Back To The Drawing Board

A few weeks ago we started reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at bedtime. It's part of my mission to help Celina re-learn the English language after reading too many Junie B. Jones books. We've only gotten to the part when the boys run away to be pirates. But apparently my girls liked it enough to start pretending to be Tom Sawyer when Aunt Polly makes him whitewash the fence. So now when they're outside, they get their broom, dip it in the bucket of water, and "whitewash" the sidewalk. This is a drawing of Miri taking a turn at it. The head is my favorite part. It looks just like her. She's a hard little thing to capture on paper.

FINALLY finished Miri's spring dress. It's made from a knit fabric that I let her pick out herself. The pattern was the same one that I used for her Alice costume for Halloween. It has all these different options you can use, and I let her pick which ones she wanted. She chose the bib front with shoulder straps and that little placket-type thing in the front (I used some leftover blue lawn from Lina's Louisa dress). She picked out the buttons to decorate it and the venice lace as well. This was so easy to cut out and put together that I really truly believed I'd have it done in a day or two. Wrong. I now know that venice lace, while being my favorite kind of lace, is not suitable to being gathered. I did it anyways, around the placket, because it looks better that way. Then, because it looked a little lonely there all by itself, I added lace around the top of the bib. And then the straps. It looked even better. And finally, to top it all off, I added the last of it ar...