Showing posts sorted by relevance for query party dress. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query party dress. Sort by date Show all posts

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Rainbow Party Project #5: Rainbow Clothes for the Other Kid


To get dressed this morning, Sydney first picked out the perfect pair of tights--orange, with flowers. Then she dug through her drawer until she found the perfect pair of underpants--blue, with a sparkly pink waistband. She dug through her pants drawer for a while, but not finding anything that suited her, she instead dug through the clean laundry until she found the perfect skirt--a striped Momma-made sweater skirt. Then she dug and dug through her shirts drawer, rejecting many possibilities, until she found the perfect shirt--white pajama shirt with a penguin on it.

To get dressed this morning, Willow pulled out the topmost pair of underpants from her drawer--purple camouflage, I think. Then she pulled out the topmost pair of shorts from her pants drawer--blue plaid. Finally, she pulled out the topmost shirt from her shirts drawer--blue long-sleeved button-down. Then she went back to her book while I spent the next half-hour bullying Sydney into the rest of her clothes.

My big girl did not want a cute little party dress to match her sister's. She really didn't so much *want* any cute little party clothes, but she does love it when I make her things, and she does have as much of a weakness for over-the-top-pink-heart-and-rainbow fabric as any other child, and what is the point, I ask you, of knowing how to sew AND having two children if I don't sew them matching outfits and then take lots of photos?

Therefore, I present to you the Rainbow Party Matching Rainbow Shorts:
Oliver + S Patterns-Puppet Show Tunic Dress & Bloomer ShortThe pattern is from the Oliver + S Puppet Show Tunic and Shorts pattern. And I have to say, I like the shorts just okay. I'm not used to dressing Willow in shorts that are so...short. You can't tell so much from the angle at which I took these photos, but they just seem a little short, in a baby-ish way, if that makes sense--sort of like a Shirley Temple  "Oh, look at those fat little baby thighs!", but it's not working so much for my almost-six-year-old. I suppose they really were meant to go with the tunic, or even a short jumper, something longer than the regular shirts that she'll wear with them, but Will, she'd never dress herself in all that on purpose, so I told her that after the party, these could be her pajama shorts.

They are super-cute, though. I omitted the gathered patch pockets because I knew that Willow wouldn't use them, so why waste the time (in retrospect, I should have made them and added them to Sydney's dress, instead, because she WOULD use them), but I made the waistband and bias out of the purple flannel that matches Sydney's party dress, and I REALLY like the gathering technique used for the leg openings of the shorts:
I'm DEF going to try that again on some other project. I've heard that's the way with Oliver + S patterns--in the process of sewing, you always learn something new and cool.

And there you have it--another rainbow project bites the dust. I let the girls waste what seemed like half the morning watching Clifford's Puppy Days--
--because little do they know that, like it or not (sometimes they like it, and sometimes not), they are going to be spending the entire afternoon in the community garden with me.

And then we'll have shepherd's pie (with soysage, not lamb, gross) and probably make rainbow cupcakes.

Just for ourselves.

Just because we can.

Monday, June 26, 2023

A Dozen Teenagers Went to Homecoming and Solved a Murder

 

At the end of the school year, I was SUPER stoked when my teenager asked me to help her host a party for her ballet classmates. Y'all know how sad I've been that my kids no longer want birthday parties with all the trimmings, and I've been missing those themed parties with decorations and food and activities and kids. 

You'd think, then, that the teenager would be thrilled to have the expertise that she'd asked for, but that kid had the nerve to proceed to shut down ALL of my excellent party ideas. DIY paint-by-numbers and tea party food in the front yard? Too much work. Bounce house? Too babyish. Drive-in movie? Too public. Paintball? Too competitive. Murder mystery?

The teenager (mostly) stopped glaring at me, and instead asked for details.

Spoiler alert: this murder mystery was the BEST party idea ever for teenagers. It wasn't expensive or difficult, and maybe it's the fact that these are kids who live for the stage, but they were SO into it! It was delightful to watch them have such a delightful time, and everything went perfectly.

I purchased the Horror at Homecoming mystery, teen version, from Night of Mystery. This particular packet has everything that teen ballerinas could possibly want in a party--not only is there a murder, and a mystery to solve, but the framing device is a school Homecoming dance, which means that the kids get to dress up... and they get to dance!

You're supposed to be able to host the game AND keep the identity of the murderer a surprise even from yourself, but since I was hosting this for the kids, it was very helpful to be able to read through the entire packet and familiarize myself with all the secrets. Because I know all the kids attending, I could also rig the game a little to play to their various strengths--some kids enjoy being the center of attention and some don't, some wouldn't mind having to read stuff out loud and some would, and most importantly, none of the sibling sets would appreciate having their character mired in a love triangle with their sibling's character. Yuck!

The murder mystery packet is a LOT to sort through, and you have to have a firm guest list before you can really start, so my teenager had to actually pass out the invitations a month before the party. We gave kids about ten days to RSVP, then I made my teenager spend a few days nagging the holdouts for answers, and only then did I assign characters to kids and make the "official" invitation packets for her to pass out to the guests. Each invitation packet had the invitation, some murder mystery basics, that kid's character sheet, and a school newspaper with important info. To that, I added a couple of notes that the guests should plan to arrive within ten minutes of the party's start time, and that if they realized they couldn't make it, they should contact my kid ASAP. And then I proceeded to have a couple of months' worth of anxiety dreams about the murderer or victim, neither of whom would know how important their character was ahead of time, simply not showing up to the party!

There were no no-shows, hallelujah, but I had my college student on hand at the party as a swing, just in case. And there was a kid who ended up giving a last-minute yes, but fortunately I had a spare character to give her. Whew!

The only materials that you *have* to have to run the party are a million printouts, including a couple of sticker sheets for name tags, and envelopes. But we wanted the party to look as much like the cliche version of a school dance as possible--and I've really missed party planning!--so we might have gone somewhat ham, as the teen ballerinas say. We bought a bunch of serving ware and photo backdrop crap from Dollar Tree, I got out all my stash scrapbook paper to make all the kids' envelopes and accessories look mitchy-matchy and fancy, and Matt did a ton of design work to turn the print-out photos of "evidence" into real-live actual pieces of evidence that looked awesome.

And it turns out that Burger King does not care how many crowns you take from their store. We got enough for each kid, and my college student and I spray painted them all gold.

The plan for the party's pacing is so smart, with each guest receiving a sealed set of "objectives" when they arrive, and then another set after the murder. The objectives include certain things to say or do to certain other guests, and certain ways to respond if a guest says or does some certain thing to you. I LOVED this, because it got the kids immersed in the game right away, got them acting and interacting, and gave them plenty to do in between the dancing and snacking and chatting.

But it made me anxious about timing, because some of the objectives are important to the plot, so I felt like I needed a way to know when people had completed them, which wasn't something included in the game. 

My kids still have one instant camera and several packs of instant film left from that hot minute in their childhoods when they were obsessed with instant photos. We've actually made regular use of the camera and film throughout their years homeschooling, but I decided that I would not be sad to have the rest of that film used up, so I crafted a Homecoming decoration to go next to the photo backdrop:

I found a foam board in the closet, and used scrapbook paper and twine to decorate it for Homecoming. I added another set of character name tags to the board, and left enough room for an instant photo above each tag. The idea was that when a kid had completed all of the objectives that she was able to complete in the first round, she should take her Homecoming photo and add it to the board. As an added bonus, this board, with all the cute pictures of all the guests, made an absolutely adorable souvenir for my teenager to take home afterwards.

After the murder, I'd planned to reskin the board to highlight the victim and label everyone else as suspects, but in the excitement of the murder and the kids trying to solve the mystery I completely forgot! 

Regardless, the kids all used the instant camera a ton, and they all took home plenty of cute instant photos of themselves and their buddies. Totally worth bringing it!

I wasn't completely opposed to hosting the party at home, but since it *was* meant to be a school dance, we thought it would be cool to host it somewhere that had more of a school dance look, so we rented the gymnasium in one of our local community centers for an evening. Because it was a city space it was rentable for a terrific price, and we had a full kitchen available, bathrooms that we didn't have to clean, a ton of room, tables and chairs, a speaker system, and just enough of what I'm assuming were volleyball or badminton net posts standing in a corner that Matt could set up the twinkly lit dance floor of my dreams:


We even made a custom Mayhem High Homecoming dance playlist, because that's the best part of party prep!


Here's a secret: the kids loved the songs and did a ton of dancing, but just between us, all of the work to think out how to mark out a dance floor and getting Matt up and down a ladder to set up the twinkle lights for the dance floor and compiling a playlist and figuring out the speaker system was actually just so *I* could dance:

Actual footage of me dancing, taken by my dancing partner who is also dancing...

Matt needs to take me clubbing a LOT more often than he does.

So, you guys. The parties that we host always go pretty well, mostly because all of my kids' friends are wonderful people, always thoughtful and polite and participative and sensitive to making sure everyone around them is having a nice time. But this was the BEST party we have ever hosted, the absolute funnest party ever, and again, all because of these kids. Teenagers are a whole other species, you might be aware, and you can never quite tell how they're going to respond. If these kids had been mortified about the idea of acting, and didn't want to dress up and pretend that they were at a Homecoming dance, and thought the idea of solving a murder was boring and didn't want to try to figure it out, this would have been the worst possible party. 

But instead, it was the BEST party! All the kids were totally in character, acting their sweet hearts out. They came ready to attend the Mayhem High Homecoming dance, and danced and ate snacks and cheered for the Homecoming King and Queen and gossiped and stabbed each other in the back and danced and blackmailed each other, all in character, all seeming to have a marvelous time:


The kid whose first round objective informed her that she was the murder victim played her part up to the murder like a freaking rock star, then fell down dead right when she was supposed to, to much shrieking and mourning:


She played the second act in the role of her ghost, and earned the prize for having the most money left at the end of the game primarily by guilting people into donating to her funeral, I'm given to understand.

Because I knew all the secrets, I watched the face of the kid who was the murderer as she opened the envelope that revealed that secret to her, and damn, that kid's face did not change expression at ALL. I wish I had half that poker face! She then proceeded to play out the second act by dropping so many red herrings and false clues that only one kid successfully pinned her as the murderer by the end of the game.

All the other kids played their parts like champs, so in character that it turns out many of them had made up backstories and thought up extra details and fleshed out story arcs--it absolutely worked to completely confuse the "official" plot of the mystery to such an extent that I'm not surprised that only one kid ended up guessing the real murderer, but OMG they seemed to be having the BEST time.

In the end, everyone got to fill out a ballot to accuse the murderer, state how much money they had left, and vote for their favorite characters in a couple of categories. We revealed the murderer with much fanfare, and gave out prizes for correct guesses, most money, best costume, and best acting. For party favors, everyone got a Homecoming crown (thank you, Burger King!) and we set up a candy buffet for kids to fill take-home baggies on the way out. 

If you're running a similar party for teenagers, here are my tips:
  • Have extra materials on hand for kids who didn't do their homework. I printed extra character sheets and school newspapers and brought them to the party, because party guest prep work turned out to be everywhere on the spectrum between "my parents quizzed me on my character for a week!" to "I lost all my stuff the same day I got it." When a kid said they didn't remember their character, it was easy to just hand them the second copy of their materials without making a big deal of it.
  • Have extra characters on hand. This is important to figure out in advance, because Night of Mystery, at least, has you purchase the game for a specific quantity of characters, both a minimum and a maximum. It was a bit tricky to buy a pack that had wiggle room, but not being able to accommodate a last-minute RSVP or unexpected kid showing up would have fueled my nightmares for the rest of my life. I had a couple of extra characters on hand that I could easily add to the game if an extra kid or two showed up to the party, and we were able to assign a character to a kid who gave a last-minute RSVP without fuss. 
  • Have a fun framing device. A school Homecoming dance was perfect for the kinds of activities this group of kids likes, and it gave them space to also enjoy being at a party.
  • Build in plenty of extra time. I wasn't really sure how long it would take the kids to complete all the parts of the murder mystery, so I set the party to last a full hour longer than my longest estimate, figuring the kids could use the extra time to just have fun together. That was perfect because it took the kids a LOT longer to complete the second act of the game, in particular--they got so invested in their backstories and character interpersonal drama and various shenanigans that they got VERY distracted from actually collecting the evidence, but since I'd built in all that extra time I could just let them enjoy themselves. The game finished with half an hour left before the end of the party, which was kind of perfect--the kids ran around the gym and took tons of instant photos and had a blast talking through the game while Matt and I got a bit of a head start on cleaning up.
This is the first party I've held at an alternate location since my college kid's first birthday party, and dang, if I had all those years of kid birthday parties to do over again, I might never have had a birthday party at home at all! Packing up all the crap to take with us did take a while, but we didn't have to deep clean the house and make the yard look nice. It was a little stressful to set up the entire party in the hour we'd allotted ourselves, but I wasn't setting up for the entire week before the party, either. It was also a little stressful to clean up on time and pack the car back up, but then I didn't spend the entire evening and next day cleaning my house all over again and washing a million dishes and taking out the garbage. 

Imagine: a Homecoming dance, a murder mystery, two dozen cupcakes, several pounds of candy, eleven happy party guests and one happy host, me on the dance floor, and I didn't even have to mop my floors.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Rainbow Party Project #4: The Rainbow Party Dress

You might think that a party wouldn't necessarily call for a brand-new, handmade, thematically appropriate dress.

You'd be wrong. Seriously, you're talking to the woman who made the children matching outfits for Music Day, and they didn't even perform!

It just so happens that I happened to have in my stash (and I have it because the children begged for it who knows how long ago when we were at Joann's, and it was cheap and also on sale) three yards of sickeningly pink, sickeningly rainbow and hearts flannel fabric. I don't sew with flannel so much anymore, so I have been busy turning all my novelty flannel prints into colored pencil rolls, but pink? And rainbows? It was meant to be.

Here's what it was meant to be:
It was meant to be hers.

The dress is sewn from a vintage children's pattern, the same one that I used to sew Willow's crochet dress--both those dresses are a size 3, incidentally, but you can tell that the crochet material has WAAAAY more stretch. This one is a perfect fit for my almost-four-year-old, in length and width, and it has a terrific fit to it, too, I think, which you don't always find in children's clothing:
The entire dress is trimmed in purple flannel bias--
--and the closures are done in mismatched (but matching) buttons, the buttonholes of which it took TWO sewing machines, and a lot of swears, to sew:
I'd say that the baby looks like an angel in her sweet new dress, but I don't know...
She's the kind of kid who can look awfully naughty just sitting on the couch, you know what I mean?

P.S. Check out my tutorial for back-to-front blanket binding over at Crafting a Green World. Ooh, and in my post about Waldorf dolls, the public is amusingly already up in arms that I so much as mentioned Waldorf's foundation in anthroposophy. It is what it is, people.

Thursday, May 9, 2013

DIY Dinosaur Birthday Party Invitations

It's birthday party season! We've got one dragon-themed ninth birthday party coming up in a do-able two months, and one dinosaur-themed seventh birthday party coming up in--gasp!--two days!!!

At this point, I should probably be concerned with cutesie games and activities and party favors, but what I'm REALLY concerned about is mowing the lawn, making a sign to warn people not to lean against the bathroom sink that is duct-taped to the wall, and...

Nope, that's about it. A lawn with grass that isn't a foot high and a sink that doesn't crash down on top of a kid. Those are my priorities.

Priorities or not, children do have to be informed that there is a party happening, to which their attendance is requested, so we did manage to get invitations made and distributed last week. The fact that this was accomplished by me unashamedly setting the task up as an assignment on a school day, well...

Eh, it is what it is. Sometimes you make birthday party invitations at school.

The invitations were postcards; Matt designed one half of one side to contain the party invitation--

--left the other half blank for the address, and on the flip side the girls each took half the postcards and drew a dinosaur scene on each one:


My Will is pretty studious these days, taking a lot of pleasure in intellect-driven pursuits. She's taken it upon herself to keep a daily journal of our chicks, for instance, and to weigh them every day, and when creating her postcard illustrations, she got out a dinosaur encyclopedia, because she knew exactly what dinosaurs she wanted to draw, and she wanted to get each one just right:

I've noticed that Will has lately become studious in other areas, too. She still throws the occasional fit about an assignment or chore and must be sent to bed for eight minutes, but she's taken complete charge of the daily welfare of our chicks, cleaning their water dish and freshening their bedding several times a day, unasked, sat through loads of sister dress rehearsals and recital business without fuss, and when I asked her this morning if she could be the one to help set up Sydney's birthday party with me this weekend (It's sort of a surprise party, so Matt's job is to keep Sydney out of the house that day), I had almost expected her to say no, or to ask if she could be out with Matt and Syd instead, but not only did she say yes right away, but she was excited at the prospect of helping with the food and decorations and set-up.

If this is what nine is going to be like, then I am all in!

Friday, May 12, 2017

Once Upon a Time There was a Fairy Tale Birthday Party

Once upon a time there was a little girl who loved birthday parties. Every year she had a birthday party with a different theme, and she got so much pleasure out of making her party fit that theme, from invitations to decorations to games to food, that the whole family loved to chip in and help her, just to see how happy she was.

Of course, it didn't bother her mother terribly much when this little girl grew up some and could do MUCH more of the planning and prep work all by herself!

For instance, guess who baked this entire cake all by herself? Who assembled it and decorated it completely independently?



The birthday girl herself!



Matt carved the watermelon into the shape of a crown, and I assembled the fruit wands:



My plan had been to use those watermelon cut-outs there as the wand toppers but let me tell you--cut watermelon is MESSY! It was dripping sticky juice down the entire wand, and while I'm not squeamish about kids getting messy when they're at my house, the line must be drawn somewhere.

To round out the dinner, we also made a tray of cheese sandwiches and peanut butter sandwiches, all cut out with a crown cookie cutter, and then some chips and mini un-iced cupcakes (from the leftover birthday cake batter). The party guests demolished the lot, so I think they liked it!

When the children arrived, I taught them how to make balloon swords--

--and another kid knew how to make balloon dogs, so we all happily played with balloons for a very long time before I was able to heard them into the playroom for our first game: Pin the Kiss on the Frog Prince:



Matt drew the frog, Will painted it, and Syd drew and cut out all of the kisses. Competitive games stress Syd out, so the kids just took turns for fun, and there were no prizes.

One of my favorite things about Syd's group of friends is how engaged they are. They love everything! Every activity you introduce, they're super into it. Every game you play, they give it their all. And what's more, they're so connected, as well--they love watching every other kid take her own turn, shouting advice as she wanders way to the left of the frog, laughing when she puts her kiss on its butt, congratulating her when she takes off the blindfold, over and over and over, for every kid, for every single turn. And some kids took several turns!

After giving that frog prince many, many, MANY kisses, we broke for dinner, and then came back to the playroom for the game that I had been looking forward to the most:



Yes, we played Toilet Paper Princess!



This game was just about the cutest thing that I have ever seen. We had enough guests to make three groups, each with a princess and two ladies in waiting. The ladies in waiting had approximately ten minutes to dress their princess for the ball, and then we had a princess fashion show.

I had planned on doing this once, but you know we ended up doing it three times in a row. Surprise, surprise--all the little girls wanted a turn at Princess!

And here's the token male, sitting in the corner looking bemused:


This game took a full hour, and after all of that shrieking and giggling I am not ashamed to tell you that I sent every single one of those children outside, taking the dog with them, and told them not to come in until they were ready for cake.

Of course they were all in and out and all around, shrieking and giggling and fighting with balloon swords, but it gave me time to swallow some ibuprofin and sit down in the kitchen with Matt for a while. I'd had a nice, long break by the time the pack of them came barreling in for good, reporting that there'd been some drama with the Freeze Tag game, and I declared that if there were some tempers that needed to be sweetened, then it must be time for cake!

I can't get over that perfect, perfect cake that she made for herself, all by herself:



And her sweet face, surrounded by her family and friends, just having been sung to, just about to make a wish:


She couldn't have had a better birthday--


--or a better bunch of kids to share it with.

I'm curious how her birthday parties will change as she gets older. The last time that Will requested a birthday party, she was nine (and there were also balloon swords at that party, and a kid-decorated castle cake, AND the candles on this cake are the same ones that I made for that first castle cake!). I'll happily have giant birthday parties for Syd as long as she wants them, then, with the sure proof that one day, whenever that day may come, she will no longer want her mommy to throw her a birthday party. I did suggest to Syd, though, that perhaps next year she might want to host her birthday party all by herself, without Mommy to organize the games and demonstrate the craft.

As soon as I said that, though, I bit my tongue in regret. Because sure, I'd have an easier week the week of her party, if I didn't have to do the prep work for games and activities, and an easier day the day of, if I wasn't cutting out a million little sandwiches into cute shapes and making fruit wands and watching yet another balloon sword-making tutorial on YouTube, but to not be there to watch every single kid take her turn at kissing the Frog Prince? To not be the emcee for the Toilet Paper Princess runway walk, for every single princess?

Not having to take double the dose of ibuprofin that night would NOT be worth missing out on all of that sweetness.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Little Ladies with Style

Even though I work a lot with clothes--sewing them, thrifting them, refashioning them, etc.--we are not a family who puts much emphasis on what we wear. I buy/sew clothes for the girls that are roomy, comfy, NOT trendy (if you don't have little girls, you probably don't know that you can buy low-rise jeans, shirts that proclaim one to be a heartbreaker who's looking for a boyfriend, and bikini-cut panties for your four-year-old), not girly (since the girls were babies, I've often made it a point to dress them in clothes gendered male because I know that people react differently to small children based on how they're outwardly gendered and I'd rather people think my babies are boys and call them sport and tell them how strong they look than think they're girls and call them princess and tell them how pretty they look--you know?), and I'm a sucker for costume stuff and vintage stuff and stuff containing pop culture media references from my own youth.

It's interesting to me, then, to witness my daughters' relationship to clothes. Willow has dressed herself since she was about two and a half, choosing her entire outfit each day--the only conditions I put upon her are that she has to cover her genitalia if she wants to leave the yard and she has to follow the school dress code when dressing for school (Montessori dress code isn't too big of a deal, since it's pretty common sense--play clothes instead of dresses; sneakers instead of cowboy boots or sandals; no pop culture media references; no jewelry; no costumes. Will's teacher only starts to get REALLY crazy when winter comes and she's telling you what kind of zipper she wants on your kid's snowsuit and hanging up an example of the kind of gloves you're NOT supposed to buy--after 40+ years in the game, the lady has her opinions).

I usually choose Sydney's outfit and dress her, because she has yet to have any interest in those activities for herself. Oh, and I'll occasionally make/sew matching articles of clothing for the girls and ask them to, in Willow's words, "be matches" now and then for my own amusement.

So for the past several days, when I've thought of it, I've been taking photos of the girls after they've finally gotten dressed for the day. I get a kick out of seeing what they're wearing and where it came from: This was yesterday, just before school. Sydney is wearing a striped onesie that her Grandma Janie bought her on clearance at Target two summers ago; white leggings with green butterflies that Grandma Janie bought at Old Navy and sent her last month (Willow has a matching one with pink butterflies, but the seams ripped in it the first time she wore it--I have my suspicions about Old Navy's workmanship); a wool vest that I bought at Goodwill; and red and pink shoes that I scored when I ended up transporting garage sale leftovers after a fundraiser (that I would be "going through" said garage sale leftovers before dropping them off at Goodwill was understood. Probably. (ahem)).
Willow is wearing a ratty old pajama top with planets and astronauts on it that I had intended to be a painting shirt when I dumpster-dived it; a pair of embroidered jeans from Goodwill; and a pair of pink and white shoes handed down from one of her little girlfriends--the growing-like-a-weed little girl blew through them in about a week, but they're still about two sizes too big for Willow, not that she cares.


This was not a school day, obviously--I don't know if you can tell, but the girls have removed the frame from my laundry bag in the closet and are using it as their "ballet barre" while they try to imitate the positions in the ballet book there in front of me. Willow is wearing a tutu I made for her while Sydney is wearing a dance skirt that was one of her birthday presents from a little neighbor girl; they're both wearing handmade necklaces, also gifts from the same party.


Oops, I shouldn't have let Willow wear those Powerpuff Girls pajama pants to school! With it she's wearing a grey velvet shirt from Goodwill, and Sydney is wearing conductor overalls sent years ago from Grandma Shoemaker to baby Willow in honor of Grandpa Shoemaker's career on the rails, and a dumptruck sweatshirt from the sidewalk exchange at our Recycling Center.


Here Sydney is wearing a flowered shirt and flower-cuffed capris (long pants last winter) that match but that I got from the Recycling Center on DIFFERENT days (wahoo!), and Willow is wearing a housefly shirt and comfy sweats from Goodwill. They're both wearing their matching candy-pink Converse Chuck Taylors from the mall.


This is Willow's school picture day, God help us. I've obviously just finished scrubbing her face to remove most of the black marker, but she chose a red shirt from Goodwill, a dumpster-dived kitty cat swing shirt (formerly a dress), plaid shorts from Goodwill, and mismatched socks. Sydney is wearing a vintage polyester dress from the Salvation Army thrift store and a blue Fuzzi Bunz.

And here Willow is wearing a ratty and poorly handmade dinosaur T-shirt that I picked up at the Recycling Center solely for the fabric but that is now, of course, Willow's most very favorite shirt that she wears everywhere so people can think I awkwardly and unevenly stitched it together for her and DIDN'T FINISH THE SEAMS! Anyway...Sydney has on a red dress with faux fur trim, also from the Recycling Center, and hiking boots that a friend gave me, assuring me her kid hardly wore them.

So I have no idea what patterns are revealed here, or what it's supposed to say about my children and their relationship to clothes. Does Willow wear whatever comes to hand first, or does she have some obscure reasoning as to color combination, material, or pattern? Does Sydney actually match in regards to what I dress her in, or sort of not? Do they look like all their clothes were originally worn by some other kids?

Or do they look totally awesome?

Thursday, August 3, 2023

An Easy Alteration To an Amazon Dress

 

Remember the teenager's end of the school year ballerina murder mystery party? One of the reasons why it was so fun is that it was not just a murder mystery, but ALSO a pretend high school Homecoming dance! 

Which means pretend high school Homecoming dance clothes!

This was, quite honestly, quite a lot of the appeal of the party for my own high schooler, since she's never been to a Homecoming dance... nor does she particularly desire to go to one, frankly, but dressing up and dancing with one's friends is SO fun.

Our local Goodwills do have a terrific selection of dresses, including plenty of beautiful formal ones, but dang, have they gotten spendy! Our local locations used the Covid lockdowns as an excuse to take away the monthly storewide sales, and when they reopened it was with higher prices and no more discounts, not even Color of the Week, grr. So even though I'm very much an advocate of thrifting and upcycling, I wasn't big sad when the teenager said she'd rather buy a cheap, fast-fashion, sweatshop-manufactured dress from Amazon. If it was gross, we could just return it and hit up Goodwill, after all.

The kid picked this one--


--and actually, it was pretty nice! The velvet and lace both looked good, the neckline had a well-constructed binding, the stretch fabric gave the garment good drape without needing darts (which means I didn't have to worry about misplaced darts), and the fact that it wasn't lined really just meant that I didn't have to work too hard on my alterations.

It definitely did need alterations, though. The length of the hemline and the sleeves were good, but the shoulders were way too long for my teenager's torso, and the waist was too roomy. We probably could have sized down, but the needed alterations were so easy that I could make them in less time than it would have taken to package up the return. 

For alterations this easy, I had the teenager put the dress on inside out, then I pinned the dress to fit the way she wanted it to.

I'm so glad I bought those plastic sewing clips that everyone was raving about on Tiktok!

I pinned the waist to fit, using the pins to mark my sewing lines and thereby skipping several traditional steps. Same for the shoulders, although I unpicked the top of the sleeve first:


To take in the garment, I just had to sew along the line my clips marked:


The sleeves were already slightly puffed, so I just regathered them to make them a little puffier, then pinned them and reset them into the shoulder. 

This was SUCH a quick alteration, and it really worked to show me that it's not the quality of the fabric that makes a garment look good, but the quality of the construction. The dress, pulled on straight from the package, looked okay, but it also looked as cheap as it was. But after doing nothing more than taking in the hems to fit my teenager's specific measurements, that cheap dress looked really good! It fit great, and therefore it looked great. 

A few weeks later, at my mending group's monthly afternoon when we sit in our public library and mend clothes for patrons, I used the same technique to alter a pair of work pants for a young adult who'd just started her first real white collar job. She'd purchased some khakis from Goodwill, but didn't like how wide the legs were. I had her put them on inside out, stood her on a stool, used my handy pins to narrow them the way she wanted, and then sewed along the pins. She tried them on again, and they looked great!

I'm telling you: easiest. Alteration. EVER!

Monday, October 26, 2009

About Those Halloween Candy Houses...:A Tutorial

As I thought they would be, the Halloween houses were the hit of the children's Halloween party. The gingerbread house's redneck cousin, the Halloween house isn't for a child too under the thumb of the sugar police, but it's really not the sugar orgy you'd expect. Frankly, I like to encourage my children to use food, especially candy, as art supplies--you still get much of the same sensory pleasures as you would eating the candy, but it allows an entirely new way to experience the candy that is creative and aesthetic instead of gluttonous.

But yes, they do eat quite a bit of candy while making these Halloween houses, so you have been warned.

The color scheme of the Halloween house is primarily black and orange--you can do a full-on "haunted" Halloween house with an older kid, but I clearly do not have that kind of kid yet. The beauty of the color scheme, however, is that it leads you straight into the awesomest kind of candy--chocolate.

For the infrastructure of the house, we usually go with chocolate graham crackers, but anything chocolate will do. Think about any kind of chocolate cookies, chocolate Little Debbies or other snack cakes, chocolate ice cream cones (they make super turrets), chocolate candy bars, chocolate doughnuts.

You could use icing for these, like you do with gingerbread houses, and some colors of icing would look really cool here, but I like to use peanut butter instead. It's super sticky, super easy to apply, and it's one less super-sweet thing for the kids to shove in their mouths while they work:
When I set this activity up for a party, I spoon peanut butter out into little bowls for each kid, and give them a popsicle stick for application. It works perfectly. I also give each kid a paper plate to build the house on, just so that each kid can take her house home. The paper plate leaves enough work area that the kids usually make little candy yards for their houses, as well.

And when I do this for a party, I usually ask each person attending to bring a small bag of something edible for decorating the house, to share with everyone else. This makes for a good variety. Some of my favorites:
  • pretzels
  • raisins
  • candy corn and candy corn pumpkins
  • marshmallows (they make good ghosts)
  • Reese's Pieces
  • gummy anything, especially worms
  • novelty candy items, such as candy bones or spiders or whatever

One kid brought Jelly Bellies to our party this weekend, and they turned out to be a huge hit--each kid really liked picking out specific colors to use in their own art installations. One kid made a swimming pool using only the blue Jelly Bellies, for instance, and one kid made a grassy yard with the green ones, and one kid made "a big puddle of blood for the witch to fall in."

Ahem.

Other awesome people who also make Halloween houses (amazing how you can think that you invented something, and then here comes the internet to disabuse you of such naive notions):

The only other picky things I do are to ask the party kids to wash their hands before they begin, and to clean up and hide all the candy supplies as soon as everyone is done. Because you get kind of sick of candy when you're playing with it and it's right in your face, but run off to do a little pumpkin pounding or dress-up or whatever, and ten minutes later you'll find yourself thinking, "Hmmm, I wonder if there are any more Reese's cups over there?"

Which there totally are, because even though I packed up all the candy for Matt and BEGGED him to take it to work with him, he forgot (HOW could you forget candy?).

I really should probably go eat those last Reese's cups, now that I think of it.

Friday, May 5, 2017

2017 Trashion/Refashion Show: Supergirl of the Night

Syd had big dreams for her Trashion/Refashion Show design this year. She wanted it to have a wrap skirt that she'd unwrap, mid-runway walk, to reveal as wings. A giant hood. Black velvet and silver sparkles.

And she wanted it to be covered in twinkle lights.

We went through several iterations of this dream, she and I, in between selling Girl Scout cookies like our lives depended on it, especially with that skirt. Twinkle lights, AND a transformation from wrap-around to wings, which means that we obviously needed two skirts, because she can't be skirt-less when her wings are revealed.

I did eventually figure out a way to make it happen using prodigious amounts of Velcro, but in the meantime I transformed a pair of black pants and a fancy dress into an underskirt so nice that Syd decided that maybe the wrap-around skirt part of the wings (and most particularly, with the wing fabric being so plain) could be ditched. The outfit, to be sure, did already have enough going on.

Instead, Syd cut out wearable wings--



--and decided on a runway move that would hide them until a big reveal.

Fortunately, the rest of the outfit went more according to plan. Syd thrifted a couple of pairs of black velvet pants and a single silver blouse that I used every inch of for the hooded shirt that I sewed her--I'm especially proud of the epaulets that used to be part of the shirt's bottom hem. The rest of that hem was used to flesh out the hood, and I cut the shirt's body into two three-quarters-length sleeves.

The twinkle lights were also tricky. For the photo shoot to accompany our application, I safety-pinned on a couple of packs of battery-operated twinkle lights, but it didn't give the effect that Syd really wanted:





She wanted white lights, and more of them. I got the idea to perhaps hook up a long string of conventional plug-in lights to a converter and then a battery pack, a set-up that's not very energy efficient but is upcycled and would, I believed, give the effect that Syd wanted. The problem, though, is that it was also heavy, with a converter box and two 6v lantern batteries. A friend helped me set the rig up, but when I tested it I realized that I'd need at least one more battery for a workable system, and the rig was already so heavy that I had to toss the plan altogether.

That night, another friend messaged me to tell me that she actually had a couple of strands of battery-operated white LED twinkle lights. Did I want to borrow them?

Reader, I DID!

For the first time this year, Syd filled out her own application. I don't know why it never occurred to me before to ask her to do that part, since it's her design through-and-through--some things only seem obvious in retrospect.

And I *should* have been having her fill out her application all along, because the kid nailed it! Here's what she wrote when asked to describe her design:

While average super heroes wear capes, REAL super heroes wear wings! Supergirl of the Night is crafted from four different pieces of thrift-store clothing including velvet pants transformed into a skirt and hooded shirt, shirts repurposed into silver sleeves, and wings made from an old blanket. The hood allows cover from rain and helps blend into the shadows. The sparkly silver sleeves reflect all bullet blasts and blend into day as well as night. The wings allow easy gliding and provide a cover of darkness for surprising enemies. The black shiny skirt hides many epic weapons to protect the innocent. Finally, Supergirl of the Night has a multi-colored string of lights to light up the night, from old Christmas lights with portable battery packs.

I tried to convince Syd that she should paint an old pair of black tights that I'd cut the feet out of back when the kids were modeling The Awesomes, but she had her heart set on wearing the tacky fishnet tights that I've owned ever since I went to that Halloween street party with Mac at least twenty years ago, probably 21 or 22 years ago by now. He dressed as John Hinckley Jr. in a bloodstained T-shirt that he'd used iron-on letters to put "I LOVE JODIE" on. I was dressed as... I don't even know what I was supposed to be, but a friend let me borrow this weird net dress that she said she'd got in Mexico, and I put on black lipstick and fishnet tights, so I think I was supposed to be some sort of sexy murder Goth or something? I have a photo that she took just before we left, with me attempting to vamp in a sexy murder Goth sort of way (I had no idea what I was doing, bless my heart) and Mac standing next to me looking bemused.

I miss him so much. I miss him all the time, so much.

So Syd wore the fishnet tights, and I bought her a pair of black Chucks to go with them (I bought myself a gorgeous pair of blue Chucks at the same time, and they're fabulous and I love them). And when I got the email that we were accepted in the show, we were in our hotel room in Atlanta, and Syd was so excited that she hyperventilated and I thought she was going to pass out for a second.

Even after you've completed your garment and you're accepted in to the show, there's still so much to do! It works best for Syd as a model if she creates and then practices an actual runway routine--and yes, I DID get this idea from watching Toddlers and Tiaras on Netflix, but I swear, it works so well! When we lived in town, Syd would draw a runway in chalk on the basketball court of the local park and we'd practice there every day, but now we have enough room that we can have a chalk runway on our own driveway, and a miniature masking tape runway in our family room. At our first rehearsal for the show,  the showrunner demonstrates a proper walk, including the points where she'd like every model to stop and for how long--I videotape that as a reference, and we use that to help Syd craft her routine. When she gets the routine the way she likes it, I videotape that, as well, and she watches it before she practices every day.

It's a lot of work being a runway model!

Syd also had to figure out her hair and makeup. Her hair, she was disappointed to realize, wasn't going to show from underneath her wide hood, so she focused her attention on Googling makeup ideas, and asked the volunteer makeup artist from Tricoci University to give her smoky eyes.

Which she did!



The rest of the makeup--blush and black lipstick with a silver vertical line running down the middle of her bottom lip (which people remarked upon the most out of anything, even though it took me five seconds to do with a small paintbrush and our clown makeup palette)--we did backstage before the show.

Even though the show doesn't start until 7 pm, Syd and I spend the whole day together, first getting her hair and makeup done, then at the theater:



The dress rehearsal takes FOREVER (and this year we rebelled by making Syd the only model who didn't dress for the dress rehearsal--in my mind, it's just one more chance to mess her garment or her makeup up and to wear down the batteries in her twinkle lights), and then we watch the opening act's dress rehearsal, and then we find somewhere to hang out and watch a movie (Beauty and the Beast this year) while doing each other's nails, and then pizza is delivered so Syd chows down on that for a while--


and then, surprisingly, it's already time to get Syd dressed and get the rest of her makeup on.

While we're doing that last bit, the rest of our family is doing this!



The Trashion/Refashion Show is recorded and plays on our local public access TV station a few times a year, but Matt always makes a bootleg video recording of Syd's walk from his spot in the audience. I present to you, then, Supergirl of the Night!


 My heart can hardly handle watching Syd perform. I love watching how enthusiastic the audience is, and how happy they are to cheer her on. Every year she's more confident on the stage, and every year she enjoys it more.

Me, though? My favorite moment is this--



Because we do that photo at intermission, when we are DONE! We just have to walk around and schmooze, show off the battery packs to interested audience members, let Syd answer questions about her process and the materials she's used, have her pose for photos with people, and then we get to sit and watch the runway show dedicated to the Trashion designs.

And even later than that, we get to walk down the streets of our town with one of us looking like this:



And because our town is the way it is, nobody even bats an eye. I don't even think we were the weirdest-looking group out there that night.

Syd has already told me that next year, she wants to apply for the Trashion part of the show. This worries me, because Trashion design is trickier, using more unusual materials that can be harder to source (although really, I suppose that we should have been put in the Trashion half that year that I made Syd's garment out of a sheet). Syd has also, however, told me something else that makes me far, far, far happier.

Next year, she says that she wants to sew her garment herself.

Hallelujah!