Easy Queen Esther Dresses

The easy Esther Dress for little girls.

These dresses couldn't be simpler! I can't believe we hadn't tried them before. The girls have been prancing around in them as much as possible all week, and are anxious to show them off along with our Sweet & Savory Hamantaschen on Sunday. Looking forward to some time outside with friends. 

Paper Chain Crowns

Sometimes the simplest crafts provide the most joy. This is a great thing for me to embrace. Though I always have grand ideas and notions of what we can accomplish in a single day, sometimes the cranky baby that can't seem to be calmed throws us for a loop. Today was one of those days, so we have Hamantaschen half made and some paper crowns to show for it.

this one is very elvish

course, we also made penguins and racoons 

If you're familiar with making paper doll strands, snowflakes, and the like, you should have no trouble picking up some paper and scissors and getting to business. I had lots of ideas to take the craft one more step, like fabric or pretty wrapping paper...but, for today the simplicity of construction paper served us well.

these new costumes are what they'll dress up in tomorrow for our party, scored Naomi's at a local consignment store--it's really cute!

Needle Felted Queen Esther Crowns and the Beautiful Day.

It's traditional to dress like Queen Esther, or one of the characters from the story, so we had to finish up our crowns...

I cut a simple pattern out of paper (folding in half again, then using a straight edge to draw the 'peaks')

then, I cut some simple 'jewels' out of felt & put Naomi to work. 

We attached a band of elastic with my sewing machine and they were ready to go! Simple enough...

I've already warned Naomi that the other plastic/ridiculous crowns we have kicking around are going. We're slowly weeding out the junky play clothes in favor of sturdier and more modest ones. The older Naomi gets, the less I like her flouncing around in some of those extremely skimpy ones!

Here are a few pictures of our all our Queen Esthers, Hamantaschen, and an around beautiful day. (There were some handmade dresses (note the gold) that were extremely adorable--I should have taken the opportunity to create something for our dress-up chest that could be reused...maybe next year!)

Listening to the story of Esther and shaking noise makers (groggers) to boo the name of Haman.

Everyone in the group brought Hamantaschen for our bake-off. There was pumpkin, chocolate, cherry, strawberry, and chocolate 'bump'. All were good in their own way, but I'm going to claim pumpkin as the best filling and Mr. Watkin's cookie as the best cookie.

there were no complains from Leviah. 

and filling paper hamantaschens with candy is another special treat! We did this last year, and while I forgot, Naomi didn't. So, before we left for the park she reminded me to bring all the supplies! I guess that's how traditions really get started...