WWOG: Baking Outfit

Today for The Wonderful! World of Grace my new poppet is modeling her Baking Outfit. While I have no idea which of Grace Thomas' six major ensembles is the most popular with the consumer, it seems to me that this outfit is destined to be an iconic outfit from her line.

Her outfit comes with a teal tshirt with an artistic cupcakes and swirls designb, pink leggings, a black jumper-style apron, teal shoes, and a pale pink elastic headband.

The black "apron dress" features an embroidered heart and a snappy stripped bow, so this outfit already hits two of the three big design embellishments from Grace's collection (the third being the Eiffel Tower).

The back of the apron is quite unique with more bows as a design element. The poppet must step into the skirt and pull the ladder-style straps over head, securing the straps at the waist with velcro.

The pink leggings are not the soft brushed cotton of the leggings from a lot of the AG offerings and instead the fabric has more waffle weave texture. It is nice to see this level of attention to every detail in the outfit.

The teal ballet-flats style shoes are perfect--and topped with black bows made of string.

The headband is a soft pink and topped with another bow.

The GOTY designers have chosen once again to heavily brand Grace's outfits with tags. This outfit has two--on the bottom of the pink leggings and on the end of her sleeve on her teal "cupcakes" shirt.

I know some collectors dislike these tags, citing that it makes it difficult to use these outfits with other non-Grace dolls. My recommendation is to simply treat the "Grace" tags as an overall brand of which the doll simply does or does not share the same name. 

Both of my GOTY Isabelle dolls are renamed and still wear the "Isabelle" branded clothing. Similarly, Grace has been renamed and will continue to wear the "Grace" branded clothing--as well as some of my other poppets.

I really enjoy having my new poppet in something other than her Meet outfit. I feel like I got to know more of her personality in the process, not to mention getting familiar with the play of her hair as well as learning her "good angles" for photography. 

The Baking Outfit is extremely cute and every piece was terrific. Highest recommendation. A+

WWOG: Meet Grace!

Grace is finally home! We officially begin our The Wonderful! World of Grace series by looking at the Grace doll herself in her first few moments freed from her box.

She looks so sweet waiting to be released. I love this moment of just before removing a poppet from her box.

Grace's hair was sleek and well groomed right out of the box. I only combed her hair through once with a brush and snipped off six crazy hairs before taking this photo.

She has a light skinned Josefina mold with blue eyes and freckles. Her eyebrows appear to be another variation of the new feathered eyebrows that were introduced in August of 2014. For the sake of clarity, I will call the new feathered brows introduced last August as "Feathered Eyebrows I" and new style of Grace's eyebrows as "Feathered Eyebrows II." The most obvious difference between I and II is that the latter is slightly bigger or bushier, but as you can see, they do not overwhelm her eyes at all.

Her eyes appear to be the standard light blue eyes with spirals as seen in dolls such as MyAG 56. Her Meet tshirt is tres cute and the graphics have an almost glittery glow.

The ubiquitous tag--but I like it.

Grace's side braid. I separated it out in order to take a clear photo of it. I was thinking I would take it out of the braid soon, but I have heard that the braid pieces are much longer than the rest of her hair, which means I would have a "style it" vs "cut it" dilemma. Plus, I just know her braid will never look this nice again if I remove it. So, now I am undecided.

Her hair is long with both auburn and golden highlights mixed in. It has a slight curl at the bottom and is lightly layered as well.

Here is her hair length compared with GOTY 2014 Isabelle. Grace's hair is longer, though to the touch her wig seems a bit thinner than Isabelle's. However, her wig appears extremely full. Overall, "sleek" is the word that comes to mind as I play with Grace's hair.

Grace's boots are a soft gray canvas material with a bow detail. The boots are a a "slouch boot" design and they have no velcro back opening like many of AG boots, yet her foot slips into the boot very easily.

The Meet outfit also comes with coordinating pink underwear, but surprisingly, no decorative bows or hearts.

I really like the charm bracelet that comes inside of her box attached to the upper right hand corner inside. The charm bracelet is exactly right in all its details. I wish they made one for girls.

Grace's skirt has a black bow at the waistline. The skirt itself is probably the least interesting part of her outfit even though I like the color and the bow. The raspberry colored material, while soft, already looks worn (inexpensive?) and I wonder if the fabric may be prone to pilling.

Grace seems sweet and curious in nature right out of the box. We are charmed!

AGPSF Flash: A Second Look & The Haul

In the AGPSF store this morning I managed to snap a series of pictures, though I definitely felt more in a rush than usual because of my own excitement and of course from the throngs of other excited shoppers. What I did not recognize until I got home is that the photos I did manage to take were primarily of the items I was not going to purchase that day.

So I offer my readers some photos of what I did not buy followed by a rather revealing "The Haul" photo.

But before I launch into those photos, I did manage to catch a snap of the Take a Picture with Grace station when no one was posing with it, though it took some patience. The fabric awning is a great detail and I am obsessed with the tiled roof of the Mansard styled french roof.

Above the picture station one can see the Eiffel Tower. (Count the Eiffel Towers!)

The City Outfit--little Bonbon looks unfortunately startled in this picture. I leave this "Love" outfit to purchase a bit closer to Valentine's Day (though I do bring little Bonbon home today).

City Outfit shoes. (Count the bows!)

Gloves and purse from the Paris Accessories. The texture on the shorts is fabulous and interesting.

The Bistro Set table. (Eiffel Tower!)

The Bistro Set table, napkin, food, carafe, and menu.

The Bistro Set sidewalk menu board. (Count the hearts!)

Grace's Pajamas. Another purchase for later. I am definitely ready to head out soon! (More bows!)

Grace's Travel Coat. Love the texture of the fabric. But not today. (A bow!)

Grace's Opening Night Outfit. I love the pink tulle mesh over sequins look. I thought sequins would be gone after so many in Isabelle's collection. I must admit, I am not tired of sequins yet--however, this is also a February outfit if I can hold out.

Cute Eiffel Tower earrings--it looks like they can be doubled up with the heart or bow earrings (Eiffel Tower! Hearts! Bows!) I need to find time to go back and purchase the earring set but not actually pierce her ears.

The above picture also shows Grace's Pastry Cart. Wait. I did bring this home--they were flying off the shelves (so to speak) and I decided that I would add the Pastry Cart to my purchases in the final minutes before checking out. While I plan to eventually get Grace's "Whole World," this was the one impulse/early purchase based solely on the store vibe.

Check out went quickly but we needed assistance to take our haul to the car. Enter Nick, one of the most sincerely cheerful and helpful sales associates we have ever met at the store. He even agreed to pose with all of our purchases and gave me permission to use his image on this blog.

Nick shared with us that he really enjoyed working for American Girl. He confessed to owning one AG doll, an Isabelle which he won in a contest. When I asked him if he was going to get a Grace doll he said he wasn't certain, but when I pointed out they both had blue eyes, I could tell the idea to get Grace had crossed his mind at least once before! (Note it was Nick's idea to pull Grace out of the giant red shopping bag for this picture! Yay, Nick! Yay, AG!)

One can really see the real estate difference between the French Bakery (bottom box) and the Pastry Cart (top box). The latter is not only a wallet saver but also a space saver! However, I was obviously not detoured.

Today's purchases include

Grace Thomas

Welcome Gifts

Bonbon

Baking Outfit

Baking Set (the mixer, etc)

Pastry Cart

French Bakery

I am looking forward to begin unpacking and photographing all the new items over the coming days and weeks. First up in The Wonderful! World of Grace will be a blog post later this evening with the first pictures of Grace right out of the box!

AGPSF Flash: Apron Giveaway and Cupcakes Update!

There and back again!

It was a terrific morning at AGPSF. In this first of two AGPSF Flash reports I will update everyone on the initial crowds at opening, the Apron Giveaway, and an update on the Baking Outfit cupcakes print on the doll's shirt.

We arrived at AGPSF at about 8:45am and went to stand in line immediately which placed us about 30th in line. Up closer than last year--high five!

The weather was a brisk but tolerable 45 degrees and the mood of the small gathering friendly. By the time the store doors opened at 10am I estimate the total line for the store was about 150 people. The sales associates let us in a few people at a time and once inside many shoppers were in "grab and go" experience. The shoppers (many of them young girls) would make a beeline to the Grace doll or certain outfits for the dolls and once they had their stack or bag of goodies, take off right away. It seemed these shoppers were already familiar with what they wanted to purchase.

The giveaway this year for the GOTY 2015 was a cute red and black apron with a polka dotted bow detail which came in a cute envelope, which I thought was a very nice touch.

The apron giveaway also came with some small paper items: a pseudo "passport" booklet, a paper heart lock, a large postcard and doll sized postcard, and a La Patisserie Menu.

The apron has one long divided pocket at the bottom and has a velcro closing at the top of the neck straps.

This was a very cute giveaway, and I am happy to report that unlike last year where I was turned down several times before being given the giveaway Isabelle tshirt at the January 1st opening (for "girls" only I was told), that today we were handed the apron giveaway as we entered the store and without any fuss! Yay, AG. Thank you!

And now to the Baking Outfit, which in early stock pictures featured (upsettingly for many) an upside-down cupcake pattern on the teal colored shirt. Defect or mistake? Well on both the store display doll and my purchased Baking Outfit the cupcake pattern appears right-side up!

Above: store model Grace in Baking Outfit.

Above: The Baking Outfit straight out of the box. Upright cupcakes!

I will be posting later today another AGPSF Flash, and time permitting, a few first photos of the newest edition to our poppet household:  Grace Thomas!

The Wonderful! World of Grace: Color Quest

Welcome to our newest feature series on Poppets & Posies: The Wonderful! World of Grace.

In The Wonderful! World of Grace series we will be featuring weekly close up reviews and photo essays of Grace's world--the doll, her clothing, books, and doll accessories.

Our first offering is a new set of Color Quest infographics which look with more detail at the distinct color scheme of Grace's collection.

Above is last week's infographic now with Grace's wardrobe pieces included. As discussed previously, Grace's colors do not quote directly from Pantone's Fashion Color Report (left) and instead offer a bright and bold neapolitan inspired palette.

Even Grace's accessories--including her dog, Bonbon--closely follow Grace's color scheme.

And the French Bakery! And Bistro! And Pastry Cart Accessories! I simply adore what I see with these sets. While the colors quite bright, especially with the large colorful surfaces of the gigantic French Bakery, its design still seems grounded in reality, such as suggestion of gray slate tiles on the rooftop and other distinctly French architectural details.

I plan to be up early and drive up to Palo Alto in time for the store opening, so later in the afternoon look for an AGPSF Flash update and perhaps some first photos of Grace!

Poppet Poses: Wishes for a New Year!

The girls and I offer to our readers our first holiday picture greeting! Happy New Year!

(From left to right, this year's poppets are Ingrid, Solveig, Ingabritta, Lilja, Posey, Freyja, and Astrid.)