Missy, Layla and Hope came along to check out some of the Christmas lights in town.....

With school out for the Holidays, Aaron decided it was the perfect time to make some cookies with his sister and her friends.  He'd already made a batch of gingerbread dough in advance...

'That's a weird looking rolling pin! It doesn't have any handles..."

"Well, it works just the same...."

Byuri could barely wait to start cutting out the cookies....

As soon as he was finished rolling out the dough, Aaron let them at it....

He baked the cookies...

...and rolled out more dough as needed....

When they were baked, it became Byuri's job to decorate them....

Cookie decided she needed to test one.....

'They are delicious!!"

Missy, Layla, and Hope were on their way home from shopping, when they passed the toy store...

The old toymaker was busy rearranging the toys in the window, trying to find room for a beautiful doll house....

"I hope Santa brings me a dollhouse like that!"

I had wanted to take some photos of my girls outside with the lights, and I was also experimenting with my son-in-law's camera again. I'm finding that the photos taken hand-held at the really high 6400 ISO are often too grainy for my taste.  I love the background lighting, and want to try take some more with my own camera on a trip-pod using the timer. But it's WAY too cold out there the next few days.  Maybe by then I'll have figured out how to do the same with his camera.

Coming home from shopping before it got too dark....

Looking at the Christmas lights....

So, against my better judgement, I went ahead with the one sleeve, finishing it off as far as I could, and then sewed it into one of the bodice halves. I should have been working on both sleeves in tandem, but was too excited to see how it would turn out, so just zoomed ahead with one....

Taking a closer look....

Then I sewed the underarm and sleeve seam.....and tried it on....

It's looking really good, and now I feel like cutting out the skirt and over-sleeves, but I really should do the second sleeve first. And that's what I meant about ignoring my better judgement, since it's rather hard to go right back to the beginning on the second sleeve now.  Sigh.....maybe I can do both at the same time, and alternate between the two, since the skirt and over-sleeves have very, long hemlines - and there's lots of basting involved.  Good idea!

And in case anyone is wondering why Bianca is still wearing her thick plaid skirt with petticoat underneath, it's to help me keep in mind that I needed to make her bodice wide enough to work with all those layers.  I've made the mistake of making a skin-tight bodice before, only to have it end up with a big gaping space at the back after inserting the skirt. It's so easy to forget that the bulk of the skirt will add to the circumference at the bottom of the bodice, especially if the top of the skirt ends up inserted inside the bottom of the bodice, which is how I always do it. So it's important to think ahead and make the bodice wide enough right from the start, to compensate for all that extra fabric.

So I've started building up the sleeves. The original doesn't have all the puffs and ruffles like the doll version, so I'm trying to stick more to the original, and am building up rows of texture with narrow cream laces, some applied flat, and others gathered a bit....

It's a lot easier to do the beading while the sleeve is still flat, but I can only bead in the middles since my machine won't like the beads too close to the seam. I suppose I could change the foot on the needle, but I'm too lazy for that, so I'll just have to finish the beading after the sleeve is sewn.

Today is National 'Baking Cookies Day', so the girls went into the kitchen again....

Hope was in charge of baking them...

"Want to try one?"

"Sure, I'd love one!"

"I'd like one too, just as soon as I finish mixing up this next batch of dough....."

Today I'm working on beading the small puffy sleeves which will be at the top of Monica's sleeves. I bought some red rhinestones and glued them all into place last night, so they'd be ready today. Now I have to bead around them to simulate a gold jewellery setting....

Taking a closer look....

The beads are very small, and are hard on the eyes, but I'm almost done the first sleeve.

Oh, and I changed my mind about the main sleeves yet again.  I made a test sleeve to see how far up there would need to be lacing, and decided that with her arms being so slender, the eyelets and lacing would take up too much space, so decided to do away with the lacing idea, and make a slender sleeve sewn down to the wrist, and I'd just have to remove her hands to get them on. So now Bianca has paper clips instead of hands.

I made some little aprons the other day, so my Mini girls could do some baking.  The first thing they wanted to tackle were some gingerbread houses....

Checking the instructions...

Passing another candy cane....

Putting on the final peppermint stick....

I just took some photos when Layla was reading Rudolph the Red Nosed reindeer to her friends...