Crazy Plans and Christmas Dresses {needle & thREAD}

Well friends, in the spirit of cra-cra-crazy we are celebrating Christmas, buying a house, moving to a different city, and having our fourth child in the next month and a half -- possibly not in that order!  It's all good.  At least that is what I tell myself when trying to wrap my brain around what all of this is going to involve.  Something tells me there won't be much sewing going on around here in the near future.

I admit I am sad to miss out on a full season of gift-sewing this year.  I'm consoling myself with the knowledge that I might just be able to carve out a dedicated sewing space in our new place (God-willing everything moves forward and we close on the house mid-January as planned) .  Since I don't share much personal information here, you may or may not know that my little family of five currently lives in a two bedroom, four room rental house.  Originally it was a three bedroom house but sometime in the last forty years they knocked out the wall between the third bedroom and the living room to create a bigger living space.  The extra running room is great for little people, but my "sewing room" is also a living room, office, toy room, rec room, and den. It's a bit impractical and unfortunately stuff of every kind has a habit of taking over any work space I've attempted to claim as my own.  Definitely hoping to carve out a better sewing nook next year!

I'm sure you didn't come here to hear me blab on and on about all of that though.  Time to break out pictures of the flower girl dresses that I've turned into Christmas dresses for my four and six year old.

I swapped out the ivory satin sashes for red velvet ones that I put together from scraps I had in my stash.  This is what the dresses looked like before:

The girls will be wearing sweaters and there wasn't enough fabric for tie-able bows so I sewed velvet bows front and center to add a bit of interest.

There is some zipper peak-through at the center back with the way I attached the sashes onto the dresses but I'm not sure it's worth the time to re-work it with buttons or something.

Anywho-ha,  the bottom of these dresses begged for red petals and I simply had to comply.  I found a box at Hobby Lobby for half off which means altogether I spent about $2.50 on each dress.  Not bad for holiday attire, if I do say so myself!

I left the cream petals and I didn't sew up the opening (near the waistline) in the tulle either. No doubt I'll need to get back in there to rearrange the petals eventually.

Now all we have to do is locate two pairs of respectable ivory tights and rustle up some dress shoes that fit.  Gosh I love to see little ones all dressed up for Christmas.  I have to relish these days of sashes and tulle and twirly girlies.

I'm linking up with needle and thREAD today.

As far as reading goes, I'm taking in little bits here and there.   Compelled by nesting instinct, I inhaled a couple of ebooks last month on organization that fueled a whirlwind of household purging.  Now I am at various stages of reading The Ordinary Path To Holiness (Thomas) and Holy Sex (Popcak).  I'm trying to keep up with the Magnificat Advent Companion this year too.  I'm only a week behind, lol.  It's awfully hard to concentrate these days.  Can I blame it on pregnancy brain?  Or perhaps the fact that most of my reading involves pages containing stuff like "Sharky the Shark was always afraid." and "Does the kangaroo have a mother too?"? (According to my almost two-year-old, the answer to that last question is always a resounding and mischievous "NO".)

Maybe I should drop everything and get a really good novel from the library.  Any Christmas-y suggestions?

Thank you for stopping by -- see you again in 2014!  Please keep our family in your prayers.  And don't forget to head on over to In the Heart of My Home for more needle and thREAD.  Thank you for hosting Elizabeth!