughter's friend was thrilled about receiving the doll and the outfit.  Her attention was on other things, so only my daughter completed the birth certificate activity during the playdate.  She ended up naming her doll Nancy (after Fancy Nancy) and filled in the whole certificate herself.  She even drew in little footprints in the designated space at the bottom.  The next time I saw her friend at school, she had brought her Little Mommy doll in to show her teachers and the whole class.  Then she told me that her Mom had helped her fill out the birth certificate the night before and she ended up naming her doll Curly Shirley.

Even though our daughter had played memory before, after her first game with these cards, she has asked to play again and again.  I think these sets of Little Mommy memory cards would make great party favors for your guests to take home.

The Little Mommy Day Facebook app features Rosie Pope, host of Bravo’s “Pregnant in Heels”, and includes the following tips and activities . . .

• Little Mommy Day! Event Guide
• Little Mommy Day! Invitation
• Little Mommy Day! Pretty Patterns & Decor ideas
• Little Mommy Day! Giggle Grahams Recipe
• Little Mommy "My Little Scrapbook" activity
• Little Mommy "My Little Birth Certificate" activity
• Little Mommy "Photo Memories" Family Tree activity
• Little Mommy Flashcards activity
• Little Mommy "My Little Hand & Footprints" activity
• Little Mommy Day! Memory Cards game

To find out more about Little Mommy dolls, fashions, and accessories, visit LittleMommy.com and Little Mommy on Facebook.  You can purchase Little Mommy products at the Mattel Shop, Toys"R"Us, Amazon.com, and most major toy retailers.

Thank you to Mattel for providing complimentary product samples of Little Mommy dolls and fashions for our playdate and for providing additional product for our contest prize.


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Decorating Pumpkins for Halloween the Mess-Free Way

Last weekend, we invited two of our 6 year old's friends over to have a pumpkin decorating playdate along with our 3 year old twins. We had a few kid-friendly pumpkin decorating kits from Pumpkin Masters. With such young children, we wanted to avoid any carving so that each child could be as hands-on as possible during this activity. After all, it is much more fun to be a participant than a spectator.

We received three kits to try out. We ended up using the Pumpkin Sticker Kit and the Monster Pieces Kit. Neither of these kits involved any carving at all.

The Pumpkin Sticker Kit had enough eyes, noses, and mouths to decorate about eight pumpkins. There were also other fun elements, such as spiders, boils, scars, and more. Since some of the stickers were quite large and irregularly shaped, some of the children needed help removing them from the sheets. If they pulled them off too quickly, they risked tearing them. Although we followed the instructions and made sure each pumpkin was clean and dry, some of the stickers adhered very well to the surface of the pumpkins, but some did not. I am wondering if this had anything to do with the texture and curvature of each pumpkin? In any case, it was nothing that a little all-purpose glue could not fix.

The Monster Pieces were plastic eyes, noses, mouths, and ears that each had a pointed backing that could be pushed directly into the pumpkins. Although our 3 year olds needed help with this, the three 6 year old children could pierce the pumpkins without our assistance. Even though there were enough pieces to make three faces, the children mixed them with the stickers to make some fun creations. Some of them even turned their pumpkins around to create an entirely different face on the back.

We did not use the Follow You Eyes Kit because they worked best with a completely hallowed out pumpkin that is lit from within. We ended up giving this product to a fellow-parent who had plans to carve pumpkins with her family this year.

To view the full line of Pumpkin Masters pumpkin decorating kits and accessories, visit PumpkinMasters.com .

Thank you to Pumpkin Masters for sending us complimentary sample kits to base this review upon.

A Chuggington Party!

As a Chuggington Conductor, I was invited to throw a Chuggington party for our children and some of their preschool-aged friends. Since preschool had not started for the twins yet, we had to downgrade our party to a playdate. Hopefully next time we will have more than enough preschoolers to attend.

To help us with our event, we received a basket of goodies, containing conductor hats, coloring sheets, crayons, music CDs, a screener DVD, popcorn, and even a Chuggington logo Flip camcorder to make a music video. I bought some popcorn tubs for the DVD screening and made some goodie bags containing the following:

• Coloring Pages
• Crayons
• Chuggington Theme Song CDs
• Lollipop Whistles
• Daffy Taffy

If you would like your children to sit quietly and perfectly still, put in a Chuggington DVD and serve some popcorn . . .

After the children all filled up on carbs from the popcorn and juice boxes, it was time to dance! Our daughter always seems to be too dignified to let loose and dance, even when I do not have a camera in my hand. Luckily, the other children had a blast dancing to the "Chuggington Theme Song" . . .

After our guest left, the children could not wait to dig into their goodie bags. Yes, they were excited about the candy, but they also wanted to start on their Chuggington coloring pages right away. I was so impressed. The twins cannot remember all their ABC's, but they can remember the name of every Chuggington train.

This fall, you can catch Chuggington 7 days a week on Playhouse Disney at 6am EST and weekdays at 11:30am EST. You can also play fun free online Chuggington games with your children on UK.Chuggington.com and find free printable Chuggington coloring pages on Chuggington.com . Chuggington toys are currently available to order online, but be sure to look for them in your local stores in time for Holiday 2010.

As a Chuggington Conductor, I received supplies to help me throw a Chuggington party and to create a "Chuggington Theme Song" music video.