A few photos of my lovely Butterfly Narae in amongst the pink crabapple blossoms.

 My own crabapple trees are too high over my head because they are in a raised garden, but the Catholic High School has several very large trees with branches right down to the ground, which are perfect for doll photos. I'm so glad I took my Lonnie and Narae for some photos in the crabapples on Monday evening, because the delicate flowers are so short-lived, and yesterday's storms pretty much blew away all the flower petals. Several times the strong winds made it look like I lived in a pink snow-globe, and now all my trees are virtually bare.

I've started a Victorian outfit for Peach for when she comes back home, so she and Lonnie can do "Victorian" things together. It took a bit of time playing around with all my green and rose ribbons to figure out a combination to work with the mint and cream striped fabric I chose. I also found a mint green braid to go around the outside edge of the straw hat, and have glued and stitched it into place, and lined the inside of the brim with cream lace. The straw hat is rather rough, and delicate at the same time, and not at all the quality they used to be many years ago. But I have to work with whatever I can get. Four different ribbons have been sewn together to make the width of the skirts, and now I'm in the process of pinning all the pleats. 

I hope everyone has been enjoying the Victoria Day long weekend. The weather has been glorious, and Lonnie wanted to go out and look at all the blooming trees. 

I took some photos, thinking nothing could be more representative of "Victoria Day" than a lovely Victorian girl surrounded by beautiful pink crabapple blossoms.

When I was a little girl, I used to think all the fluffy little dandelion and thistle seeds drifting on the wind were fairies. It was fun to blow on the fuzzy balls of dandelions gone to seed, and send the fairies flying. Elin has found a nice big ball of dandelion fairies and is ready to set them free

There's not much going on doll-wise these days other than taking the occasional photos. I've been playing with ribbon combinations trying to figure out the pleated skirt for a Victorian dress for Peach for when she comes back home, but gardening is taking up most of my time now that the weather is finally good enough to plant things. The front yard is almost finished. Jan went over to a new housing development a few streets over where they are tearing down four old houses to make room for a new mini-subdivision, and he asked permission to dig up any perennials in their gardens; peonies, irises, Solomon seal, lots of hostas, pink and blue forget-me-nots, and several thousand grape hyacinths (which I had to sort through and pull out all the crab-grass, creeping Charlie, and other weeds). Well, two truckloads, and several days later, he finally has everything planted in the gardens. Good thing the forecast is calling for four straight days of showers and rain later this week - the new plants can definitely use it.

I managed to create two new photo pages today - one with the girls in their sundresses and playing dress-up, and the other with all the Museum pictures. Weebly is still giving me issues, but as my son always say; "There's more than one way to do things on the computer. If something doesn't work one way, try another". So I have.  I figured out that if I pre-load all my photo and text icons first in the spots I'm going to post photos, then fill in all the text, and then load the photos, it usually takes just three or four tries. But I really miss being able to add and move photos around, so I'm making a preliminary layout in IPages first to see how things look, then writing down the image numbers, so I can load according to my list.  I also discovered that Weebly prefers Jan's vibes to mine, so once I've managed to load my photos, I get Jan to press the "Publish" button, and TaDa!! it works!!  Most of the time.   It's a total pain, but I'm nothing if not determined! 

Today is "International Museum Day" and everyone is encouraged to take the day off and visit at least one museum. So the girls headed off to the Museum of Natural History, to the Egyptology Department, and as luck would have it, the staff was busy unpacking a newly arrived mummy temporarily on loan to the museum.  The girls found it fascinating to watch, but also thought it was rather creepy.

The little girls heard that I wanted to package up all the sundress sets, so they quickly ran off with all the slips so they could play dress-up one last time. I can't really blame them - frilly slips and skirts were one of my favourite dress-up items when I was little too. They can pretend to be a bride, or ballerina, or princess, and with so many slips the possibilities are endless.

All the BID Sundress Sets are now finished and up for sale, although three are already spoken for. There are still two each of the Black and Blue Gingham Sets available....

...and in the Valentine Hearts print sets below, there are three Yellow Heart Sets (with the white top) available, and one Pink Valentine Set (with the bright pink top)  All come with sundress, long-sleeved top, tights, slip, and crocheted hat.  Click on photos for more details.

I did manage to finish all the Gallery pages earlier today, even though it took many attempts with photos constantly disappearing on me. It feels great to be done!

A sneak peak at the three different gingham colour combinations; red, blue and black.

I'm almost finished all eleven sets, and hope to get them up for sale by the weekend.

Today is "Straw Hat Day", the day to get out those straw hats and wear them with pride. It's also "National Chocolate Chip Day", the day we are encouraged to put chocolate chips in or on everything we eat today; cookies, ice cream, sandwiches, cereal, coffee, everything!

So Lonnie put on her lovely straw hat and went out in the garden to enjoy some chocolate chip treats.  And judging by the size of that cookie and that huge ice cream sundae, I'd say it's a good bet today will also be "Upset Stomach" Day.  Probably "Alka-Seltzer" day as well.

I'm making good progress on the tops and now have to sew snaps on all of them. Then it's time to cut out all the slips. I'm really liking the gingham combinations - red, blue and black - all with red, yellow and white accents. Here's Elin in the blue combination.....

The red sundress will have a white top and red tights, and the black gingham sundresses will have yellow striped tops and red tights. Next decision will be the colour of lace on the slips. I've pulled white, light blue and red lace. I'll see which combos get what colour.