Pillowcase dresses

Well among other things to update on, I made two pillowcase dresses for the girls! These were obtained from R's grandma and he was using them for pillowcases! I was aghast at this waste of hand embroidered and hand crocheted pillowcases. I waited until this year to make the dresses so G- would be vertical and could show off the dress better. This project should have been done earlier in the summer (or spring) but I forgot about it! The blue seam binding came from Grandma Freda's stash and I used elastic I already had for A-'s. I did have to spend $1.29 for more elastic for G-'s, but not too bad for two cute dresses! I used directions from this site: http://rowena.typepad.com/rostitchery/projects/index.html

Can I just say how much I love the Internet? There is so much information out there from regular people that are so generous with their time and talents.

Also, we are babysitting the neighbor's bird so that's been quite exciting for the girls. We have two chairs in front of the cage because they like to sit and watch him. G-, of course, saw me take the tray on the bottom out once so now she does it whenever she drops something inside the cage. Poor bird is never going to be the same. Actually, he seems pretty content, only chirps occasionally and plays with his toys.

I've been test-driving some of the Montessori activities I'm preparing for A-'s school this year. It's going pretty well so far - she loves to walk the line (masking tape on the sunroom floor) and the sandpaper letters but I've having to hold her back on the letters. She wants to trace all of them before she has learned the sounds of the first two. She's not too into the practical life activities, I think I need to make them harder because she already knows how to pour and transfer and use tweezers.

She was playing with the foam geometric shapes the other day and came up with this person

and matched the trapezoids around the sides of the hexagon all of her own volition. My geometry loving heart was so proud!