Generations of Dressing Up

Jennifer will be here soon. Since I can't do a lot and I'm feeling very sentimental, I went through the boxes of pictures and came up with this idea to share with you.

I used to love to sew. I made everything we had. I made my daughter clothes, doll clothes, and of course her Halloween costumes. I have not always been a grown up though, aren't you surprised?

That little tot in a Danish traditional outfit is me. I still have it. My Mama is on the right and now you know why I like being blond it makes me look more like her. People who can't get used to the blond have their obvious reasons. Most of my years I wore my hair long.

These are the outfits I made over the years. Jenny was a bunny in kindergarten, the outfit was made of velvet and I could hardly keep my hands off her. I could not figure out how to make the ears stand up so I told her she was a jackrabbit.  The genie outfit was really fun. I would use satin lining fabric which in those days was cheap. I also had a wonderful fabric store with a very good remnant box and found the dark blue velvet in there. Those deals don't exist anymore. It used to be cheaper to sew. The princess outfit we found at goodwill, somebodies prom dress that I made over. The hat and the wand were cardboard, foil, and some other odds and ends.

This was the hardest and most expensive. I had to buy real fabric. We actually spray painted her hair black. Those sleeves were complicated but she really did look just like Snow White, white collar, red cape and all. I have no idea what happened to that! We should have kept it.

We didn't really need a holiday to dress up. Jenny loved to play and dress herself up.
That was her prom dress. I put the picture of her and her toys in there to show you my idea for what to do with all those stuffed animals. I took a closet wooden pole and put a hook in the ceiling and a hook on top of the pole. Then I used cup hooks all over the pole in strategic places and put a little loop on the toys if they had nothing to hang with, most did. What a space saver it was and so cute, not to mention cheap. I was on welfare in those years.

 The next generation wasn't exempt from the love of play. That is Kayla with Rasmus when he was young. Now that you see Jenny you can see that Kayla was a little replica. The top picture is Hunny, and Heather and Granny marching around in Halloween hats the girls had made. I used to hunt the thrift stores for girls formals to have a dress up box. Kayla and Heather were dressed up one year from that and a mask we got in New Orleans.

This time it wasn't any holiday at all. We were playing with Heather and dressed her up. Then Jennifer and I got dressed up. I couldn't find the pic of Jen, it's too bad because she looked hawt! When Pa came home from work he got into the spirit of things and let us dress him too.

How about you? Does your family enjoy dressing up to play?