Dress-up, etc.

A couple weeks ago Madeleine saw a bin underneath my bed and asked for it to come out.  It's a small bin that my mom kept during my childhood and put a few random clothes in, cards I made, school projects and writing samples--relics of my childhood.  She also included two little dresses she bought 40 years ago while she was single and a missionary in Thailand.  I'm sure my mom put me in these dresses when I was a toddler and I thought it was only fitting that Maddie gets a turn to play dress-up in Mimi's beautiful Thailand clothes.

Also in my bin was an old little league shirt.  I'm almost positive this actually belonged to Joseph because I didn't make it past t-ball.  It makes me smile to see "Meyers" on the back of something Maddie is wearing.  (Mom also put in one of my baton twirling t-shirts but it isn't featured in this post.)

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Last week I brought my camera along while we walked over to visit our neighborhood farm--complete with a barn, horses, donkeys, sheep, and cats.  Maddie stops at almost every part of the sidewalk where it's all loose and gravelly.  She loves rocks and picks them up just about every chance we get.  This also happens to be the reason why it is impossible to hike in Rock Canyon with her *sigh.*

Here we had found horsechesnuts and were picking them up.  I think something interesting was going by at the moment I took this picture and she was trying to tell me to look and see.

There are four donkeys and two/three horses that come up to the fence and greet us.  I often get a few handfuls of grass and feed it to them when we are the only ones around.  I figure grass is safe because they'd eat it anyways if it was around them.  Oftentimes the owner is around the barn and invites us in.  Then we get to give them their real treats.  Maddie can even give the donkeys their treats--not so much the horses, but the donkeys are really easy to feed because their teeth are set so far back from the tips of their "long soft lips" (that's what Dalynn, the owner always says).

Madeleine got sneezed on by one of the horses the other day and so now she thinks that you have to shake your head when you neigh like a horse.  She was demonstrating it here.

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On to other projects... Matt's old, holey jeans got cut up to become a pair of pants for M as well as the outside of a little vest that will be lined with fleece.

I thought about doing one of those cool tutorials like some of my favorite sewing bloggers do.  I started with these two pictures thinking maybe someone would actually care.  In the end these were the only two pictures I took of my process though... oh well, maybe another time.  Here it is in a nutshell: I made my own pattern (changed a pattern that I have already tried so that it fits Maddie better) and cut out the two front pieces and two back pieces.  I sewed down the crotch to connect the two back pieces together, then same with the front pieces.  The first time I made pants I sewed the front pieces together all the way down the inseam--I won't make that mistake again.  :)  Then sewed the front and back together down the sides and then connected the inseam and put in a seam around the waist for elastic to fit inside of.  The end.  In case anyone cares, I built off of DanaMadeIt free pants pattern and used some of her tips from another post to adjust it for Madeleine.

Last but not least, my most recent sewing project was to finish up this Tiger Lily costume for Halloween.  It wasn't quite finished in these pictures but you get the idea.