#nanea mitchell

this is my wishlist of sorts (i’d probably end up getting their accessories too guys it’s okay)

Nanea's school dress and lunch are some of my favorite pieces from her collection but they cost a pretty penny so I decided to make my own versions!

I used this pattern for the dress, with a few tweaks like using tucks instead of gathers for the bodice and a slightly longer skirt so it better matched the AG version.

I'll explain how i made her lunch pail under the cut:

I've seen a few diy versions of her lunch pail online either using paper or tuna cans, however I wanted smth that would actually fit together.

My solution was a set of plastic stacking bead containers from Michael's which were a pretty close match dimension-wise. I sanded and painted the containers before sealing them with two coats of Deco Art Triple Thick gloss glaze. Before painting i used a heated screw driver to carefully make two holes in the sides, which I used to secure a handle i got off a dollar-store metal pail. The top handle is just a piece of construction paper that I cut, painted, sealed and glued to the top.

Her sandwich is a repainted key chain I also bought from the dollarstore and I plan to make the rest of her lunch out of clay.

Alice Nanea Mitchell didn’t want to be the baby of the family anymore; her and her best friends were working hard to find a way to prove themselves mature. But she has to grow up a lot faster than anticipated when Pearl Harbor is bombed, and her family and community are ripped apart. With everything in chaos, Nanea grounds herself with the ones she loves, and works to find a way to help where she can.

Nanea was first released in 2017.

So Nanea's books have so many great foods mentioned that I just knew I had to make a "cookbook" for her. However, unlike Cecile, Marie Grace or Rebecca, Nanea and the rest of the beforever girls never got paper dolls I could use for cookbook covers.

I am not an artist, so my alternative was Frankensteining together art from Nanea's book, elements from the American Girl Magazine paper doll series and some drawings in Photoshop. I'm honestly pretty proud with how it turned out and really excited to make cookbook covers (and maybe even craft books if I can come up with enough ideas) for the rest of the historical girls!

All these dishes are mentioned in Nanea's books, except for the onion fritters which are a recipe from when Hawaii had too many onions which does come up in her series, and the Spam eggs & rice which seems the most likely candidate for what the Mitchell family is having for breakfast when we are told Nanea's mom made scrambled eggs and rice.

few of the linked recipes are unfortunately no longer viewable as newspapers.com seemed to have just closed the loophole that allowed you to see articles without paying. But I promise I could read them a month ago!

Breakfast

Guava Bread

Malasadas

Pineapple Juice (to follow the great AG cookbook tradition of recipes that aren't really recipes)

Spam Eggs & Rice

Coconut Pancakes

Portuguese Sausages

Dinner

Lomi Salmon

Onion Fritters

Luau (Chicken and taro leaves cooked in coconut milk)

Potato Salad

Favorite Recipes

Two Finger Poi

Kalua Pig

Rice Balls with Pickled Apricot

Strawberry Shave Ice

Pineapple Upside Down Cake