3

Happy birthday, Sweet-Yee, the icing on our cake.
Three has never seemed like such a big number to me until today!

Little Miss Birthday

You are two today.

You like:

• "cooking" and playing with your dishes
• Mr. Incredible ("Kebullll") and Woody (Ian's toys, of course)
• snacks. All. Day. Long.
• cleaning up
  
• playing in brother's room
• building with Megablocks
• swinging
• wearing your "wimmin yupe" and "webow yews" (swimming suit and rainbow shoes)
• books
• "prin-ce-ezz" (your princess nightgown)
  

You do NOT like:

• brushing -- your hair or teeth
• walking barefoot outside
• riding in the car
• leaving mommy or daddy
• running through the sprinkler

You often say:

• "uh-YAA!"
  
• "Naaack" (snack)
• "Mommy you okay?"
• "Here go daa-eee" (Here you go, daddy)
• "No wann iiitttt!" (don't want it)
• "ah-hee-yah" (I'm here)
• "Go ou-yide?"
• "ah-poopINNN" (I'm pooping)
• "C'mon, mommy!"

You LOVE to be held, cuddled, kissed and hugged, and giving the same back in return. I've never seen a child with so much affection to share -- does a mama's heart good.

Happy birthday, Lilly Ruth, Lilly Girl, Yeebird, Sweet Pea, Monkey, Sweetie Girl.

Now, let's head to Toys R Us and celebrate with a new play kitchen for you!!

Pink Ruffle-icious

Isn't this dress yummy? I made it for Lilly to wear at her second birthday party coming up in a few weeks. I call it "Pink Ruffle-icious." Like it? Inspiration came from this blog I found last week. Tres cute!

Trust me, you, too can make the Ruffle-icious. It's easy and cheap. But it does take some time to sew the billion ruffles. Here's how to do it:

I started with a plain, white dress. This one is from Baby Gap -- a gem given to Lilly by a neighbor when her little girl outgrew it. You could also make a tube skirt (see blog link, above) or try sewing tulle onto a patterned dress. That would be sweet.

Sew your ruffles together first. To give you an idea, a two-yard strip will ruffle into about 12 inches of length. I cut my strips 2 1/2 inches wide by two yards of fabric. Just eyeball it -- it doesn't have to be perfect. Then, I put two strips together (to add poof) and ruffled them up as I ran them through my machine.

Those billion ruffles . . .

Pin the ruffles onto the dress where you want them and sew on top of the seam of the ruffles.

A trick: the flowers on the neckline are not officially attached. I decapitated this little bouquet of flowers, hot glued them to a thin strip of pink felt, then safety-pinned the felt to the dress. That way, I can remove them and, voila! the dress is machine washable.


And no party girl or Ruffle-icious is complete without a flower in the hair. I beheaded another poor silk flower and hot glued him to a Goody barrette. Done!



There. Color me happy! You can't sew miles of pink tulle ruffles and not feel happy.