My Guerdon.....

are my children's accomplishments and we made it through another school year. I'm so proud of them. Ian my eldest and favorite 9 year old received 3 awards 1- for A+B Honor Roll 2- Star Reader 2(Part of the accelerated reader reading program at the school) 3- Millionaires Accelerated Reader, which basically means that he read 1,505,453.00 words this school year. He was the only one in the 3rd grade to receive this award and the only one in the school to do it in just one school term. The others had last years average added with this year. Can you tell we love to read?? If you don't believe me I have the $78.00 receipt that we paid in library fines!! We love reading so much that we don't like to give the books back, Lol....Gotta make a joke out of that one....

Zoe graduated from kindergarten - she is now officially a FIRST GRADER! She feels so accomplished. She walked away with 3 awards also: 1-Kindergarten Diploma 2-All S Honor Roll 3-All S in conduct. And now you get to see the dress(sorry for the crappy photos-6 to 8 weeks and counting before I get to see my Nikon again...)! McCall's 5568. It was very easy. I used size 6 because I wanted it to look big like the pillowcase dresses look and added an extra 1/2 under the arms because she has personal issues with materials close to her skin...she only likes knits and briefly tolerates anything else I make her wear. If I would have cut it based on her measurements it would have been to close to her under arm. You should have seen how fast that green gown came off, Lol!! I added the striped fabric at the bottom because she had to sit on the stage on a bleacher and I was afraid she'd forget her manners and wouldn't keep her ankles crossed like young ladies should........how can you sit on a bleacher and cross your ankles..hmnn. Any way I let Zoe pick out the zipper at Hancocks and we were in a hurry so I didn't see that it was not an invisible zipper....opps! I would make this again for her in a knit top instead of dress and draft my own neckline, omitting the zipper.

The polka dots and stripes belong to Robert Kauffman. I paid $8.95 for 1 yard of each print, $.88 for the pattern, $1.27 for the zipper, and used the thread and interfacing I already had. Total cost of this dress is 20.05 not included my time. If I was going to sell this I would list it at $65.00....which includes the flower pin and or hair bow(size 6).
So what do you think?