Emily Rose just celebrated her 12th birthday.  Now that she is getting older one of the things I miss is having a “theme birthday party”.  Don’t get me wrong we still have a great time on Emily’s birthday.  But long gone are the days of slaving over creating a “Blue’s Clue’s cupcake cake” or spending hours piecing together princess goodie bags.  Themed parties are so much fun.  One of our @Home founder’s members wrote a great guest post on creating an American Girl Doll ® party for your favorite American girl just a few weeks ago.  In browsing the web this week we uncovered another party planning post specifically with the American Girl Doll theme.  Purple Trail Party ideas has a great post you can read here.  My favorite idea is to blow up a paper doll image of your doll and post her on the wall for the girls to decorate with clothes and accessories.  Why not add to the challenge and give the girls a specific period in history to adhere to?  Or you could turn the concept in to a craft activity by having the girl’s make paper dolls themselves.

An American Girl Doll ® party is such a fun idea for a theme.  What would you do at your doll party?

Emily has already asked me multiple times for a Facebook account. “All my friends have Facebook accounts”, she will whine pointlessly, knowing full well how far that argument will get her in our house. I was surprised when I checked and found out that the minimum age for a Facebook account (according to Facebook) is only 14. I don’t know why I hadn’t expected that but it scares me. I started to do some research online on Facebook usage amongst the younger set and came to the conclusion that rules and guidance are not only required but should be discussed and monitored in length.

I was so relieved when I came across this very well-thought out and totally thorough Facebook Contract from the website Pass The Torch.

I know it is probably very early for most of our readers to be thinking about this issue – but you might want to do as I did and bookmark this contract and add it to your future calendar for the dreaded Facebook sign-up date. Trust me… time passes awfully quickly.