It's a shame the beautiful blooming trees only last for such a short time - a mere few days most years. My crabapples which were so impressive just a few days ago, are now mostly bare, and the patio is a carpet of pink. The backyard was like one giant pink "snow-globe" the other day, so Elin and Byuri wanted to go out between storms with their umbrella....

Weebly Support finally got back to me, and they say the issues I'm having with loading photos is because of my browser. They suggest updating my browser or loading a new one. I did try that but my system is too old to support any of the new versions. Mikey got back to me too, and he's more helpful. He's given me an older version of Firefox that should work with my system. I will try that, but if that doesn't work, I may have to upgrade my system, but he also says the newer versions have features I definitely won't like.  Sigh.... I HATE change!!!!  I think I'd rather play "Russian Roulette" with the disappearing photos a bit longer, before I give in to upgrading to a system I won't like.

The mint and rose Victorian dress is coming along nicely - mostly because I injured my knee so can't do much else. I decided to just go with lace and thin ribbon above the sleeve cuff, instead of duplicating the pleated sleeve trim on Lonnie's dress. I decided to move the darts on the bodice front more outward towards the side seams so the darts wouldn't mess with the three vertical rose stripes. The sleeves and lining are sewn into the bodice, and the next step is to add the ruffled lace around the yoke - which is way easier to do now while the bodice is still flat. 

The underskirt is also sewn and pressed, and ready to have the lace and wider pleated strip sewn on. I cut the underskirt with the stripes going horizontally so I'd have nice straight lines to sew the skirt parts onto - the striped print won't show on the outside, it just supports the various skirt layers. The pleated skirts still have the basting holding the pleats in place - I won't remove the basting until after the skirts have been sewn into place.

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.