Five Amazing Years and a Special Giveaway

Five years ago today, I sat down and started a simple little post on blogger.com. I never dreamed that this seemingly insignificant choice would lead to an amazing online adventure.

It's hard to believe that Never Grow Up has been going for that long. I've seen many blogs come and go over the years. Even in my readership, I've seen a huge turnover. And I totally get it. Keeping something going for this long is a big commitment.

But even thought it can be overwhelming at times, I love this little corner of the internet I've claimed as my own. I've met some incredible people from all over the world, learned about dolls and toys, added extensively to my collections (sorry, Hubby!), improved in my photography and reviewing skills, and have become much more self sufficient on the computer than I ever thought I would be. ;)

Blogoversaries are always a fun time to look back over some of the milestones from over the years. So let's check them out! :)

In five years, I have:

-Accumulated 451 followers (Incredible! I still remember when my main goal was to hit 100.) :)

-Published 934 posts

-Hit 1,662,319 pageviews

-Hit 296 likes on my Facebook page

-Gathered 1,197 Pinterest followers

-Hit 185 YouTube subscriptions

-Reviewed several new toys offered to me for free review, including Zelfs and a Maru and Friends doll :D

The thing is, none of these amazing milestones would have been possible without all of you, my readers. I've never forgotten that, and I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart. (I know it's a cliche, but it does a good job of expressing how I feel.) ;) Thanks for sticking with me all of this time. Thank you for your lovely comments and your emails (I do read them even when I'm horrible at responding to them). :} Thank you for following, "liking", reading, and everything else. I wouldn't be where I am today without all of you. :)

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I thought it would also be fun to share my "bucket list" for this blog. I've already hit a lot of my previous dreams and goals for Never Grow Up, but it's always good to have a few dreams in your pocket, right? ;) Here are a few that would be incredible for the future:

-Just for fun, hitting 500 followers ;)

-Reviewing a Makie

-Reviewing a Limited Edition Disney Store Doll (Maybe I'll be able to afford one by the time they bring out all of the special Beauty and the Beast dolls in 2017, around the time of the live action movie.) ;)

-Attending a D23 Convention and sharing about it on the blog. :)

-Getting some sort of official partnership/sponsorship...I think. It would be nice to receive free items to keep down the expenses of new dolls and toys. However, independently blogging gives me a freedom to share my honest opinions without worrying about what my sponsoring company would think. I guess I'll think about this one some more. ;) (And really, it's a pretty unrealistic dream at this point anyway.)

-Taking my girls to Disneyland and blogging about it. This isn't exactly blogging related, but it is a family goal within the next few years. I haven't been since I was pregnant with Oldest Gal (it would be really nice to go again and NOT be pregnant). ;) The girls have never gone. And of course, I'd take lots of pics to share with all of you. ;)

-Attending the New York Toy Fair and sharing about it on the blog. :D This is my ultimate bucket list item. I don't know if it will ever happen. New York is very far away, and even though I get free admission to the Toy Fair as a blogger, I do NOT get free airfare, hotel and food. ;) Someday, though, it would be awesome to get to go. :)

I don't know if any of these things will ever happen, but that's okay. This blog has already taken me so much farther than I ever thought it would. Even if nothing else happens, I'm so thankful for all I've experienced already. :)

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I wanted to think of a fun way to thank you guys for the adventure we've shared together. So, in honor of my blogoversary, I'm doing a special giveaway. I've chosen five items that are the typical types of items I review here on the blog. All five will be given away together as one giveaway prize for one of my readers. :D Here's what the giveaway includes:

(Sorry, everyone. Tess is not part of the giveaway. She just thought I might need someone to help display the giveaway items.) ;)

Here are the items individually:

1. A new Fashion Spree Shopkins pack. This is the "Best Dressed" collection. Shopkins are some of our favorites, so of course they had to be a part of the giveaway. ;) (My favorite one in this set is the cute little camera.)

The back of the package. You'll want to save this since it's the only place that has their names! ;) 

2. Candy-Lou the Candy Zelf from Season 5. I'm sure none of you are surprised that a Zelf made it to this giveaway. ;) The Zelfs were the very first toy line offered to me for free review by a company (without my asking first), so they hold a special place in my heart. Plus, they're super adorable. ;) Candy-Lou is one of the brand new Zelfs that has just been released.

The back of Candy-Lou's package.

3. Mini Lalaloopsy Whirly Stretchy Locks. While I haven't reviewed these recently, the mini Lalaloopsies are another of our favorites here at the Never Grow Up house. We hope you enjoy this one. She's kind of in keeping with the candy theme, too. ;) (This prize was supplied by my mom, who has been a huge supporter, fellow doll hunter, and financial provider for my blog since day one. Thanks, Mom! You're the best.) :)

The back of her package.

4. Our Generation "A Day Fur You" 18 inch doll accessory pack. This blog started out primarily as a place that reviewed 18 inch play dolls, so I wanted to pay homage to that. Sadly, shipping an 18 inch doll worldwide was a bit beyond my budget. ;) So instead, here's a fun little pack for your 18 inch dolls with everything they need for a day at the zoo. It includes a pair of sunglasses, a camera, a package of peanuts, a map of the zoo, a little baggie, and a zoo pamphlet. (This prize was also supplied by my mom.) :)

The back of the package.

5. A Funko Mystery Mini Joy in Bing Bong's wagon (a Hot Topic exclusive). I had to get something Disney in here too, of course. ;) Joy is super cute and looks great on display. Her head turns, too. :)

Joy from the back.

I apologize that Joy is opened, but I wanted to make sure it was the figure I wanted for the giveaway. ;) She will come with her original box...

...which shows concept art of all of the available figures from Hot Topic.

Giveaway Rules:

1. This giveaway is WORLDWIDE and open to ANY of my readers. :) One winner will be drawn at random and will receive all five items.

2. If you are under 18 years of age, please get a parent or guardian's permission to enter. I'll need to get your mailing address, and I want to make sure that's okay with them. :)

3. To enter, please leave a comment below with your name or username AND your email address. (Please don't forget your email address. It makes it so much harder for me to let you know you've won if I can't contact you.) Comments containing email addresses will NOT be published.

4. For an extra entry, you can share this giveaway on any form of social media (your blog, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.). Please come back and leave another comment, telling me where you shared and leaving a link. Otherwise, I won't know to give you your extra entry.

5. The giveaway will be open until Tuesday, August 4th. On Wednesday, August 5th, I will select the winner and contact them via email. The winner will have ONE WEEK to get back to me with their mailing address. If I haven't heard from them by Wednesday, August 12th, a new winner will be chosen.

Just a side note here. I love publishing your personal comments, but I can't do so if they're in the same comment as your email address. If you would enjoy having your comments published, be sure to leave them separately from your entry comment. If it's not a big deal to you, then you can go ahead and keep your comments all together. ;)

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Thank you again for five wonderful years, my friends. Here's to the next five! :D

Our Generation "Plaid to Meet You" Playset

While browsing through Target a week or so ago, I happened to spot this little set in the Our Generation section:

It's called "Plaid to Meet You", and includes a doll-sized bag, laptop, and pen...well, it's possibly a pen.

Front view of the package.

Back view

Here's everything out of the package.

The bag is made of a leather-look material and a flannel-like material on top.  It has real working clasps that are easy to open and close.

I love the adorable Scottie dog design on the top flap. :)

The bag opens... 

...and has enough space to store both of the other items inside.

Here is the cute laptop that comes with the set.  When I first saw the package, I thought this was a notebook or something.  When I realized it was a laptop, I was so excited!  I've been looking for a reasonably-priced doll-sized laptop for a while.

Here's a view of the front when it's closed.

And here it is open.  The screen on the inside is from the Our Generation website.

The side includes indentations that give the impression of the various plug ins on a laptop.

The laptop is marked "Our Generation by Battat" and "Made in China" on the bottom.

And here is what I assumed to be a pen, although I thought it was kind of silly that they didn't put a point on it.  When my mom saw it, she thought that maybe it was supposed to be a stylus for the laptop.  

What do you guys think?

The set is very compatible with American Girl dolls.  Here, Charlie shows how she can hold the bag.

The laptop is slightly small for her, at least for a standard-sized laptop.  This doesn't bug me too much, though.  Laptops are getting smaller all the time.  Maybe she's just got a more compact model. ;)

I'm looking forward to incorporating this computer into Tess and Maggie's photostories for their blog.  Of course, now I'll have to come up with another excuse besides "we couldn't get to the computer" when I'm behind on their posts. :} 

I'm very happy with this fun little set from Our Generation.  It was just $6.99 and is made well.  If any of your dolls have been begging for a computer of their own, this just might be the perfect thing for you. ;)

Shortly after I purchased this set and before I managed to get around to reviewing it, Emily at The Toy Box Philosopher did her own blog review.  I thought I'd link it HERE since she had a lot more pictures and went into more detail.  Enjoy! :)  

New Doll and Toy Releases in Town! :)

Hey everyone!  Just thought I'd check in before the craziness of the first week of school. :}

Thank you for all of the entries in the Lottie doll contest.  So far I think there are around 21.  Keep them coming!!  You have until this Friday to enter.

Yesterday I spent the entire day with my three daughters, one last day of fun together before the school year starts.  One of our stops was our local Target.  I have to preface this by saying that our local stores have had NOTHING new in the past few months.  So many new releases have been sighted elsewhere, but not in our hometown.

So yesterday, I went into Target without any expectations and nearly hyperventilated in the toy section.  This month has been very tight financially because of our vacation and paying school tuition, but let me tell you, if I had endless money at my disposal, I easily could have spent a few hundred dollars!

Target finally had 1 Lauryce, 2 Sholas, and 2 Mosis.  They also had a whole big new section for the Our Generation dolls.  While I'm not a fan of the dolls themselves, the adorable bike, the new red kitchen, and the awesome camp trailer were AMAZING!!   There were a ton of new Disney Princess releases, including the Disney Princess Palace Pets (I'm still a bit "meh" about them, but my girls LOVE them).  They also had the Disney Princess and Me line with the new Merida doll.  I was pleased to see they were priced at $39.99 instead of $49.99 like they are at ToysRUs.

And then we went to the My Little Pony aisle, and saw the new Cake Family blind bag set, and the Target exclusive Pinkie Pie Boutique sets, and the big new talking Twilight Sparkle...and in the same aisle, they had Care Bears blind bags...

Seriously, I was feeling like "MUST HAVE ALL THE NEW THINGS!!!", so it's probably good I was broke. ;)  I made it out of the store empty-handed and was quite proud of my restraint. ;)

Our local Walmart had new stuff too, such as the brand new My Life As dolls for the year.  They only had two in stock.  I nearly took pics with my phone, but realized that I'd left my phone in the car.  It looks like there are about 17 dolls being released this time around (including a few sets of different dolls in duplicate outfits).  And we did buy a few things there, because my girls fell in love with the adorable new roller skates from the My Life As line, and they were only $2 per pair:

I checked Walmart online and found a few links to the new things.  Only one doll is there so far, but it's one of the two that was in our store.  The other was the African American version of the same doll.  You can see the brunette school girl HERE.  Their site also shows the new camping set, the new sleepover set, the new snowboarding clothing and accessory set, and the new ice skating set. :)  (Just a reminder, some of the pants and skirts from this line are a little snug on AG dolls, so be aware of that.)     

And I finally found my Granny Smith MLP blind bag pony at Walmart! :)  Now I just need Apple Bloom and I'll have the main 4 members of the Apple Family in miniature. :)

The moral of the story is, go check your local stores.  Everyone is starting to get their new toy stock in! :)

I mentioned this briefly before, but the blog will probably will be a bit quiet until later this next week.  The next few days I really need to focus on lesson plans, getting girls ready for school, and getting to bed early enough so I can function in the mornings. ;)  (I'm SO not a morning person!!)

Tess, Maggie and Belle should be getting something up on their blogs this next week, too.  They've informed me that blogging has been too difficult these past couple of weeks with all of us running around like crazy, trying to get through our last minute school preparations. ;)

Hope you're all having a great weekend! :)

Madame Alexander Friends Boutique Doll Review (with pics!) :)

Hi everyone! I got some birthday money and had some eBay sales, so I splurged and bought the African-American version of the Madame Alexander Friends Boutique dolls at Wal-mart. So, just thought I'd share some pics of our newest member: Claire Rebecca Jones, and also give you some of the pros and cons of this particular doll.

Well, the first thing I have to say is that she is absolutely gorgeous!! :) She has the sweetest face. Her body is the same size and basically the same style as the Alexander Girlz dolls and the Madame Alexander Friends 4 Life dolls from last year. She has the same poseable vinyl head, vinyl arm, legs and chest plate, and cloth body. The main difference is that she has poseable arms and legs as well. Here's some pics of her in the box:

I have to say I was pretty disappointed with her poseability (is that a word?).  Basically, she has hollow arms and legs that have flexible wire inside (there's even wire inside her cloth body).  Both her arms and legs take some definite force to get into position (so much so that I was worried she would break when my 4-year-old tried posing her).  Her arms seem to like a certain point of articulation; there's basically one position they like to stay in.  If you try to pose her arms a little closer or farther, they won't stay in position.

You can squeeze her hands completely flat since she's hollow...it's really weird!

This is the position her arms like the best...it's hard to get them to stay otherwise.

Claire demonstrating the fun part about poseablity.  Tea, anyone?

Striking a pose. :)

Her legs stay in position pretty well.  I guess my biggest complaint is that she looks like someone deflated her legs and arms when you bend them.  It's not as noticeable when she wears looser clothing, but when she wears tight clothing, like in the pic below, it's glaringly obvious.  Couldn't they have done joints in her arms and legs instead?  Then at least she would look a little more realistic (especially in skin-tight clothes).

 

The other thing I'm wondering is how well these dolls will hold up to normal play, especially since they are a cheaper alternative to an American Girl doll for a younger child.  It makes me think of those bendy plastic toys with wire in them.  You play with them too much, and the wire eventually breaks inside (my brother's bendy toys were always breaking because he used them so much!).  Not only that, but since it's fairly difficult to bend the arms and legs, I could see this being frustrating for younger children. 

In looser clothing, the legs and arms look a little better.  And I think the poseability wouldn't be a problem for collectors...I just don't know how good it is for little girls.

The other thing to note is that her hair is pretty low quality.  Since I've had experience with these dolls in the past, I was expecting this, so it wasn't a surprise.  Within the first ten minutes of taking Claire out of her box, she had one strand of hair that was hanging 4 inches or so below the rest of her hair.  And although I love her corkscrew curls, they are very hard to salvage once they've been messed up.  Give this doll to your young daughter for Christmas, and I guarantee the hair will be a disaster within a day or two, if not sooner!  If you wanted to get one of these for a younger child, I would recommend one with straighter hair.  It's a little easier to manage.  Once again, for a collector the hair shouldn't be a problem.  Just don't plan on doing many styles with it.

The clothes she came with were cute and not too bad quality-wise.  I love her paisley shirt (the purple sleeves are attached...before I opened her I wasn't sure if it was 2 different shirts).  She came with everything in the pic below:

Here's a pic of her without her clothing:

I also bought one of the accessory sets, just to show you.  I bought the "Slumber Party Fun Set", which includes a pizza, a boom box, a board game, 4 barrettes, 2 sodas, and 2 bottles of "fingernail polish".  Here are some pics:

The back of the box has pics of some of the other accessories sets.

Here are some close-ups of the Slumber Party set:

The set is really cute.  I especially love the pizza and the boom box.  All of the sets shown here cost $10 each.  The only thing I was disappointed in was the low quality of the board game and the sodas and other things.  The board game is just printed on thin cardboard, and the sodas and things are just colored plastic with stickers on them.  I know in my house, the first thing to come off would be all those brightly colored stickers.  At the same time, you're only paying $10, so...I guess it's up to you and what you want to pay for.  :)   

One other thing to consider is the Target "Our Generation" brand.  While I don't care for their dolls, I think their accessories sets (comparable to these ones) are better quality and look nicer.  They are about $7 more per set (each set sells for about $16.58 instead of $10), but you get more in the set and the items have better quality.  To get an idea of what they have available, I've included a link to the "Our Generation" slumber party set at Target.com HERE.  This will give you an idea of the differences.  Notice that the Target set includes a sleeping bag and pillow.  There's not a boom box, but when I was in Target, on the back of the box it showed another coordinating slumber party set with a pink sleeping bag and a boom box.  I also really liked the "Our Generation" camping set.  While I love the cool campfire that comes with the Madame Alexander Friends Boutique camping set, I love the fact that the "Our Generation" camping set comes with a tent and sleeping bag.  For doll camping supplies, it might even be worth buying one Madame Alexander set and one OG set, just to get the best of both worlds. :) 

So overall, I love my new doll.  She is beautiful, despite my concerns about her durability for a young girl.  Hope this post gave you a better idea of whether you want to add a Friends Boutique doll to your dolly family.  :)

Claire hanging out with Hailey, her new friend.

Claire loves "The Princess and the Frog". :)

Some close-ups to leave you with...

...isn't she so photogenic? :)