Ready For Summer and a Princess Skirt Preview

The end of the school year is SO close I can almost taste it and this year I am SALAVATING at the idea of a break!  Lydia (and the big school system) have been out since last week, so it feels like we are a little stuck but summer is coming and I am getting really excited about having a little time to focus on making stuff (and cleaning stuff, and organizing stuff, and planning school stuff).

Of course I will also be devoting lots of time chasing to the kiddos, especially now that Joshua can WALK! Yep! He took his first solo steps this weekend after NEVER learning to crawl!  Aside from some baby-proofing, my most pressing project is making stuff for Lydia's birthday party.  I have scaled things WAY back and am mostly inviting school friends. We are having the party at our house and planning on the kids mostly playing on Lydia's new playhouse complex (blog post coming soon) so I'm not doing party games.  I'll have some fun with food and decorations, but for now I'm obsessing over what Lydia will wear.

So far, I have made something for Lydia to wear that matched the theme for each of her parties.  There was the dress shown above for her Butterfly 1st Birthday party, a fun dress for her Alice in Wonderland Tea for Two party, there was an up-cycled dress for the Three Under the Sea party, and then a custom tee shirt and Paris themed skirt for last year's Four and Fabulous party.  This year is all about PRINCESSES!

Lydia LOVES Cinderella and she actually already has a Cinderella costume that I made for her.  I have a feeling she will want to go full dress up for her party, but I want her to have something new and something that is more of a normal outfit.  I started searching for "princess fabric" online and fell in love with a few options.  I ran them by Lydia and she picked her favorite.  it's from a Riley Blake line called "Happy Ever After."

She loved the print of houses and castles because it reminded her of Cinderella's story.  There is even a clock and a pumpkin shaped carriage!  It even comes in a version with a blue background, the color of the sky..... AND of Cinderella's dress!

 Perfect..... except that I failed to notice that this fabric is from 2012 and sold out on most sites!  Ooops! How do I not check this stuff BEFORE showing it to Lydia?!?  After some frantic searching, I found a place in Austrialia that wouldn't ship to the US and a place in England that would. The fabric has been ordered and  has been listed as shipped.  Here's hoping it makes it in time!

 

While I wait for the fabric to arrive, I have been playing around with photoshop to look at a few possibilities.  Mostly, I realized that if I wanted any of the coordinating fabric, I might need to search it out as well and couldn't afford to wait.  I definitely want to use the landscape print as the border of the skirt. 

There are some other cute prints with princesses and one with princess dresses that are designed to coordinate. Honestly, I was more excited about the idea BEFORE I made these digital mock ups.  I think I have decided that I can find lots of prints that are a little less busy, maybe a dot or a stripe, and find them here locally after the border print arrives. I am pretty sure that I am making a skirt, so that still leaves a shirt to find or create, so stay tuned.... and wish my fabric happy travels across the ocean!