Little Dresses for Africa

The girls and I went to a sew-in at our church. It was a day to get together and sew dresses for little girls in an orphanage in africa. We also worked on shorts for the boys and skirts for the women. I believe the ministry is called Show Mercy. Our church's goal is, I think, 110 of each item. You can visit their blog at www.littledressesforafrica.org.blog. I haven't visited the site yet.


Here is an example of one of the dresses. This dress is actually made from a pillowcase but we have been using fabric and bias tape. They seem to be the simplest thing to make. I brought the instructions home to make some for B#6 for summer dresses with a t-shirt underneath.

Here is B#4 working on one of the dresses she made.

We started hanging the finished dresses in ziplock bags on the bulletin board in church. It will be exciting to watch it fill up as we continue to make more.

Here is a friend's daughter doing some of the cutting. My contribution consisted of ironing as that was about all my tired, postpartum brain could handle for the day. B#2 stayed home with the little boys to help dad while I took the rest of the girls with me. B#6 made some beaded bracelets and necklaces for the girls in the orphanage while the sewing was going on.

Some of my favorite websites

I decided today that I wanted to do a post on some of my favorite websites/blogs. Now my family might be disappointed not to see any updated photos of beautiful B#9 or read some more personal things but not knowing who my other readers are and wanting to share some things that interest me, I thought this might be a good post to do.

www.raisingolives.com is a new blog that I have found, written by a mother of 9 also. There are so many good things on this blog from saving money, homeschooling, parenting(great posts here), pregnancy etc.

www.raisinggodlytomatoes.com is a website that is written by a mom of 10 with some wonderful advice on raising godly children in an ungodly world. I purchased her book but you can also read it through her articles on the website.

www.raisinghomemakers.com is a blog written by many different authors. Some are written by moms about raising our daughters to be godly young women who desire to do the Lord's will in their lives, even if it goes against what society thinks they should do and other posts are written by young ladies themselves as they go through this time in their lives.

www.yoursacredcalling.com is a blog by another mom of many, Staci McDonald, who co-wrote the book "Passionate Housewives Desperate for God" and "Raising Maidens of Virtue", which I am hoping to read through with my girls or at least have them read if time with a newborn and two rambunctious toddlers won't allow me to read with them.

www.ladyofvirtue.blogspot.com is a blog written by a mom of 12, I think. Her posts have all different ranges, from homeschooling to politics. I really enjoy her perspective on things.

I know there are others that I read on a very regular basis but these were the ones that came to my mind for now. Even if you don't homeschool or even have children, you might find something of interest for you at one of these. Maybe even just to help you understand our families convictions better.

Hope you all are having a blessed night.

Graduations

I can't believe that DH and I are old enough to have two of our nine children graduated. Scary thought:) but that is what we have. B#1 actually graduated last year and has been attending our local community college this year. During the summer he participated in a Police Cadet Academy in a town near ours so here are his graduation pictures from that. He is pursuing Law enforcement as his career and is actually working on the river as part of the Marine Patrol for our local Sheriff's Office.


B#1 with our Sheriff and another guy, not sure who he is actually.

The cake for the reception.

B#1 shaking the Sheriff's hand as he went forward for his certificate. During this academy they had the option of being pepper sprayed as part of their training. I do believe that they now have a healthy fear of using pepper spray on people without just cause. It is some nasty stuff which took B#1 a couple of days to be completely cured from.

Then last weekend we had B#2's graduation party here at our house in the backyard. She loves lavender so we went with that as our theme, using purple and white for our colors. The big purple things in the picture are our drink dispensers. I had hoped to borrow a friends pretty glass ones to hold our water and our punch but she was using them so it was time to get creative with what to use. A friend suggested covering the big orange water coolers from the church with table cloths and tying it with ribbon so that is what we did. All in all I think that worked well. We should have made more punch though as it went pretty quickly.

We were blessed to be able to borrow tables, chairs and table cloths from the church.

The girls made lavender sachets for all of the girls and ladies to take home with them. Nothing for the guys that came though, sorry.

B#4 spent the day before baking 85 cupcakes and then the day of the party filling and frosting all of them. We helped her a little. These are chocolate cupcakes with a peanut butter cup inside them with peanut butter frosting.

These are chocolate cupcakes with raspberry filling with chocolate frosting and a raspberry on top. We also had lemon cupcakes with lemon filling and vanilla frosting and the good old stand by of yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting. They were all yummy!