Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from all of us here at Worldwide Dolls! We hope that you get lots of candy and have a super fun time, whether you're trick or treating or not! We all decided to dress up in pairs this year, and we wanted to share our costumes with you!

Flora and Lydia: Sunflower and Gardener

Clover and Claudia: Gumball Machine and Coins

Meryl and Clementine: Carl and Ellie from UP

Jayne, Nikki, and Riley Jude: Anna (Frozen 2), Elsa, and Anna (Frozen 1)

Marlee and Maja: Velma and Daphne from Scooby Doo

Lila and Eden: Alien and Spacegirl

Georgia and Violet: Sun and Moon

Piper and Madelyn: Devil and Angel

Zaira and Eve: Mad Hatter and Alice

Rosanna and Elijah: Happy Little Tree and Bob Ross

 What are you dressing up as this Halloween? We'd love to know!

-Zaira and Friends

Family Photos: The Mitchell-Mckenzie and Wilson Girls

Hey, everybody! Remember me? The past few months have been busy here on Cedar Island, with school starting and some of our friends moving away to attend college or university. But today I'm back to share the penultimate family portrait, which just happens to be my own! Here I am with my sister, Georgia, and my cousin Flora, who I don't think that you all have had the pleasure of meeting yet.

Georgia is my younger sister, the two of us live with our moms above the store that our family owns on Main Street. Georgia wants to be a musician--she and our friend Violet are in a band together! Our cousin Flora and her mom live on an island just across the straits from Cedar Island, where they're the only residents--her mom is the lighthouse keeper, and Flora attends school on our island except for the few winter days when it's impossible for her to get here. They also have a farm on the island where they raise chickens, sheep, and pigs. When Flora gets older she hopes to run the farm and make a living selling produce, yarn, and honey from their beehives.

I suppose now I should say a bit about me, although I always feel awkward writing about myself! I'm Georgia's older sister, and someday I want to be a photographer, videographer, and journalist.

I hope you have been enjoying our little series! The last girls to be photographed are Piper and Nikki, who are cousins.

-Eve

First Day of School

Hi, everyone! It's Marlee here! I wanted to share the photos that my mom took from Lila, Eden, Maja and I's first day of school today! While it's a little strange to be not actually going off to Cedar High for the first day of my senior year, it's going to be worth it to keep everyone safe. 

My mom made us these little signs, just like she does every year, to celebrate the occasion! Maja and I will be going into 12th grade, Eden will be going into 11th, and Lila will be in 10th grade.

I hope that your school year is getting off to a great start if you're in school currently! Remember to be nice to your teachers and always do your best :) See you soon!

-Marlee Ellis

Family Photos: The Thomas Girls

Hello everyone! It's Eve, and as promised, I'm back again with another installment of my family photos series! Today's subjects are the beautiful Rebekah and Jayne Thomas, two sisters who both attend Cedar High School. 

Both of the Thomas sisters love to act. Rebekah, who is the younger of the two, is very good friends with my friend Mackenzie, who makes a lot of short films. Rebekah hopes to be a film and television actress someday, while Jayne, who has starred in many of our school's musicals, has the goal of being a professional stage actress. This past year at school, Jayne was crowned Homecoming Queen at school, and she's also a member of the cheerleading squad. 

I hope you enjoyed learning more about these two girls! I have a few more family photos to share before this series is complete (Mackenzie and Clover; Georgia, Eve, and Flora; and Violet and Madelyn), and I hope to have them all up in the next week or so before school begins!

See you soon!

-Eve

Family Photos: The Arnold Girls

Hi, friends! It's Eve, and I'm back with another family portrait! These girls are Olive and Clementine Arnold, and they're some of my best friends!

Olive is the older sister, and she someday wants to be a lawyer. She is on our school debate team and has won several speaking contests throughout her time in high school. Clementine, on the other hand, likes to spend her free time outside, either at the beach or in the pool. She's a great swimmer, and last year was on a relay team (with another friend of mine, Violet, and two other girls) that set a school record! 

I'll be back again soon with another portrait, as I'm a bit behind in posting these! I hope you're all doing well out there!

-Eve

Family Photos: The Ellis Girls

Hi everyone! It's Eve, and I'm back with another installment of my "family photos" series! These girl are Marlee, Eden, and Lila Ellis, and I'm super lucky to call all of them my friends. Marlee is a senior, Eden is a junior, and Lila is a freshman at our high school!

Even though they're all sisters, all of the Ellis girls are very different! Marlee is the oldest, and she's also the quietest of the group. She loves to make all sorts of arts and crafts, from jewelry to paintings and drawings, and she also loves to write stories. Eden, the middle sister, is on the Inclusion Board at our school, and she works to make sure that school events and activities are accessible to everyone! Lila, the youngest sister, is definitely the most outgoing of the bunch, and she loves performing!

Before they moved here, all three of the girls lived in New York City, where they attended a performing arts school for dance. Now, Marlee teaches dance after school and on the weekends, and Lila especially loves to perform in talent shows and recitals, often to raise money for good causes!

I hope that you all enjoyed the latest installment of my little series! I'll be back soon with the next family photo.

-Eve

Family Photos: The Montello and Montoya Girls

Hello, friends! Eve here! Recently, I was asked to take photos of some for a section in the school yearbook on families that attend Cedar High. I asked my teacher and my friends if it would be okay if I share the series here, too, since I thought that it turned out really well. I'll be posting the series in increments over the next few weeks. I know that our blog content has been slow since we've all been "social distancing" due to COVID-19, but this project was a fun, safe way to keep taking photos and doing my yearbook duties, since I could take all of the photos from six feet away!

The first group I'm going to be featuring are the Montello girls, Madelyn (in red) and Violet (in yellow), who are twins, and their cousin Josie Montoya (in blue). Maddie and Violet Mexican on their mom's side and Italian on their dad's side, and both of Josie's parents are Mexican.

You can always read about each of us individually on our "Bios" page, but I thought that this series would also be a great opportunity to tell you more about our life here on the island! Maddie and Violet have lived here for about five years now, and before that they lived in a few places in Europe, namely Italy and Spain. Josie only recently moved to the island with her parents, and she lives just across the street from the twins!

All three of the girls are the same age, and they all are seniors at the high school this year. Madelyn is on track to be the class valedictorian, and next year she wants to go to college to study computer science. Violet wants to be an animator or a singer, and she's gotten top awards in our vocal music department at school! Next year she wants to attend a conservatory to study music, and keep working on her art skills, too! Josie loves animals and wants to be a veterinarian, and she's planning on starting at community college and then transferring to a university before she applies to vet school.

I hope you enjoyed learning more about some of our friends here! I will be back soon with the next installment of the series. Thank you for joining us!

-Eve

Cedar Island Public High School 2019-20 Yearbook

Here is the link to our school yearbook from this year!

CLICK HERE!

(Edit to add this photo of Elijah! He's was homeschooled, but here's his photo with Piper's graduation cap.)

Hello from Marlee!

Hi! It's Marlee, and it feels like it's been forever since I posted here. I've been busy busy busy with school and all of the other projects that I've gotten myself involved in, but with only one more week of classes left, I decided that there was enough time to squeeze a post in here and prove to everyone that I'm still hangin' in there!

Here's what I have to show for my (long) absence: this little yellow backpack that I finally finished up the other day! It feels a little silly, now, seeing as I sure can't use it to go to school, but I have it for whenever we're allowed out into the world again. What do you think? Should I make some more and put them in our shop? Let me know!

I hope you're all doing well! As for me, I'm looking forward to when I can see all of my friends again. Lila and I are absolutely losing our marbles in here--Lila more than myself, because she needs to be around people all the time! I'm going a little stir-crazy too, though, and we've been taking a lot of bike rides lately to get out of the house. What have you all been doing?

I'm missing Maja, and everyone else, too, but I know it's best for everybody if we all stay inside!

See you all soon,

-Marlee Evanna Grace Ellis

Riley's Rambles [001]

Hello, world! I hope someone's out there to listen to me for at least a few seconds today, because I feel a bit like I'm going to explode if I have to listen to my own thoughts any longer. :)

Anyway, it's Riley. I've never posted here before, but I asked Zaira if I could make a post today, just about some thoughts that I wanted to share, since I've missed blogging. You see, at my old school, before I moved here this year, I helped run our school blog. It was kind of like a school newspaper and a newsletter in one, except it was online. I wasn't an editor, or anything, but I worked on the blog for two years and I sure got to write about a lot of really interesting things, and some strange ones, too--one time, I had to write a whole post about a girl at our school's parents' Chinese restaurant, which was delicious, and another time I had to do one on a kid on the football team who wore the same pair of polka-dot socks before every game, which was gross, because he hadn't washed them since he got them in eighth grade. Our football team wasn't even that good. We won, like, three games while I went there.

One thing that I'm missing a lot right now while I'm not in school is my band class. I can do all of my English and history and science and even--ew--math classwork online, but there's sure no practicing for our spring concert over Skype or Zoom. It's sad, but there's always next year. I've been sending videos of me playing little songs on the saxophone to my grandparents and aunts and uncles, because maybe it will make them smile. :) Some of my best friends are in band, and that's where I met a lot of my first friends when I came to my new school for the first time, too. Marlee plays the clarinet (and the saxophone, but only for jazz band), and Claudia plays the trumpet, while Rosanna, Jayne, and Georgia all play the flute. Eve plays percussion, but primarily keyboard instruments, something that I'm jealous of, but good-naturedly--I just think that everything must be better for you if you can play the piano. :) Maybe I should take this social isolation to learn, but more likely I'll spend it making weird crafts in my bedroom with Clover and Mackenzie, who live in the next house over,

My new house here is a bit of a weird thing. Where I grew up, in Traverse City, it was not a BIG city, per se, but it was definitely more populated than here. When I lived there though, I lived in a new(ish) house (we were the second owners) in a neighborhood with a big backyard and a patio. It wasn't like we lived in a big open area with no neighbors, but still, it's a big contrast to where I live now. Let me paint the picture for you. You're walking down Main Street, right, just a little bit outside of town, past some of the old, fancy hotels and towards the part where the State Park starts. On your right--which is where the shoreline and lake are--there's some little cottages, one or two or three in a row down little dead-end drives towards the lake. I live down one of those roads, in a cottage-like thing, I guess, except my house is actually three houses stuck together. They all look exactly the same, except for the curtains, the shutter colors, and the front doors, and of course the flowers and bushes and things. I live in the middle house, and on the left is Clover and Mackenzie's house, and on the right is Meryl's. It's a strange thing. I have no idea who built them, and I'd like to investigate, but these days that's not really an option. It's very fun, though, to share a bedroom wall with two of your friends on one side and another on the other.

I was really, really scared about making new friends here when I first moved. I didn't really have a lot of friends at my old school. I was really busy with band and the blog and just doing a lot of other things here and there, and, sure, I had a group of girls I hung out with, but they weren't really the type of close friends you'd have over for sleepovers or anything. I knew moving here that I wanted to make closer friends, maybe even best friends, and it seems like God agreed with me, sticking my bedroom right in the middle of the bedroom of two girls that, before I knew it, would become my best friends. Things have a funny way of working out, don't they?

Woah, this is long. You probably didn't sign up to read QUITE this many of my thoughts today. I have more to tell you, but I'll save it for next time, okay?

Hope you're having a great day,

-Riley Jude

Spring Forest Adventure

Hi, y'all! It's Zaira, but only for a second, because today I'm handing my blogging tasks over to my good friends Elijah and Eve. We've all been trying to stay busy around here, since school is closed and many of our family businesses are, too. Elijah is still at work, of course, and we've all been going to bother him every once in a while., just for something to do. Yesterday, he and Eve decided to go up in the woods on the bluffs and have a little look around at some of the first signs of spring on the island. I'll hand it over to them now! Thank you guys for sharing your exploration!

-Zaira Joy

Hello! It's Eve here, and I think that, first of all, I need to apologize for the both of us when I say that we might make some mistakes with this whole blogging thing. Eli and I are both usually behind-the-scenes sorts of people--you may know that Zaira and I co-run this blog usually, I take the photos and she does the writing. But you might not know that Elijah is an amazing artist. He loves botanical illustration and making little worlds in his sketchbook. He wants to go to school for that someday--but enough from me, for now. Elijah can talk about himself!

Oh! Um, hi. Thanks, Eve! :) I would tell all of you how amazing Eve's photos are, but if you've been around here for even a minute you already know. I can talk about our little walk in the woods, though! I love spending time up on the bluffs any time of the year, but especially in the early spring and late fall when there aren't many people. This year, it's even quieter than usual! I'm lucky that I live in the woods to begin with, my house is pretty isolated and it's nice to hear the birdsongs and things. Although, I suppose other people might not like it as much. I know that Georgia and Eve love living up above their moms' shop on Main Street, and I can see why, with all the fun and excitement that goes on along the shore in summertime.

It's true, Georgia and I do love being right in town, but I love being up in the woods as well. I think in this photo I was trying to convince you to climb a tree with me. You weren't having it.

You're right. I'll stay right here on the ground, thank you very much. And I should probably do what we were asked to do when Zaira first said we could commandder her blog for a day--update you on some signs of spring! And, well, there aren't many yet. It's been rainy, so the grass is getting greener, but you sure can't tell in the photos. There aren't many buds or blooms yet, either, but I did see some crocuses and robins in Lila and Marlee's front yard on the way to work the other morning. It does seem fitting that the season would start for them just a little before it does for everyone else.

We hope that you and all of your families are staying healthy right now! I know things are a little scary for everyone, and if you can get outside in nature, by yourself or with the people you live with, do it!

We also hope that we didn't do too bad a job here today, and maybe Zaira and you all will have us back again sometime! Until then,

-Eve and Elijah

An Introduction to Our New Friends (Part One)

Hi everyone! Zaira here. My friends and I have met some new girls over the past few months while we've been semi-MIA, and I thought that it was only fair that you, dear readers, get a true, formal introduction before you start seeing any unfamiliar faces popping up around here. I have to at least try to be a reliable narrator (and believe me, it's a hard job!).

These two girls are Clover and Mackenzie. They're sisters, and Mac is in my grade, while Clover is younger than us.

Mackenzie loves making videos--she wants to be a filmmaker when she gets older! Right now, she interns at the Cedar Island Public Broadcasting Station on the weekend and helps make the news. It sounds like a really important job! Mac is really focused and organized, which is something that I really admire about her. I'm so happy that we met this school year!

Clover is less reserved than Mackenzie is, and she always has a ton of energy! She loves science, especially astronomy. When she gets older, she wants to go to outer space! It sounds like an adventure to me! I love hanging out with Clover because she always has some crazy stories to tell me, and they're always true, whether they're about something cool she found in the woods, a complicated experiment she did in her biology class, or even some weird new scientific discovery she read about!

And last, but most certainly not least, this is Riley! Riley is one of the newest residents of the island, she just moved here with her dad. I met her in our Foods class first semester of this year, when she gave her Family Recipes presentation about kugel, a dish that her family makes for Hanukah. At first, I thought that Riley was really quiet, but it turns out that she was just new and didn't know anyone. We became friends really fast, and I'm so happy that we did! In truth, Riley is one of the most outgoing and funny people I've ever met, and I'm so glad that I know her! She loves going on adventures and is always down to do something fun and crazy, no matter when or where. 

Riley says she wants to try writing a post on here. I told her that that sounds great to me, so maybe you'll be reading that next! Remember back a few years ago when my friends all wrote posts once in a while? That was super fun, and I think I'd like to try it again, especially since we're all stuck at home nowadays and have a bunch of time on our hands.

Later, I'll introduce you to Jayne, Meryl, and Clementine in part two of this post...then, you'll all be up to date! In the meantime, Eve and I have been working hard on the new bios page, if you feel so inclined, check it our and maybe leave us a comment!

Until next time,

-Zaira Joy

Happy St. Patrick's Day from Our Irish Gals!

Georgia may be the only one in today's featured photo, but all of us Irish girls at Worldwide Dolls wanted to wish you all a happy St. Patrick's Day! Whether you're Irish or not, may luck be with you on this sunny Tuesday! :)

"May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

May good luck be with you Wherever you go, and your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow.

May your days be many and your troubles be few, May all God’s blessings descend upon you, May peace be within you, May your heart be strong, May you find what you’re seeking wherever you roam.

May you have the hindsight to know where you’ve been
the foresight to know where you’re going
and the insight to know when you’re going too far."

Sending love from Cedar Island,
-Georgia, Eve, Marlee, Piper, Clover, and Mackenzie