Juliana's Creative Summer Wardrobe

As the weather warmed up this year, I looked in the attic stash of clothing and discovered Juliana had virtually no clothes for summer. Hazards of being the first girl, I suppose! So we hit all the thrift shops and came up with very little. Unfortunately, I find that in size 6, the little girls styles change from cute to ??? (not sure what to call it), and I am not comfortable putting my daughter in the majority of clothes available. So we dug out my stash of fabric and had fun putting together some outfits.
Although it was not my goal, we ended up making her entire summer wardrobe from fabric and notions we already had. All the garments here were made from odds and ends and we didn't buy a thing! Wow! What a blessing for my pocket book this year. As I looked at these pictures, I realized I had a lot of red and blue in my stash--that or she was just drawn to reds and blues this year.
I have a few more things to make for her, but we bought fabric for those projects. I'll try to post pictures when I get them finished.



I have loved this red fabric since it was given to me several years ago. When I went to cut out the shirt, I discovered it was some old curtains! Made up adorably and we had rick-rack and buttons to finish the outfit. I love these shorts with the tie pockets.

Fun little summer dress for going to town. I changed up the pattern a bit and added the ruffle sleeves and piping for color!

Simple little outfit for hot summer days. It took three tries to get these shorts to fit her. Juliana is so slim we could have fit two of her in the original size 6. I kept taking them in until now they are only slightly too big!

I guess I really love these shorts! I put in two pictures of them!

Sweet little top with a bird print. The shorts were an experiment trying to make a band at the bottom that tied on the sides. They are cute, but I will make a few adjustments if I make them again.

Love this sweet little peasant top. Again, because she is so slim this top was HUGE on her. So I did some shirring with elastic thread and it turned out really cute!

She really liked this navy print with tiny yellow flowers. It is a little boring in my opinion. When I found these bumblebee buttons in my box, I knew they were just the accent the dress needed. The dark color is perfect for playing around the ranch since the kids tend to get pretty dirty. Juliana goes through clothing phases and right now her preference is all dresses and skorts and no pants at all if she can help it! I'm happy to comply because she looks so sweet running around in her little dresses.

Katherine's Kapers

Katherine, at close to 25 months, is at that stage where she keeps me hopping all day long. Her kapers often bring a smile to my face! Here are some favorite snapshots!



Peter, I think your new shirt makes a better skirt!

She wrapped herself up in this towel and strutted around the house for 1/2 hour as though she were the Queen of Sheba in the most royal of gowns. She loves to dress up and appears to have quite an imagination already!

Aunt Hannah gave the girls these spider plant starts. Kate was enthralled with them and decided to give them a ride in her coupe. Unfortunately, the plants didn't survive the ride!

Katherine is obsessed with kid's lawn chairs right now. She loves to carry them all out of the basement and set them up in a row. This is an almost every day event for her!

 

At least she takes a minute to put her feet up and enjoy her chairs!

Kate has a special relationship with our new kitten, "Oreo". That kitten tolerates an awful lot from her and Kate spends a lot of time lovin' on the kitten. The results are always adorable!

Garden in May

Our garden is growing rapidly. We finished up the planting this month for the summer harvests. I stagger plant my corn and squash to spread out the fruits.



Tomatoes are growing very fast this year. I think they like following the beans we grew here last year!

Some of the most beautiful and largest heads of lettuce I have ever grown. And SO tasty. This bed gets deep afternoon shade, so the lettuce hasn't bolted yet.

This is half of the garden, with the raised asparagas bed on the left and the smaller bed of strawberries on the right. You can also see the nice drip irrigation system we were able to install last year. The slight variation in color is the old straw we used around the plants as mulch. This helps keep the moisture in the ground during hot spells and also keeps the weeds down. We are trying 3 different kinds of mulch this year. Old straw bales, used barn straw w/some goat and llama manure mixed in, and shredded paper.

We had a lovely broccoli harvest this month. Still learning a lot about brassicas, but for a first try I was happy. The plants in the front are kale. They are doing amazingly well! We harvest about 2 lbs of kale every 5 days (that's the equivalent to about 5 bunches in the store). To help with this huge supply we have started making our own baked kale chips, which we find quite tasty and crunchy!

My new strawberry bed. A friend blessed me with 24 strawberry plants and they are doing very well in their new home. Here is where we used the shredded paper mulch (which we obtain easily from the office next door). The strawberries seem happy with it. I had trouble with the shreds blowing in the wind until I wet them with some water. Now they stay put. My husband decided the confidential documents were probably safer decomposing in my garden then in the recycle bin somewhere! I promise, I don't have time to piece together all those little shreds! :-)