Dressing Up, Kentucky Style

You've seen lots of posts showing my girls' dress up adventures recently.  They're really into it.  They're just like their Mama in that way.  I've also posted recently about the dearth of dress up items in my Mom's closet when I was growing up.  She came through with a few fun things for the girls yesterday though.  Check out this hat.

It was made, of course, by my Grandma.

Lass loved it.

The girls loved seeing their Grandma try on this clown costume, also made by my Grandma.  It is actually a full clown costume with a baggy one piece suit that has big buttons down the front.  But I'm not sharing that photo.

When I wrote about my Mom's dress-up-lacking closet recently in this post, I mentioned the one item she did have that I loved to dress up in - the beautiful silver shoes.  I forgot about the beautiful silver purse that went with those shoes.  My Mom brought it out yesterday and I was so happy to see it.  Seriously.  I gasped and exclaimed, "The silver purse!"  The girls are loving it too.

Miss really got into carrying it around.

Before I gave it to the girls, I opened it up to make sure there wasn't anything in it that they couldn't play with.  Turns out I was the last one to use it.  Here's what I found:

This is what I used to carry in my purse.  My keys, "address book," and um, FBI identification card?

Miss enjoyed my special purse contents too.  She was very animated in discussing the importance of having her "message" (the FBI card), her "keys to go for a trip in the car," and her "book to read in the car" in her purse.

I love playing dress up with my girls.

Things I Loved This Week

I lost my camera cord for uploading photos for a few days.  I found it yesterday and uploaded a ton of fun photos from the past week.  So here's a big post of some things I've been loving this week, chock full of lots of pics. 

I'm loving new fashion statements.

My Auntie sent a package last week with some things for all of the girls.  My big girls had a field day with these headbands and balloons.  I love that they put the headbands on like little hippies.

When I was little, I was very into dressing up.  I used to have a field day at my Grandma's house because she would let me play in her jewelry box, which was full of tons of necklaces and clip on earrings.  My Mom's jewelry box, on the other hand, was sadly lacking fun dress up items, as was her closet.  I think she owned one pair of high heels.  They were silver, from my Auntie's wedding, I think. I loved that one pair of beautiful shoes.  My Mom just wasn't really a shoe gal.  Or a purse gal.  Or a clothes gal.  Therefore, my dress up options when I played in her closet were nearly nonexistent.  My girls will not have the same problem.  They get into my closet and have a field day with all sorts of heels and purses.

They have a box of their own things in their play room too.  Shoes have been big this week.

I'm loving sister bonding.

These two have really gotten into wrestling in the past few days.

But they're always super sweet and gentle with Baby Sis.

I'm loving watching this one.

I'm loving conversations with my girls.

My two big girls are so chatty and have so much to say.  Lass's language is really exploding and she is starting to speak in sentences.  She can say just about anything, though sometimes it's hard to understand her at first.  She makes me smile and often laugh with the little things she says. She loves to play "Shark" right now, and so she tends to yell the word any time she's in the mood to play, which is quite often.  It makes me giggle that her pronunciation of the word is "Shart."  Yep.  Full volume.  All the time.  It cracks me up.

I also love listening to my girls talk to each other.  They have real conversations now.  Miss understands Lass nearly as well as I do, so they talk about all sorts of stuff.  I love that Miss calls her "Honey" a lot and likes to try to teach her new things and tell her what to do.  She's trying to help her learn ABCs and counting.  It's adorable to watch and listen to them.

Life is so good.

Song Bird

Last night I had some special girl time with my eldest before bed.  We painted her fingernails.  She chose blue, of course.  While waiting for them to dry we made some funny faces and sang some songs.

My girl loves to sing.  Both of my older girls do, in fact, though Lass is still working on the words a bit...  Miss goes all out in singing her favorites.  She lifts her chin up and belts them out at full volume.  In the car, in the playroom, at the store, on the swingset, wherever.  We were even informed by her teachers that she sings like this at school.  I absolutely love that she does this.  I think it might be a little bit hereditary, because I think I used to sing like that when I was a kid too (okay, I still do).  I remember singing with my mom and my Grandma a lot.  My Mom and I used to rock out to "Barbara Susanne Stripe" (a.k.a. Barbara Streisand), Neil Diamond, and Barry Manilow on 8-track. Or we'd sing all sorts of kid's songs: You are My Sunshine, Eensy Weensy Spider, Gray Squirrel, Gray Squirrel, and so on.  My Grandma is a very talented musician, and she used to play the piano and teach me lots of old-timey songs.  I think singing is an expression of happiness.  It's good for the soul.

We sing a lot in our family.  My husband plays the guitar and we sing along with him in the evenings.  The girls and I sing lots of little songs during the day.  We sing while we play, while we are in the car, while we do just about anything.  I've had strangers chuckle at me for singing with my girls in the grocery store.  I think it's usually a nice, friendly chuckle.  I hope.  I'm no vocal sensation, but I can carry a tune.  And who doesn't love a moving rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star in their grocery's produce section?

Anyway.  Back to last night.  After Miss and I finished with her nails, while they were drying, she was singing her latest favorite song, "Whistle While You Work."  I especially love when she sings the songs from Snow White, because she doesn't just sings the words, she does the vocal trilling "ha-ha-ha-ha-ha..." like Snow White does.  I don't know if that's the right term to describe it, but it's so cute.  And since I can't really describe it well, I captured it on video.  Though my girl sings loudly and unselfconsciously almost all day long, like most kids her age she was a little less willing to do it on command.  When I first asked her to sing for the camera, she said that she had "run out" of singing.  But then when I told her that I wanted to take a video of her and she could watch it afterwards, well, I could just see the wheels turning as she thought about that.  The video below is not characteristic of how she usually sings.  She's more timid and much quieter than usual.  But I couldn't help but smile when I watched and listened to her sing her song.  I hope you will too.  

Girls' Rooms Madeover

As I have mentioned several times, I have been crafting stuff for the girls' rooms for the past few weeks.  I think it has been my form of nesting.  I am finally near enough to completion that I can reveal what I've been working on.  Here's a look at Lass's room.

I've already posted about how to do the growth chart.  If you want to know how, see the tutorial here.

This is basically what Lass's room looked like before (check out how tiny Miss is in this pic!).  All of my girls' rooms had fairly pathetic wall decor, so I decided to use a few ideas from Pinterest, add a few ideas of my own, and make them much more fun and interesting.

I got the idea for the fabric rings from Pinterest.  They are so easy and cheap and really make a big impact I think.  I am not completely happy with the balance of the circles in Lass's room, so tonight I made a couple more circles and will try adding them tomorrow to make it look better.  But I still love it even as it is right now.

I also spruced up the other side of her room.

This is what it looked like before.  I needed to take this huge rocker and move it to Baby Sis's room, so I brought Miss's old reading chair in and added some shelves.

I love the finished product.  My mom made these curtains!

Baby sis's room still has a bit of work to be done, but the wall above her crib is done.

This used to be Miss's room.  We were initially going to move Sis into our third bedroom, which was previously a guest room, but at the last minute decided to move Miss in there and put Sis in Miss's room.  The main reason was because we couldn't find a good place for the huge rocker pictured above in the other bedroom.

This was Miss's crib that we converted to a full size bed when she moved into her "big girl bed."  We converted it back and Miss got a new big girl bed you can check out below.  I made a couple of crib sheets for Sis's crib and used the bed skirt that my mom and I (mostly my mom) made for Miss's room before she was born.

The biggest transformation has been in Miss's room.  We painted it this green originally to match the fabrics for Sis's room, but the color works just as well with Miss's new bedding.

In her old room, Miss had rails on the sides of her bed.  She was ready to have those taken off, as the only thing they have been needed to keep in her bed for the past several months have been all the "friends" Miss had been sleeping with.  I got these planter baskets from Hobby Lobby and they have been a perfect way to keep the friends within reach, though not right in the bed.

This was Miss's reading corner in her old room.  The chair went into Lass's room, Miss got a bigger chair, and the bookshelf stayed where it is for Baby Sis.  It's attached to the wall, so Miss got a new book shelf.

Here's Miss's new reading/vanity corner.  I got her this cute little vanity to replace the dresser that was in her old room (which stayed in there to serve as a changing table for Baby Sis).

She has adjusted remarkably well to this move, considering we decided to do it kind of last minute.  She loves her new stuff, especially the vanity.  I also took some fabric flowers (left over from the arrangement I made for her that you can see below) and a few upcycled food cans (I made sure to remove all sharp spots) that I painted in coordinating colors, and I put them in one of the blue boxes on her shelf for her to use to make her own flower arrangements.  This has been a huge hit with her.

After all the shuffling around of rooms and furniture and all the crafting and sewing I've done (2 growth charts, tons of fabric circles, two crib sheets, and three large cardboard initials), I'm extremely happy with the results in all the girls' rooms.  I have to give credit to my husband for all the work he did to help (moving lots of furniture, putting up a chandelier, putting together several pieces of furniture, and many other "Honey-Do" tasks). One of the projects I've been really happy with is the cardboard initials I did for each of the girls.  The initials came from Hobby Lobby.  I used Mod Podge to come up with three different looks for them.  They were all very easy.

For Miss's I used torn pieces of scrap book paper and Mod Podge.  I just put the Mod Podge down before placing each piece of paper, used enough overlapping paper to cover the whole letter, and then put a final coat of Mod Podge over the top when it was all done.

For Lass's letter I started by painting it green, and then cut out these flowers from the fabric that I had used to make her crib sheet.  The fabric flowers got Mod Podged in place, and then I again put a final coat of MP over the whole thing when it was done.

Baby Sis's letter was done by just Mod Podging some of the leftover fabric from one of the crib sheets I made onto the cardboard.  This one was a little bit more tricky to figure out the best way to piece the fabric to get the whole letter covered and still looking nice.  I started by cutting strips of fabric as wide as the depth of the letter and covering the inner "V's" of the N first.  Then I just used one big piece to cover the front of the letter and outer sides.  I had to wrap around a little bit, but it turned out great.

So, that's what I've been doing for the past several weeks.  I still have a few more projects I would like to get done, but they don't feel as pressing as these did.  Each of my girls has a pretty new look for her room, so I'm satisfied.