Howard Family, Party of 5

This weekend....

....I made this:

A "ruffled neck top" with a headband to match.

I love the owl-print fabric....I want to use it for everything!

The shirt turned out a wee bit big....mostly because I rushed through the directions cause I wanted to get right to sewing & photo-taking. But that's kind of my signature-style at this point I guess. :o)

I do like the "ruffly neck" part of it:

But I think I'm going to need to tweek the pattern somehow because everytime I look at the top I think of what a fine line it is between being super cute and looking like this:

or this:

or even this:

Looks that are each fine in their own right, but not really what I'm going for with my 5-year-old couture. :o)

Mallory like it though. She sported it all day Saturday...despite the rain and winds.

....Arissa went ice skating!

Jesse went too...and he only fell once. :o) Arissa did great and only ended up with a slightly bruised knee and one record-breaking blister on her ankle. But she wants to go again so I'd say it was still a success.

......Mariah went to a Birthday Tea Party!

She'd been waiting for this party for weeks. She was so excited she wouldn't even wait for me to snap another picture!

Mariah & the birthday girl:

The sweet little dainty snacks & "tea" (apple juice) are served:

......we spent some time with our cousins!

Cousin Audrey & baby Kassadi (not pictured) were down for the day so we spent some time at Nana's to catch up with them. The girls love their little cousins...and I think the feeling is mutual.

Look at those pretty eyes!:

....It rained!

So we...................any guesses?

We baked.

.......We got to wear our new dresses!

The girls got to wear the new dresses I got for them recently (courtesy of the much-loved Macy's One-Day sale).

(Mariah isn't pictured because she had already run to the car to beat the rain that started pouring down.)

.........So that was our weekend! Minus the things I couldn't/didn't take pictures of. Such as:

~Mallory's playdate with her sweet little friend on Friday after school

~Arissa's overnight playdate w/ Vanesa on Friday

~Jesse's electrical project he's been working on for days and spent a lot of time on this weekend

~Gary's birthday party we had lots of fun at on Saturday night

~The loooong game of Monopoly we played (we let Mariah be the banker....enough said!)

~The world-wide online auction (but instead of highest bidder winning, it was first bidder) for a knitted stuffed animal being sold from a lady in London.....

that I wanted more than anything to win........

that I've tried several times before to win......

that only happens once or twice a year.....

that I enlisted the help of Jesse, Gary, & Courtney + 4 different computers for to increase my chances of winning.....

that I planned an intricate strategy for....

that I trained all my helpers on how to execute that strategy beforehand so we would win....

and still lost.

:o(

My helpers were awesome though.....3 people dedicated 40 minutes of their time to help little old me win this simple silly (albeit super duper beautiful) over-priced knitted thing that they couldn't care less about and that I could probably make myself if I had enough time and was patient enough to try. 3 people helped me try to out-smart the internet and international time zones, when they could have been napping and listening to the rain or doing anything else. 3 people whooped and clapped when we thought we'd won, only to find that when we refreshed the page, others had been able to beat us.

So I feel badly about that. I need to take them out to dinner or at least bake them cookies or wash their cars or something.

That sure was a bummer way to end a lovely, fun-filled, rainy perfect weekend.