My Frugal Family: Wow what a fall!!!

Sorry for being lost for so long, I promise to do better.

We moved and got settled and the house we moved to ended up in foreclosure so we are moving again.

I also have become addicted to Pinterest, If you have not found this sight you have got to check it out! It is an amazing reminder of how many creative and talented folks there are in this world.

While on Pinterest I found this cool idea for a cute girls Christmas Dress. Empire Waist Santa Dress

Well I was highly disappointed when I went to the webpage and it was neither a tutorial or for sale.
Since Bethany had an appointment with Santa to get pictures taken today and I was on my usual own time management schedule and had not gotten it taken care of sooner, I had to put on my middle of the night artistic person hat and create it myself.

The worst part about it was that Bethany was not home, so I had to use her waistband of a pair of jeans to guesstimate her size, but alas that did not work. I am sorry not to have pictures of the step by step, but I was just struggling to get it made.

I began by measuring out some strips of 6 in tulle. I used 100 yards for her dress and it seemed to be just right. The length will depend on the height of your child. Roughly double the length from chest to knee and add 1.5 inches.

I then sewed to ends of 1/2 inch elastic the length that I estimated her chest size to be. ( this is where I screwed up).

I tied two strands of tulle together to the elastic at the middle and continued the whole way around til all the tulle was tied on.

I was wanting to give her a little more modesty so I sewed together two beautiful red Christmas napkins and created a tube that I placed inside the tulle and folded it over the top and sewed the elastic with the tulle ties inside.

I added a fur trim and then couldn't find the perfect Santa Belt, so back to the creative board. I found a black and silver belt at a thrift shop and with a little gold paint...Voila! Santa's Belt. She loved the dress, except for when it fell down exposing her chest to Santa. But I promised her we would fix the size and add a ribbon to help it stay up. But she couldn't decide if she was a ballerina or santa...The whole way to the portrait studio, she was showing split personalities. LOL