Pass the Christmas Bauble Game for Doll Lovers

Old-fashioned bauble postcard to
download, print and send as an
invitation to the Bauble Game Party.

        For this Christmas party, you will need to invite as many playmates as you can who are also lovers of dolls, for the gifts or prizes are to be doll sized and intended for doll play. Suggested Christmas themed doll gifts are below. All of these may be made in bulk for a special party like this one!

 

The Primary Game for This Party

       The supplies needed to assemble the large bauble for the game include: tape, gift wrap, plastic wrap and small numbered tags. Each numbered tag will correspond to a numbered, wrapped gift with a doll sized prize. 

       There are two ways that may be used to pass the bauble. The first is to pass it is in a way that uses music. Play a Christmas selection from a radio, itunes, Youtube etc... When the music plays the bauble must be passed from friend to friend. When the music stops the guest left holding the bauble may open the outer-most layer only on the bauble and keep the small numbered tag that falls out. Then start the Christmas music again to repeat the game. The person in charge of the music needs to be careful to allow each guest to have a turn to unwrap and keep a tag. After all of the tags have been unwrapped and distributed, the guests may retrieve the corresponding, numbered gift from beneath the Christmas tree and open it.

       The second method of playing this game involves a set of dice. The bauble is passed from guest to guest in the following manner. The first guest peals away layers of the party bauble while the guest seated on their left rolls dice. The dice rolling ends the unwrapping of the bauble. The numbered tag(s) that fall from the unwrapping process belongs to the person unwrapping the bauble. If the bauble is wrapped in a complex way... fewer gifts will be distributed. If the person unwrapping the bauble is quick enough, he or she could possibly collect many tags. Once doubles have been rolled the gift opening is passed to the player next in line on her left and this player repeats the unwrapping while the guest on their left starts to roll the dice for doubles and so on. 

       If rolling doubles for this game is used, the host should be prepared to have an overabundance of gift wrapped with corresponding numbers to the tags. Once all of the tags are distributed, the numbered corresponding gifts beneath the tree may be opened.

How to wrap a Christmas Bauble Step-by-Step: Begin to wrap this game bauble with a small rubber ball. Tape a tag with the number 1. to it's surface. Now wrap around the tag and ball several layers of plastic wrap. Then insert another numbered tag and wrap around this layer using plastic wrap and then, a layer of Christmas wrapping paper and scotch tape. Continue on in this manner with mutiple tags and layers of plastic wrap and wrapping paper. There should be a stack of nicely wrapped gifts with the same number of corresponding tags, off to the side on a table or shelf. After the game has been played  every guest should have one or more tickets. The gifts with matching tickets are then distributed to guests with the matching tickets.

 

Suggested Prizes For The Bauble Game: wrapped in advance with numbered tickets taped to the outside of the box...

• A cookie sheet with doll sized cookies
• doll sized Santa hats
• tiny doll sized mittens
• a merry little Christmas wreath
• mini strands of real Christmas lights (from dollar store)
• Christmas candles: matching sets of tapers or a larger candle with trim
• doll sized book of Christmas Carols
• a Christmas sticker garland for a doll's tree or mantle
• Doll sized Christmas stockings
  

Suggestions for Refreshments: A decorated Christmas cake with ice cream and punch served at the end of the gift opening.

Hostess Gifts: Doll sized Christmas cakes to be served at home by every little doll in attendance at the party to remember their night of fun and mischief!

Dolls Can Host A "White Elephant Party" for Christmas

        Unfortunately to most Americans the term "white elephant" requires no explanation. Each of us has tucked away in some corner an article he or she would gladly throw away were it not for the feeling of wastefulness involved. In fact, your dolls may also wish to deep clean their own dollhouse or closet to rid these of useless articles like: a left shoe without a matching right, chipped doll pottery, a blanket with holes, or even a toy that some jealous pet has chewed upon. So why not give these unwanted things away in a playful, fun-filled "white elephant" party for your dolls?

       Send invitations from one doll to another (preferably one belonging to another child's doll) and suggest a Winter Christmas party among your classmates, neighbors etc... who also have an interest in doll play. The White Elephant Card below has been provided to hand out among your friends.

A Jingle to Print Inside the Invitation:
Twenty white elephants, going for a song;
Have you an elephant? Pass it along.
Wrap it and mark it -- no name, if you please;
You'll get rid of your burden with laughter and ease.

Postcard invitation for your doll's "White Elephant" party.

Refreshment Suggestions: Make elephant shaped sugar cookies iced with white frosting and serve these treats with chocolate milk.

 

The Primary Game: White Elephant

       Request that each doll participant bring a doll's possession, wrapped with Christmas paper and trims, that is no longer wanted. Every guest should be seated after arriving around a table or in a comfortable circle on the floor with pillows. Don't have the passing begin until all guests are on the scene. After which vintage Christmas music is played as a signal to begin for each exchange. The 'gifts' will be passed off to some other party participant who will in turn open the gift and try to pass it off to a third person and so on until it is finally excepted by one person or rejected by all.
      Forty-five minutes should be allowed for 25 some odd gifts to be opened and rejected. Until this time has elapsed no white elephant is final property. Whatever 'gift' is in the player's hands when the final Christmas carol plays, she must keep and take at least one from the party with her.
      However, if any participant is happy with the white elephant she has opened before the final tune, and she thinks she can find no other that pleases her more, she may withdraw from the game prior to the forty-five minute deadline. This guest may watch the party proceed but cannot change her mind to reenter the game.

Polite ways to handle a young emotional crowd if necessary...

       A clever hostess will monitor the game as it progresses and watch for especially 'unwanted' items unwrapped in the crowd. The hostess will trade with whoever (one or more persons) has the misfortune to be left with such a gift. She will politely suggest that she has been looking for this possession for quite sometime to recycle into something else. . .while handing this guest a new gift from her own stash of secret presents that she knows will please any person in attendance. This gift will not be a ''true white elephant'', but a nicely crafted, doll accessory or dollhouse decoration. By these means, no guest leaves the party disappointed because they were 'stolen from' or 'traded with' too often.

       The hostess may also extend the timing of the gift exchange by entering secret gifts into the collection under the tree. These should be wrapped in plain brown paper and the gifts should be things that she knows her guests 'actually want.' The secret gifts should be placed beneath the tree after the other white elephants have been exchanged. In this way, the "white elephants" may be taken less serious if the children are not treating the game in a light-hearted fashion. Many first-time players do not totally understand the point of a "white elephant" and this helps to ease tension after the preferable gifts have been stolen too frequently. I have conducted "white elephants" and "ornament exchanges" for many years and find these methods calm frustrated guests successfully.

"One man's trash, is another man's treasure." More suggestions for recycling discarded items...

• Have a garage sale for charity.
• Take things apart to recycle/reuse materials in a whole new way.
• Give unwanted items to charity resale.
• Regift to your dolls, they usually have easy opinions about almost anything!
• Look at old things in a whole new way. Our doll's favorite cups are recycled thimbles, kerchief's that are now tablecloths, juice can lids made into new doll sized platters and plates etc... Use your imagination!

More ways to play White Elephant:

• How to play "White Elephant" at Christmas by ehow
• Kids White Elephant Game with kids from 2017
• Opening Holiday Presents: Barbie's White Elephant Gift Exchange

Send old-fashioned birthday wishes through the dolly post...

       The following vintage Birthday cards are for your 18" dolls to send via the dolly post office. Cut and paste them to card stock to make doll postcards or glue them to the front of mini greeting cards and then wright a message inside for your Best Birthday Wishes.

The postcards above range from 1890s through the 1950's.
Give your American Girl doll a card from her own era if you'd like...

Postcards from WWI

        The following doll sized postcards cover the historical topic of WWI. Originally these tiny greetings were pasted across the envelopes of letters to seal them with a bit of color. They are very old, but I have cleaned them for this new use.

Download, print and paste these WWI postcard greetings on top of heavy cardstock.

Cut them out carefully and then help your doll to write a message of encouragement
to their pretend fathers and mothers fighting in a war.

Dolls Can Now Send Vintage Halloween Greetings

        Your doll can send a Happy Halloween message to all of their friends and family through the dolly post! These vintage, reproductions include: carved vegetables, corn, pumpkins, jack-o-lanterns, straw hats, children in costume, witchy brooms, tub of apples, black cats, scarecrows, party table, lighted candle, and a large hoot owl!

Printables at our blog are not to be redistributed from any other online collection or sold
 for profit. They are the property of kathy grimm and are for personal home use only.

Printable Valentines for Playtime With Dolls

       Your doll can send a Happy St. Valentine's Day message to all of their friends and family through the dolly post! These vintage, reproduction postcards include: angels, hearts, roses, violets, charming young children, Victorian ladies, doves and even a kiss!

Printables at our blog are not to be redistributed from any other online collection or sold
 for profit. They are the property of kathy grimm and are for personal home use only.

Little valentine messages to include on the back of your cards:

"These two hearts are yours and mine,

If you'll be my Valentine.''

"Two hearts with but a single bond,

Filled with fancies dear and fond.''

"Hearts have wings on St. Valentine's Day.

They fly to each other from far away.''

St. Patrick's Day Printable Postcards for Your Dolls

       Your doll can send a Happy St. Patrick's Day message to all of their friends and family through the dolly post! These vintage, reproductions include: clover, shamrocks, clergy, ladies, spinning wheel, leprechauns, harps, flags, pennants, frogs, top hats, planets and even Blarney Castle!

Printables at our blog are not to be redistributed from any other online collection or sold
 for profit. They are the property of kathy grimm and are for personal home use only.

A Creepy Halloween Party for Your Dolls and You

A nostalgic little Halloween invitation for your doll party. Print and send
these to all your friends and their dolls. Don't forget to fill out the date,
time and location of your spooky party!

       Turn the lights low; pile more logs on the open fire, and then play some of these games on Halloween. They will make one quite sure that there are fairies, and gnomes, and elves, and all the rest of the delightful little folk that live, usually, only between the covers of the picture books.

A Jack-O-Lantern Game. From our printable below, print ever so many of the quaint little pumpkins on orange construction paper and then cut them out, neatly, coloring their round eyes, noses, smiling mouths. Write down a number on the back of each jack-o-lantern, ten for the most frightening, five each for the friendly faces and one for just a plain uncarved pumpkin, and so on until each little squash has a number. Then hide the pumpkins in out-of-the-way corners of the room, behind the curtains, inside books, peeping out from the backs of pictures and beneath the rugs. The children who are going to play the game must stay out of the room while the pumpkins are being hidden, but, at a given signal, they return and begin a merry hunt for the paper pumpkins to see who can find the greatest number in fifteen minutes. After the pumpkins have been collected, each child counts up the numbers on the back of his pumpkin to see who has the highest score. There should be a nice prize for the winner!

The Game of Tinker Bell. She was the strange little fairy, you know, in the story of Peter Pan, whom one never saw, but only heard, because her voice was a tiny, tinkling bell. To play this fairy game, all the children, except two, join hands and make a ring in the center of the room. If it is a party, it will be much more fun to have these two children dressed in costume, one with wings upon her shoulders like a fairy and the other in a Peter Pan cap. Peter and the fairy stand in the center of the circle, the fairy wearing a tiny bell hung from her wrist by a ribbon, and which she rings from time to time. Peter's eyes are blindfolded, and he tries to catch the fairy by following the sound of the bell. As he almost reaches Tinker Bell, she moves softly away, and the children move also, but very softly too, on their tiptoes. If Peter does succeed in catching the fairy he gives his cap to some other child to wear, who is, in his turn, blindfolded and tries to catch Tinker Bell.

The Fairy Gifts. Every one knows that Halloween is the night when the fairies give good gifts to little children. One may choose one's own gifts when playing this game.

       Draw or paint a big yellow crescent moon on a white sheet and all about it draw many little yellow stars. Upon the moon, and in the center of each star, paste little white papers, with the name of a good gift written plainly on it. These gifts may be anything that a child would like very much; a set of dolls' dishes, a drum, a party, happiness, a new book, a sunshiny day, all these and many more gifts are written down. Each child is blindfolded, turned about two or three times, and then told to walk up to the sheet and pick out a gift. Perhaps he will not be able to touch any gift at all. Perhaps a boy will select a doll for his gift and a girl a drum‚ that is the fun of the game, but before the time is up some delightful gifts will have been touched which the children can write down on slips of paper and count up, afterward, to see who is to be the happiest and the richest during the year.

Secrets. This is a mystery game that will furnish ever so much fun as the children sit around the open fire on Halloween. One child leaves the room while the others decide upon some object or character connected with the eve. Then the child returns and says to each of the others in turn:

"What is your secret like?"

Perhaps a Jack-o-Lantern was chosen, and the answers are:

• "It is round."
• "It has large eyes."
• "It grows in the garden."
• "It is orange," and then the child is able to guess what it is.

If an elf was decided upon, the answers may be like these:

• "It is tiny."
• "It lives in story books."
• "It is fond of playing tricks."
• "It wears pointed shoes," and after awhile the child finds out.

The Witch. To play this game, one child is chosen to play the part of the witch and she may wear a red cloak, a pointed cardboard hat, and have a toy black cat sitting upon her shoulder. In one hand she carries a little broom and she is blindfolded. The other children form a circle around the witch and dance about her, chanting: 

"On Halloween,

We all believe,
A witch rides over the trees,
On a broomstick steed,
She's a sight indeed,
And she catches each child
she sees."

       At the end of the jingle, the children stand still and the witch points her broom at one child, who

must catch hold of it.

       "Who are you?" asks the witch.

       In reply the child who holds the broom disguises his voice and crows like a rooster, gobbles like a turkey, peeps like a chick, or makes any other animal or bird sound. If the witch is able to recognize the child's voice and tell his name the child has to pay some funny forfeit.

Printable sheet of pumkins for A Jack-O-Lantern Game described above.
Print pumpkins directly onto orange construction paper before cutting them out.

More Halloween fun with dolls:

• American Girl Doll Halloween Party with a Werewolf!
• The Haunting Halloween Party - Dolloween Special
• An American Girl Halloween
• Trick or Treat?
• An American Girl Halloween