With the start of a new school year, the girls have been playing school with their American Girl dolls even more than usual. We’ve talked about adding on to our existing doll house but with our favorite doll house contractor (Daddy) off at work, we decided to take matters into our own hands. We had lots of extra items that just didn’t seem to have a place in the doll house so they needed a space of their own. These rooms are a work in progress and have been completed over the last week or so mostly using items we already had.

To start, we picked up a few tri-fold presentation boards. The first 2 I purchased at Michael’s for about $5 but then discovered they sell them at dollar tree as well. The dollar tree boards are a tiny bit smaller but still totally worked out.

We also selected some scrapbook paper (some I already had) for the “wall paper” and attached it to the board using spray on adhesive.

Once the paper was on I trimmed it and then trimmed the remaining board using a box cutter. FYI: 2 stacked scrapbook papers are the perfect height for American Girl Doll rooms.

The school desk is AG while the locker came from Justice last year. We are hoping to add another desk soon.

I found the cork board and the dry erase board at dollar tree. They’re super cheap thin cardboard actually so they worked really well to hot glue onto the board without being too heavy. I happened to have a whole bag of the little flags leftover from several years ago. I trimmed the stick a little to fit and stuck it in the board. The clock, map, and all the bulletin board goodies I just printed on card stock and used double stick tape to secure them to the walls and board after the girls cut them out for me. I just used google image to find the photos using search terms like “classroom clock”, “classroom map”, “bulletin board printables”, “classroom art”, etc.

I recently had to photograph an event in Dallas and had some extra time to kill before hand so of course I seized the opportunity to take the girls into the AG store to check out the new Beforever line. We absolutely fell in love with Samatha’s ice cream parlor.  It’s so super cute but I did not love the $300 price tag!

Check out Samantha’s ice cream parlor here:  http://store.americangirl.com/agshop/html/item/id/244005

When we got home, we hatched a plan to create a sweet shop the same way as the school room. Walmart’s 18″ doll line just released a fabulous snack stand that we thought would be a great start. I had actually already picked one up a couple of weeks ago but hadn’t given it to them yet. These aren’t available online yet but I imagine eventually they will be.  At $27.97 each, I decided to pick up another to display even more goodies.  These would also work great to create a concession stand type thing.  American Girl has a really cute snack cart priced at $150!

You can see the snack cart here: http://store.americangirl.com/agshop/html/item/id/228583/uid/235

They’re actually surprisingly sturdy I thought and come with lots of goodies. Each stand came with 2 milkshakes, 3 super cute cupcakes, a baking sheet with 2 cookies, 2 glasses of lemonade, a pink cash register with a drawer that really opens, a sheet of money, 2 plates, napkins, and cardboard bakery signs.

We set up our AG baking table for patrons to enjoy a treat and added our metal dining chairs. These actually came from the garden decor section of Ross a couple of years ago. I spray painted them this lovely tealish turquoise color when I purchased them.  I used double stick tape to secure the cardboard signs to the wall.

The little candy jar is a button holder purchased for $1.50 at Michaels. We filled it with mini Christmas ornament candies we found at Hobby Lobby and covered the top with a circle of scrapbook paper. I glued the lid on so they didn’t get lost or eaten accidentally.

I found this fabulous shelf at Home Goods last year on clearance. We were using it in the living room but it works much better in here! The pink and purple tea sets came from dollar tree. Most of the ice cream treats are from AG and the cakes on top are actually Christmas ornaments from Hobby Lobby last year.

The flowers on the table came from an old AG pet show set, the truffles came with the AG baking set, and the yankee candle is a car air freshener that my daughter absolutely had to have from Hobby Lobby. It was $5.99 I think but I used a 40% off coupon on it since the paper I was buying was already on sale.  We chose the vanilla cupcake scent hoping it would fill the bakery with sweet scent and it does!  Smells ah-maze-ing!!!

There you have it! 2 super easy rooms that can be easily folded up for storage any ole time we want. They took little to no time at all to put together since we had most of the stuff already and it was such a fun project for the girls and I to do together. They loved helping me find images for the classroom walls and stocking the bakery shelf. They’ve already had so much fun with these 2 rooms that we’re working on a playroom and a salon. You know they’re a hit when they wake up extra early for school just to grab coffee and a muffin at the doll bake shop and get their girls to school before it’s time to head to class themselves! Have I mentioned how fun having girls is!??!?!

So now the girls want to know what you think. What should they call their bake shop? Comment here or email me at dysfunctionaldomesticdiva@gmail.com