It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a big purple bag! (I’m back with my announcement!)

      Hi, friends! <3 It’s E here today, and I’m back with the announcement I mentioned in my last post! 

       My announcement is: Last weekend, I got to go to the last ever American Girl benefit sale!! ❤️ This was one of the best experiences of my life and I’m beyond grateful. Huge thanks to everyone who let me have this wonderful experience, my parents (for so many reasons) and my neighbors that let me babysit so I could earn money! I wanted to do a bit of a blog experience thing about it, because I’ve learned I’m obsessed with benefit sale vlogs on YouTube. I’m not a YouTuber, so this is as close as we’re going to get to my own vlog today. 😉

        If you need an explanation as to what the benefit sale is, read this paragraph! Essentially, American Girl donates all of their return and overstock items to the Madison Children’s Museum in Madison, Wisconsin. This is a tradition that has lasted since the days of Pleasant Company. The founder of Pleasant Company, Pleasant T. Rowland, was very passionate about this museum and her and her husband basically donated enough money for the whole museum to be built. Every year, the Madison Children Museum (MCM) sells all of the items AG donates to them as a HUGE fundraiser! This year, they announced that this year’s sale will be the last one hosted by MCM, as MCM wants to focus on their priority of being a museum.

     Here’s a cute countdown calendar I made before the sale. 

       I had Friday filled in because we were driving that day! It was about a 10 hour drive from where we live to Madison, and I’ll admit a lot of people looked at us kind of crazy for driving that long. I personally didn’t think that was an outlandish amount of driving for American Girl stuff, but who knows? Maybe I am crazy. 

      With the initial lottery, our ticket times were 1:00. The sale started at 8:00, I believe, for early shoppers, so we weren’t thrilled, especially since the afternoon shopper tickets started at 1:45 and were way cheaper. We were lucky enough to purchase 9:30 tickets from a woman who wasn’t able to go to the sale. That was the perfect time for us! We may or may not have arrived at the center the sale was taking place 2 hours early. Even though we weren’t allowed to line up until 15 minutes before our time. Yeah, we got there a little early on accident. We shopped the vendors beforehand, and there was a lot of cute stuff!  

       ^This was an outfit I saw in the vendors that I found hilarious. 

       Let me tell you, the MCM purple bags that apparently fit 8 boxed dolls are HUGE! I’m 5’ 9” and this is the bag compared to me:

       Don’t ask why I put the bag on my head. I get extra goofy when I’m excited. I probably still would have put it on my head if I wasn’t excited. 

      Finally, it was our time to line up! I was so excited I was shaking!

       My mom and I have a running joke about the sale that it was like this scene from our favorite show, The Middle. 

       In all honesty, it wasn’t near that crazy, but some of the things that happened at the sale remind me of what happened in the news clip. I sort of expected the sale to be that crazy, so I was relieved that it was actually pretty calm. 

       

       I have no pictures of the sale part on first day except for this one my mom took of me. Now you guys have finally seen my face! Just kidding, that’s an emoji. Emojis on other random strangers faces so they don’t sue me. Because seriously, you can get sued for that and mostly I’m just really paranoid. I was standing next to this table that had so-called “Limited Treasures.” These were very old, retired items they had few of, in many cases, only one of. There were things like vintage AG catalogs and a pre-Beforever Samantha. I *cough* went Frankie Heck mode there. (Watch the video above… when she jumps on the table… that was me mentally. Not physically though. I think I would have been kicked out.) 

      The limits on the first day were 5 dolls, 15 accessories, 2 voucher items, and I forgot how many girl’s clothing items. :) My mom and I had 2 shopper tickets, and we didn’t even get close to our combined limits! I got some cool stuff I can’t wait to show you guys! 

        The next day, we had 10:00 tickets. Almost everything was gone by then! They had decreased prices by 20% and increased limits to 20 dolls and 20 accessories. Resellers were buying PALLETS of dolls and it was low key enough to make you a little sad about humanity. The only dolls they had were #91, #31, #67, #79, and #28. 

 

      

       I enjoyed the first day wayyyy more. I was a little disappointed when I saw they didn’t have Nanea or Rebecca for sale. But, my mood quickly changed after picking up a really cool item. I’ll show you guys what I got! 

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       This is now officially the haul portion of the post! The pictures aren’t the greatest, because I took them in the hotel. I was going to take better pictures when I got home, but everything was unboxed in 0.238753 seconds after getting home. 

       

       This honestly is something I don’t need, but I saw the price and couldn’t help myself. My dolls have needed a table for a long time, but I’ve also wanted my dolls to have a cool cafe to hang out at, so I grabbed this! 

       I was super excited to find Nanea’s birthday accessories! This was the first thing my mom and I grabbed, and we pulled it out of the big bin people were putting the things they had grabbed but didn’t want. I wanted this set because of the camera! Nanea’s camera is a Target Brownie Six-20, and is a very similarly named model to a camera I own! At some point I’ll do a comparison between some stuff that I have from Nanea’s time period so you guys can see! 

     

        Who would have expected the twins to have anything at the sale? Not me! But, this set was one of the things we saw early on! There were only 2 or 3, and I didn’t pick it up, but I later saw a girl with it and felt sad that I didn’t grab it. Then, my mom and I decided to reorganize what was in our bags, and low and behold, this set had somehow been in our bag all along! My review on the twins is one of my most popular posts, so I’ll try to do a review on their computer set! I hope you guys enjoy it! 



       I always dreamed about this skate park when I was younger. Is it cool to say I’m fulfilling my childhood dreams? I’m still pretty young lol. It’s been cannon that my dolls’ fictional town of Piney Grove has a skate park, and now it finally does! This set was only… wait for it… $15!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m not joking! It originally retailed for over $100!! We couldn’t believe the price, and had to ask how much it was to make sure it had the right sticker! 


      

        I know I don’t have Nanea yet, but I really wanted her accessories because of the two dollar bills in the set! I have a Hawaii dollar just like these—- a post about it is definitely coming soon! 

        My brother has been playing Hockey for half his life, so I’ve wanted this set for a while now. I feel like it’s original retail price is justifiable, but I had to snatch it while it was $30! My brother opened it with me and it was… an interesting experience.

       The LoveShackFancy Garden Party Dress has always been an outfit I’ve wanted, so getting it at the sale was a no-brainer! 


       

       Molly’s accessories are the only thing I was missing from her current available collection, so of course I snatched them while they were at the sale! 

      

        I picked this up because nostalgia. 😉


       Since I got Josefina, I’ve wanted her accessories, so I just had to grab them! 

     I know this is a stock photo, but I really did get Felicity’s bed! This was the item at the limited treasures table that I went crazy for. I kinda froze up right in front of it because I was fairly confident I couldn’t just pick it up and shove it in my bag, and then I got super anxious because I wanted to show my mom and people around me started talking about it and pointing it out, so I just aggressively stood there in front of it until my mom got there. I feel silly, though, because it sadly doesn’t fit in my dollhouse. Like, at all. 😉

       On day 2, I only got one thing.

      

       Meet Toni! Truly me 31 was one of the dolls I was hoping would be at the sale. She was actually the only doll that I was interested in at the sale, but I kept putting her back because I really don’t need another doll. Then, she was surprisingly one of the only dolls left on day 2! I realized that I really wanted a doll as a part of the benefit sale experience, and I decided to get her. The woman who checked us out was so excited I was getting a 31, and that made me excited about it, too! Like many of my other Truly Mes, I picked out Toni’s name way before I got her. It’s a little bit of a silly story. One late night I thought, “I’m going to name a doll ‘Mac and Cheese.’” And I’m realizing how weird this sounds, but I actually loved the hilarious-ness of naming a doll something so silly, I decided that, since Toni rhymes with macaroni, my collection could not go without her. 31 seemed like the perfect candidate to be the one and only Toni Macaroni. Toni, of course, is her first name, and she still needs a middle name and last name, so suggestions are welcome! 

       My mom bought a few things that she claimed were for my birthday and Christmas, but she surprised me by giving all of it to me after we got back! I think I actually picked out and grabbed a lot of these things lol. 

       There was a photographer at the sale, and somewhere in the universe, there’s a picture of me grabbing these shoes.

       My mom and I both agreed this outfit was so cute. It’s definitely one of my favorite things from the Janie and Jack collab. 



      This was something I pointed out as something I didn’t have but always wanted, and my mom suggested I grab it! 

      Courtney is my mom’s favorite doll, so she picked up this sweatshirt since I didn’t have it! 

       This is another one of my favorite things from the Janie and Jack collab! I mean, those sleeves! 🤩

       I love cardigans, so I’ve always liked this one. My mom suggested we grab it for the dolls. 



       Self-explanatory. 



       This was at the limited treasures table and my mom grabbed it! It’s one of the old CYO accessory sets! 

       So…. I may or may not have announced that Claudie is my favorite AG doll ever shortly before the sale, so this speaks for itself. 🤭



       Same here. 😉

       And that was the total haul! I’m obsessed with everything!! Another quick announcement for you guys: since I got a lot of accessories, the dollhouse is being completely redecorated, and as a result of how it’s being decorated, a lot of the setting/universal law world building writing things in my photostories will be changing. It’s something I’ve been dreaming about for a while, and I’m excited! (Also a bit scared, but alas, change is scary.) 

       I hope you enjoyed hearing about my trip and seeing my haul! I’d love to hear in the comments what you guys would be interested in me doing a review on! Or let me know if you could name a doll something super silly, what would it be? I’ll leave you off with this picture of Toni! 

       Remember to eat your veggies! Bye! <3