“Look at me!
Look at me!
Look at me NOW!
It is fun to have fun
But you have
to know how.”
~ Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat
When J.C. was out of town, he left Addie with a DVD of the 1971 version of the Cat in the Hat. She watched it rather obsessively over and over while he was gone. She turned into a bit of a Cat in the Hat addict, so when I saw this fabric, I just couldn't resist it.
I knew I had to have my mom make a dress out of it for her. She loves it! Can you tell?
Every summer growing up, I would spend a week or two at my grandmother's house in Virginia. I would help my grandmother pick cherries or cucumbers, wander out to the old tobacco barn, play gin rummy on the big front porch, or walk through the woods picking up bits of moss for the moss garden I was constructing in a canning jar. My grandmother would check me over for ticks and use butter or a match detach them. As a big city girl, everything was an adventure out here in the country.
Her two hundred year old house had character. We usually entered through the keeping room which was a dark, cool place, not quite a basement, not quite house, where my grandmother kept all the jars of canned peaches, tomatoes, pickled beets, cherry jelly, and pickles that she expertly canned each summer. The step down into the keeping room was long, and the doorway was short, so adults would invariably hit their head the first time through on every trip.
To the right was the quaint little kitchen. You had to step up and over a big step in the entryway, and there were frequent curse words thrown about here as heads were bumped again in the doorway. The kitchen was a warm, cozy place where my grandmother was always busy canning, baking, making sandwiches, or preparing to entertain guests. My memories of the salty Virginia ham, hamburger meat fresh from the farm down the road, tart cherry pie from the cherry trees in the yard, and fresh veggies from her garden will never be equalled.
Also off the keeping room was the living room and dining room. It had an old wooden door with a wood and leather latch to keep it closed. In the winter, you were in big trouble if you forgot to latch the door and let out any heat from the fire place. Upstairs off the porch was a formal living room where my grandmother played the piano beautifully and attempted to teach me. Sadly though, piano lessons two weeks per year don't go very far. The third floor was a narrow space with sloped walls, but it was the perfect bedroom for a visiting grandchild.
One of my grandmother's favorite spaces in her home was a room we called the strawberry room. It wasn't much bigger than a walk-in closet in a modern home, but it was my grandmother's little sacred space. There was a round glass-topped table with strawberry print table cloth over it. There were strawberry pillows in her reading chair. There were strawberry tea cups on the table and strawberry paintings on the walls. I see strawberries now, and I think of my grandmother's strawberry room.
I see strawberry fabrics and envision that print as the newest tablecloth on her table.
I find myself drawn to them, unable to resist sweet strawberry dresses, as if the dress came straight from her strawberry room. Maybe it is just a little bit of my grandmother in me.
I think she would like that.
In April of 1911,
AND... the girls' great-great Uncle Herman was born! Happy 100th Birthday Uncle Herman!
Elise, Addie, and I headed down to Dallas this past weekend for a little fall fun with my parents. Why just two kids, you ask? Well, have you ever tried traveling alone with three? Yes? Then you understand. No? Then try it and let me know how it goes. Air travel with a toddler is not my idea of fun regardless, so adding in two constantly-bickering older sisters sounded like more than I was willing to tackle. In a lucky twist of fate, it turned out my choice of Elise and Addie was for the best in more ways than one. Nina ended up with a horrific case of strep throat all weekend. I felt horrible for her, but I was also glad she wasn't part of the traveling half of the family.
It was a nice trip. We did a little swimming...
where the girls decided to push poor JoJo in the freezing water.
We went shopping and had lunch at the American Girl Store and Bistro.... Elise's definition of a dream vacation.
We hung out with Bubba. My poor ol' Dad can't really travel any more, so the girls don't get a lot of opportunities to spend time with him. I wish they could have gotten to know him more before his hearing and vision deteriorated so much. We just have to take advantage of the time that we do have with him.
Of course, we went out for Mexican food... for my beloved nachos.
My personal favorite part of the trip was the visit to the Great Pumpkin Festival at the Dallas Arboretum. I've never seen anything like it! The pumpkin houses were spectacular!
It was k.i.l.l.i.n.g. me not having my good camera with me. I was surrounded by dSLR's with killer lenses for all the awesome photo ops while I snapped away with my sad little point and shoot. I had serious camera envy. Then again, it was so crowded that it was hard to get pictures without a background full of people anyway, so maybe it was just as well. It was clearly a popular photography spot. We saw two brides and three girls in their quinceanera dresses doing photo shoots along with loads of kids either in Halloween attire or (of course) their UT or OU outfits.
One of the girls being photographed for quinceanera was wearing a dress very similar to this one, and she had a doll wearing a matching dress. I thought Elise's jaw might fall right off her face. You would have thought that Cinderella herself stepped right out of one of those pumpkins. I'm just envisioning six years from now Elise trying to convince us she needs a quinceanera dress even though we don't have so much as a drop of hispanic blood in us.
In true Texas style, one of the brides was wearing white cowboy boots - love it! I may not live in Texas any more, but I'm still a Texan at heart. You know what they say... "You can take the girl out of Texas..."
We really had a fun trip. If you'll be anywhere near Dallas this fall, I highly recommend a visit to the Arboretum.
Nina seems to have recovered from her strep. She and J.C. made the best out of the remainder of the weekend once she was feeling a little better, and she knows she is on the roster for the next trip to Dallas.
I come from a long line of grandmothers who sew. That's what grandmothers do. They sew. They sew things like quilts...
(That's me under a quilt my grandmother made)
...and dresses...
(That's my grandmother with her three girls in dresses she made for them. My mom is the one in the middle)
... and flower girl dresses...
(Those were the flower girls in my wedding, my cousin N and niece K, wearing dresses my mom made.)
... and matching outfits for twins...
(That's my dad on the right with his twin sister D and older brother J wearing outfits my grandmother made.)
... and a cradle liner...
... with the names of the three generations of babies who have slept in it embroidered on the sides ...
(My mom made that before Elise was born.)
... and hand-knit sweaters...
...and the same sweater in a bigger size when that one gets too small...
... and lovely bishop's dresses...
... with bonnets to match...
... and cute shorts sets...
...and soft flannel quilts just perfect for a bare bum...
... and toile dresses because my girls' grandmother knows how much I adore toile...
...and white beach portrait dresses...
... and sweet newborn smocked dresses...
...and jumpers with doll dresses to match...
.... and soft-as-a-cloud knit blankets...
... and dressy frocks to wear to a wedding...
... and even Halloween costumes.
While I am eternally grateful for all the beautiful creations of these seamstresses before me, they are tough acts to follow. My sewing skills are limited to badges on Brownie vests and an occassional patch to a ripped pair of jeans. I don't smock, knit, quilt, embroider, crochet, or do any type of sewing that might possibly create an article of clothing. How can I ever be a proper grandmother if I don't learn to sew???
OH THE PRESSURE!!!
I do have one skill though... I can SHOP. Yes, that is how I will save face. I am quite certain I could out-shop any of those women with one credit card tied behind my back. Surely I can properly endulge my grandchildren with lots of power-shopping.
Or at least that's what I kept telling myself.
Then, my mom had to go and up the ante. Darn her and her sewing skills!
Check out these:
My mom made those with the girls as a grandmother/granddaughter sewing project. How fun is that? The girls picked out the patterns, colors, faces, trims, buttons, and ribbons, and mom helped sew them up.
These guys are fun, clever, creative, whimsical, and just plain neat, right?
But seriously Mom, as if I didn't have enough pressure on me in my future as a grandmother, did you really have to go off and involve your grandchildren in such a cool sewing project? I certainly can't compete with that. Cute dresses and blankets I can handle with my retail skills, but THIS??? What are you trying to do to me? I'm still trying to figure out this whole parenting gig and you go pull off this uber-grandmother project?
Sadly, I think the sewing gene may have skipped a generation with me. Perhaps my girls will become inspired by their grandmother and all the grandmothers before her who have sewn beautiful things for their grandchildren. My poor deprived future grandchildren will just have to settle for a grandmother who blogs, shops, occassionally bakes and who will always treat them to a popsicle from the ice cream truck.
The week leading up to Easter Sunday is Easter Holy Week. I'm not sure exactly what makes it holy, what types of holy things we're supposed to be doing during Holy Week, or how much of a Heathen I am by not doing these holy things, but by all accounts, Holy Week was a fun one here at the House of Estrogen.
Friday, we made chocolate bird's nests. I have had a couple requests for the recipe. If you Google "no bake bird nests", you'll find no fewer than 2487 different variations of the recipe. Some include peanut butter, rice krispies, oats, marshmallows, corn flakes, or peanuts. Choose your favorite! The recipe we used was just a bag of semi-sweet chips and a bag of butterscotch chips melted together and mixed with 2 cans of chow mein noodles. We used Cadbury mini eggs and Whopper eggs for the eggs, but jelly beans look great too.
On Saturday, we invited a couple of neighbors over for dying eggs.
Then the eggs were all promptly turned into deviled eggs. Is it wrong to "devil" something during Holy Week? According to Wikipedia, I can call them "dressed eggs" or "salad eggs" to avoid them sounding so evil. They aren't salad though, and if anything I undressed them more than dressed them when removing their pretty dyed shells, so I think I'll stick with "deviled eggs."
Saturday night, the girls put their baskets out for the Easter Bunny along with some apple slices (Alas, we were out of carrots). Nina left him a note: "Dear Easter Bunny, I will put ot applse. Pleas eat them. Nina write this sintis [sentence]."
On Sunday, the Easter Bunny delivered baskets of goodies. Elise declared that she thinks the Easter Bunny is Santa Claus dressed up in a bunny costume. Picturing that makes me giggle.
This photo is horribly blurry, but I had to share it anyway, so you could see how thrilled Addie was with her Pez. The girl is a serious Pez addict. Truly.. the entire day, all we heard was, "Mo Pez Please! Mo Pez Please!" I think the basket could have contained just one Pez dispenser and a bunch of refills, and she would have been over the moon. Forget the bubble blower, chocolate bunny, and board book... THERE IS PEZ!! DID YOU SEE THE EASTER BUNNY BROUGHT ME PEZ?? I LOVE THAT BUNNY!
She also got a kick out of her light-up egg necklace thingamajig.
Next, they were off to find the eggs the Easter Bunny left.
A highly nutritious breakfast of Pez and chocolate bunnies followed the hunt.
Sunday evening was a family dinner with yet another egg hunt.
Addison wore the sweet smocked dress my mom made. I should have taken a close-up photo. It has little bunnies all over it!
In the end, a good time was had by all during Holy Week.... despite the presence of deviled eggs and the lack of all things holy.
North Carolina State Wolfpack 88, Duke Blue Devils 74
GO PACK!
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