Little gem

While sifting through some old pictures, I found this little gem.  Hope everyone's having a great summer!

mix

Alina hypothesized the other day that the gold in the suitcase that Ephraim Longstocking gave to his daugher Pippi was the same gold that Smaug stole from the dwarves.  I'm just waiting to know where a black stallion comes into it.

Black

ALINA: (to me while getting off of her new bike)  Henry, I'm going to go put the Black in the stable for the night.
 
I love her imagination.

Hair-B-Gone

I finally gave in to Tassia's request for shorter hair.  Or was it too many time of trying to comb out toothpaste, soup, and ice cream from little girls' hair?  Either way, this is the result:

And Alina?  She wants to grow her hair down to her bottom.

"Sortie nature"

THE DRESS!!!!

One morning about 2 months ago, as I was getting Sybille ready for the day, Alina called to me from her bed.  There was that little something in her voice that said, "This is urgent," so I arrived promptly, expecting that she was sick or in dire need of assistance.  To my surprise, she quite excitedly related to me a sudden, now-found desire for a dress.  Not just any dress.  A red dress with white polka-dots.  She launched into great detail as to the width of the straps, the number of ruffles, etc.  So when my Parisian friend asked me if I wanted her to bring me any material, I knew what to ask for.  I've been turning this project over in my head ever since, contemplating the best way to make Alina's dream dress, and fearing lest my realization not live up to her idea.   I finally launched into the project yesterday.  Cutting the material, I decided to err on the side of big, figuring I could always take in seams and make huge hems, but if I cut the pieces to small...  And anyway, if I was going to go to this much trouble, I wanted her to be able to wear it for a good, long time.

I got the top together, and pinned on the top skirt layer.  I had Alina try it on, immediately judging that the skirt was too far down, I should pin it higher, and that it was too long I would have to take a big hem.  Alina, however, took one look at herself in the mirror, got a big grin on her face and said, "Mama, you should leave it just like that."  "But, you wanted a double skirt."  "No, I only want one."  "But you wanted it shorter."   "I want it just like this."

My immediate thought was relief.  "You mean I'm almost done?"  But then there was a bit of a letdown.  "What do you mean you don't want the double-skirt ruffle I've been puzzling over for two months?"  But I figured it would be best to leave well enough alone.  The good thing is, she loves it.  Oh, and that she'll definitely wear it out or get sick of it before she outgrows it.

Here it is:

 A bit of a back view:

 It also has good twirling action:



And as if the dress wasn't good enough, this just rocked her world:

I don't think I've made a hair scrunchy since middle school.  But I figured now was a good time.  Apparently, I was right, because Alina said to me, "Mama, how did you know that was exactly what I wanted?"  How did I know that was exactly what you wanted when YOU didn't even know it was exactly what you wanted until you saw it?  Well, Alina, I guess that's what Mamas are for.

Sew crazy

 I've been doing quite a bit of sewing recently.  A friend of ours brought me some new material, and I let each of the girls pick out their favorite material and their favorite project.  Here is Tassia's again:

 The pattern that I used called it the Twirly Skirt, because it's good for doing this:

 And here is Sybille's.  I actually took just as many pictures of Sybille as Tassia, but somehow they mostly came out looking the same, so here's one:

 and another.

You'll notice this just screams "Sundress!"  Well, with long sleeves and sweatpants, it was almost appropriate for today.  Both these projects were in a way warm-ups for the dress of Alina's dreams.  Which I hopefully will be posting pictures of shortly.