Old Fashioned Dress:

Christa Taylor, Striped Best Friend Dress

I am such a sucker for shirt dresses and feminine skirts, I recently saw these in a Lands End Magazine, Women’s Regular original belted shirt dress, and Women’s Tie Waist Full Skirt.

My little son, at age three, told me, “Mom, I like when you wear your skirts.”

My husband said to me, “such a pretty blouse on you, it would sure look cute with one of your denim skirts!”

Emily skirt, from Junees;I don’t own this skirt, my main skirt I wear now is a denim spunky hand me down from my dear friend Jeralyn.  Its maternity and a bit below the knee, and a great stand by I frequent!

Old Fashioned Goodness: I was corresponding with one of my dear friends this last week and we were discussing old fashioned goodness.  Women of the past were purely women, and they made a career out of their roles, as it were.  My friend was referring to one of her favorite shows when she referred me to Janet, one of her favorite characters.

“ I watch her as she cleans and cooks in her dress and apron and she is strong and yet sensitive and she raises her kids with morals and disciplines them and loves and heals them and ahhh i want to be like her….Janet was not thin and beautiful with makeup and hairsprayed hair, she was a little meatier and her hair was messy from the days work and she was sweaty but oh man… i think she is so beautiful… i think she is the epitomy of what a woman should be like.  She is not perfect.  She doesn’t have her nails done and highlights hahah and she works hard and even helps with the animals. ”

I loved my friend’s words and practically drewled as she described a woman who is not a fashion template, who has a normal body, but who captures the essence of femininity in her character, in her persona, and in her life style…yes, she sweats a little, and might even stink when she does her work with the animals!  A womanly woman thrills in her role as woman, friend, wife, and most especially…Mother!  She finds her talents, beautifies and enhances her surroundings with them, and shares!

Inspired by my friend’s letter, which was fraught with all her favorite old fashioned pleasures, old fashioned moral joys, and human kindnesses, I was tickled into glorying in the old fashioned with in me, and in my life….and loved it!   I started with making a new apron that I referred to in my previous post.  I invented some darling skirt outfits, wore the jean skirt over-all combo I recently finished, (see picture from Fashionably Modest Patterns, Buckle Jumper dress) and cutefied in my modern shress option (pants with a pretty blouse/dressish-like top) with enjoyment.  This week I skipped on my duller options, for old-fashioned funsies.

Raising Old Fashioned Kids: Once, when I went to visit a friend, her children were all in the back ground tussling and pretending together; dressed as little lions, tigers, and bears or princesses.  She told me that every year at Halloween time she picked up a costume from the local thrift stores or second hand stores.  I thought it was a delightful tradition and started it myself!  I delight in our dress up box.  From it, my son emerges as a lion, a leopard, and Davy Crocket, on a weekly basis.  My daughter doesn’t use the dress up box as much as my son now, but just incorperates dress up looking clothes into her daily outfits.  Her spinny gini-gown is getting terribly unsightly, and her red velvet Santa-dress is terribley past Christmas acceptance, still these outfits make their way into her dress choice each week.  I love it.  I love it.  My children are experimenting with their God given roles through play, through every day choices, and it is old fashioned, it is good, and it is so happy!  They play with blocks, and big plastic laundry baskets become cars and boats.  Little craft projects are always being invented, the latest is my daughter’s invention to give to her Nanna’s cat and dog, a big bowl of watery milk with grass pieces.  Our son throws on his coat any old time of day and romps outside, and in the summer they play in the ‘grass house’ or the ‘secret bush’ and splash in the irrigation water we are fortunate to have access to…its a childhood wonderland!

(This is Milly’s cousin Wesley in her gini-gown)

(Milly’s currently not so fresh, and pink and chipper gini, now gray, holey, and entirely loved)

Old Fashioned Service:

These last few weeks, I wrote a letter with an old fashioned pen and a paper to a dear friend and shared slices of my life with her, and started making some valentines~old fashioned love notes. (Ideas from Family Fun) I made a meal for someone who had a baby.

I visited a neighbor with the childrand thanked her for generously giving us a bag of apples we found on our porch, and found out they weren’t from her, now I have to suspect my visiting teacher!

Old Fashioned Teaching:

This week, I utilized the talents of my sister in law, and got fresh exciting ways on teaching science.  We made weather bags, and experimented to find out what snow and ice are made of.  I thouroughly enjoyed the freshness of my children’s delight in simply watching red ice cubes melt into hot water, and observe them eagerly collect a fresh batch of dirty snow to test its melting properties.  We notebooked our evidence, our predictions, our guesses, our outcomes.

Old Fashioned Park with good-time fries:

We were so excited to go to our mid-wife appointment to hear our new Little’s heart beat.  After, we were just in the mood for something fun.  So we went to BYU’s creamery, got some pepper fries, garlic fries, and spiced fries, and found a park where we ate our fatty entrees and then the kids romped in the icey park.

(BYU creamery fries come in a cup like this: but ours was to-go in a Styrofoam box, and a lot of them!)

Old Fashioned-Hobby:

And, this week as I busied my children with homeschooling, I realized I could multi-task when the hobby was portable and quite brainless! Hallelujah!  I realized I didn’t have to wait till I was all alone to do my hobbies!  I recently attended my sister’s Knitty Gritty Party (Thank you Eirene for hosting our Domestic Dolls, I actually learned a lot just from that night!)

(Hazel is doing a puzzle on the couch, Rawl in his Davey Crockett hat is working on an alphabet puzzle, Milly is doing a United States puzzle–Milly innitiated this whole puzzle bonanza, and I am taking a picture but was knitting with Hazel on the couch.)

So CHEERS to an old fashioned week, and may we all enjoy Old Fashioned Goodness~  That shouldn’t be so terribly Old Fashioned, after all!