Kitt Kittredge -9yr- Party in a  Treehouse

My daughter loves her Kit American Girl doll, and has an outfit for herself that closely matches her doll, so it was easy to choose her party theme for her 9th birthday! 

I purchased a Kit Kittredge mystery party kit from the American Girl website, and it included invitations, name tags, scripts for the girls to read when acting out the mystery, cards written with hobo code, and clues for the parent to set out. 

We assigned each of her friends a specific role, and the invitation included a card for each role that described their role and how they should dress.  The girls all did a great job of dressing for their part!  We had a little girl that came dressed as Stirling (a boy), another came as a nurse, another as a hobo, others that came with their hair in a bun and wearing nylon stockings, etc (exactly how their invitation had suggested). 

We decorated the inside of our house with large hot pink, light pink, and yellow tissue flowers hung from the ceiling and a colorful balloon bouquet. As each girl arrived, they set their doll at the doll table.  The dolls each had a brownie bite with an icing flower on top, set on a small white doilie.  Then the girls went to Kit's treehouse.  We turned our back patio into Kit's treehouse by hanging a camoflauge tarp to enclose the patio and adding a lot of potted plants. 

On the back door that led to the treehouse, we hung a poster that read Kit's Treehouse" and had a photo of my daughter standing in front of Kit's treehouse at the American Girl boutique plus it had the hobo code for "safe camping here."  I printed photos of my daughter with each of her friends that came to the party in sepia color with a jagged border.  We glued these in collage form onto a black posterboard with the title "Member-o-bilia" just like in the movie!  The girls enjoyed finding pictures of themselves on the poster! 

We also decorated the treehouse with cameras and a stuffed monkey (there was a monkey in the Kit movie) and we had a child's size table with a small bowl of water in it.  My daughter asked each girl to recite the members only pledge and dip their fingers into the water again just like the movie! 

Once they came inside from the treehouse we played a variation of duck-duck-goose but the girls said "hobo-hobo-Kit" instead.  They loved playing that game and running around!  Since the party was from 5 - 8pm we served dinner.  I set the table with bright pink and yellow striped plates with yellow napkins that had a hot pink smaller tissue paper flower acting as the napkin ring and we had place cards for each character. 

Dinner included ham sandwiches cut out as daisy flowers and PB&J sandwiches cut out as butterflies.  We also served macaroni and cheese carrots and ranch dressing chips brownies and lemonade which were some of the items recommended in Kit's cookbook.  At dinner the girls read Kit's Talking Tips.  These were cards that came with Kit's cookbook and had a conversation starting question on each card.  After dinner we read through the mystery skit and had quite a few laughs!  Some of the girls really got into playing their parts! We then sang Happy Birthday ate cake and ice cream and opened presents. 

As each girl handed my daughter her gift she said which American Girl doll she brought to the party and a little something about her doll.  I also took group photos and individual photos of each girl with my daughter and some shots with the girls and their dolls.  We finished the evening by watching the Kit Kittredge movie.  Each girl went home with a favor bag that included a matching fleece hat scarf and mittens that my mom sewed. 

One girl spent the night so they gave their dolls pretend baths in an American Girl bathtub and changed their dolls into pajamas then we did a craft of making fleece sleeping bags for their dolls.  We all had a really good time at this party and it was unique because none of her friends have ever had a mystery party before!  "