Emilia and Eleanor von Trapp

(Alternative title: How do you solve a problem like Elsa?)

About a week after I finished making the girls mermaid tails (December 16, to be exact) Emilia told our hygienist that the two things she most wanted for Christmas were a chocolate bar and an Elsa dress. Chocolate I could easily pull off, the dress I wasn't so sure. Our local fabric store is tiny and terribly overpriced and it was much too late to order online or even travel to Ottawa/Ogdensburg and still get all the sewing done. Fortunately I remembered a pair of pale blue sheer curtains with crocheted lace that had hung in our master bedroom for the first couple of years after we moved in. More fortunately still I hadn't yet donated them. As visions of eidelweiss danced in my head I hastily turned those curtains into two princess skirts and crocheted tiaras to match. And now our halls are alive with the sound of music... from the Disney movie Frozen!

I bet you didn't know that the real life von Trapp family included a daughter Eleonore. She was one of three children born to Maria and Georg after Maria came along to help the widower raise the seven children he already had. That's a lot of curtain costumes. I had it pretty easy after all!