Matching Easter Dresses

Remember how I've been telling you about the Big Sewing Project I've been working (and reworking) on?  Well, it's finished!  In January, after my Christmas gift debacle (and I still haven't finished Jonathan's present yet...), I decided that the first thing I was going to do this year was make Easter dresses.  Then I could work on other stuff. 

So, here they are.  I choose coordinating fabric and some of my favorite dress patterns.  The next door neighbor has taken down his fence, which made for some nice pictures.

Hannah's dress is from the book Sewing Clothes Kids Love, by Langdon and Pollehn.  I've made it before, and it looks so much cuter on a kid than on the clothes line. 

Lydia's dress is the Party Dress from The Cottage Home.  Isn't it sweet?  It was a dream to sew, except for the part where I re-sized the bodice much too small, and had to pick out the whole thing and do it over again.

And this is a smocked skirt for me, from Make It and Love It. 

Aren't we going to be cute?!  After these were all sewn, Jonathan reminded me that we're going to baptize Lydia on Easter, so she'll wear the family baptismal gown to church.  Oh well.  We'll look good in our pictures, right?

On My Nightstand

It looks from my recent posts like I haven't been sewing or crafting for months, doesn't it?  Well, I have, but nothing's quite ready to be revealed yet.  Let's just say that one should try the dress on along the way, instead of waiting until one has finished it only to realize that the blasted thing is so small it won't button in the back.

But I have been reading lately.  Jonathan and I love to have long discussions, which we would like to think are intellectual.  Are they?  I don't really know, but we feel smart while we're having them.  As far as gathering information, we are polar opposites, so we always have interesting tidbits to pass to one another that the other has never heard of.  Jonathan loves the news media, especially anything to do with national politics.  (As a rule, he doesn't usually discuss politics with people other than me, but I get to hear a lot of hypothesizing about whichever election is upcoming.)  He is also an avid magazine reader.  I, on the other hand, have a life-long love affair with books. Being around books makes me happy.  When meeting in someone's office (think the typical pastor's study), it is almost impossible for me to engage in conversation because I'm covertly reading the titles of their books.  The last time we moved, we had 27 boxes of books.

So my latest book obsession has been about real food.  This is partly because all of our "intellectualizing" leads me and Jonathan to make change very slowly, with lots of discussion, planning, and information-gathering along the way.  The idea that we will change our entire diet and shopping habits is a hard pill to swallow, no matter how good an idea it seems. 

So on my night table right now is the neighborhood library's real/whole foods section.  It's not as much as it seems, since most of these are cookbooks.  Did I mention that I love to read cookbooks?  This is something that continuously baffles Jonathan.  ("What are you reading?  The ingredients?  The directions?  Is that even interesting?")

I'm also reading the Bible...yes all of it.  Our church is reading the entire book over the course of a year.  Now, we're in the middle of the Psalms.  I have to admit, I'm glad that we're through Kings and Chronicles.  I'd much rather read cookbooks than the history of war.

And to round out the pile, two books I've just begun because I acquired them yesterday.  Next time we move, there will be 29 boxes of books because we picked up two more yesterday at a pastors' book giveaway.  So I've been trying, in between washing diapers and trying to cook more vegetables and dealing with a little girl with a cold, to read this Marva Dawn book.  She is an author I admire.  You might have to be a little bit of a church nerd to love her, but if you are, I think you'd love her.  This book, Unfettered Hope, looks so interesting.  I'd like to tell you about it, but so far, I've read the introduction and am now on page two.  So I don't think I'm qualified to say anything at all!

And just for laughs - because not much is simple in my life right now - Six Weeks to a Simpler Lifestyle.  Now that's exactly what I need!  Maybe things will get simple enough that I can read it...

Oh yeah, and there's a little book of fingerplays in there.  Because even if I think I'm a nutritionist/chef/theologian/idealist, the truth is that right now, I'm mostly a mom.  Which encompasses all those other things, but you've got to have a nice new song to sing every now and then.