Very funny, Elizabeth

I got my first American Girl doll of my own 3 years ago, Molly McIntire, my dream doll. However, that's not necessarily the first American Girl doll that I've ever played with. A long time ago, a family member had been given Felicity Merriman as a birthday gift, and since then and partially motivated from watching the Felicty movie over and over again, I was very much inspired to try and get Elizabeth. But as you all know, that never ended up happening.
Fast forward a good amount of years and that finally happened.

American Girls are very expensive dolls. I remember when they would sell for around $80 and back then I saw that is pretty pricey. Nowadays they sell for $115. So you can imagine how excited I was when I saw Elizabeth selling on Ebay for $48. So I grabbed her. The doll didn't come with her actual dress, and normally that doesn't bother me. I was pretty happy with the idea of remaking her outfit with fabric I already have, but since Elizabeth is such a fancy and exquisite doll, Kitty convinced me to look for her outfit as well.

Seeing as Elizabeth has been retired for a quite a long time now, the doll and the outfits sell for pretty expensive on the used market. Sometimes auctions start out pretty cheap and you think for a moment, "Hey, maybe I can get this for a good deal!", but they almost always go up to ridiculously expensive prices in the end. I got really lucky though and managed to bid on and win Elizabeth's entire outfit (the dress, shift, and shoes - though it didn't come with socks, but who cares!), as well as a couple of accessories like her pinner cap and a necklace.

And after a few delays with shipping and stuff, everything arrived.

Here she is on the day the doll arrived.  (All the photos in this post have been edited slightly due to the lighting being all wonky, so don't be surprised if they look a bit washed-out or the colors don't look very accurate.)

Her hair didn't look too bad.  She just needed a little bit of shampoo and condition and a good brushing.

Also, I didn't know that the doll I ordered was coming with earrings, so that was a nice surprise.  Now, these earrings were pretty stuck in her ears for some reason, and in trying to get it out, we broke one of them.  Oops!  It's much easier to get it out by taking off the head and pushing the earrings out from the inside. It's much less damaging to your nails, haha.

The doll also came with her necklace, which is pretty neat.

Also, the earring that broke was missing the rhinestone that was on it.  So while gluing the earring back together, I also glued on a rhinestone of my own.  It's a bit too small, but you can hardly tell the difference. :)

The back of her hair.

And now here's the doll after getting her hair all cleaned up.

Not sure how well the camera picked it up, but here hair was so much smoother, shinier, and softer after shampooing and conditioning it.

This is attempt #1 at fixing her pin curls.  They were pretty easy to find on her left side, but the right side's pin curls had been cut off it seemed, so I instead took hair from the general area of her original pin curls and cut them myself.  Now because they aren't the original pin curls, they don't curl as well, so I've attempted to do curl them several times now.

The back of the hair all nice and curled.  (Most of the curls fell out but that's okay since I only wanted a little bit at the bottom.

And now here she is after her dress and accessories arrived in the mail.

Her dress is absolutely gorgeous.  I love all the details and the design of the dress. 

Her pretty shoes.

Also since the outfit came with a necklace as well, guess who now has two Elizabeth necklaces. xD

And this is my latest attempt at the pin curls.  You can really see the difference between the original pin curls (right) and the ones I cut (left).  Hopefully I'll figure out a way of making them look good.

I'm so happy to finally have Elizabeth in my collection with her entire outfit. She is so beautiful, and I'm glad I was able to get her at a much more affordable cost than the doll would sell for new. I think it was well worth the wait. :)