Arie's blessing

Arie's blessing day was last Sunday, November 4th.  Here are some pictures of our sweet girl.  (Be greatful there are just "some."  I narrowed these down from around 250 pictures.  It was hard.)

Arie Kait Webb

My sister Melanie made this flower for her hair.  I completely ran out of time to make anything, so I gave the task to Melanie.  She twisted some ribbon around and made this.  It was perfect.  And this picture makes me want to kiss those cheeks.  :)

Here is a close up of the overlay on the dress.

This one shows the detail at the bottom edge of the overlay.  My sister-in-law Laura was smart enough to take these pictures of the dress details, but also add Arie's hands in to make the pictures really cute.

This is probably the best picture of the dress I made.

Here is the story of her dress.  My mom made my blessing dress.  I still have it and Natalie was blessed in it.  However, I didn't want to bless Arie in it because I wanted her to have her own dress that she can keep because I will give mine to Natalie.  But since Natalie's dress hold some special meaning, I wanted Arie's too as well.  That's why I decided to make the dress instead of just buying it from a store.  Plus, I like to make things and I didn't really see any dresses in the store worth buying.  My mother-in-law sent me a blessing dress pattern, but it didn't take me long to determine that I had no idea how to use it.  :)  So I made my own pattern.  I used a remaining piece of the sheet from the boys' Halloween costumes to make a mock up of the dress.  Everything looked pretty good, but after putting it on Arie, I realized that it was probably a bit too big.  So I re-drew my pattern a bit smaller.  Before starting with the real fabric, I figured it would be smart to make one more mock up of the top of the dress, just to make sure it fit.  So I did.  And it fit.  So I started in on the real thing.  The real bodice was a bit more involved because I sewed a lining and a ribbon waistband and tie into it.  It looked so good when I finished.  I was about to start on the skirt when I had the thought, "I should probably try this on her, just to be sure."  I didn't really want to because there were still a lot of pins in it and I didn't want to poke her.  But I'm glad I put it on her.  Because it didn't fit!  The pieces in the back barely met up, which meant I wouldn't be able to put the buttons on.  I was so frustrated.  I thought about calling my mom and my mother-in-law to see if they had any suggestions, like using a hook closure or adding another strip of fabric... But sadly, I knew that the only real fix was to do it over.  This was not good because I was on a serious time constraint.  It was Wednesday and I was leaving on Friday for Time Out and wouldn't be back until Saturday night.  I re-drew my pattern for a third time.  This time I was smart enough to measure Arie as well.  I made one more mock up bodice, and then made the real bodice again.  This time, it fit.  Thankfully, Nate's mom came to help me finish the dress.  Friday morning we were finishing it up as I was trying to get out the door to Phoenix.  Nate's mom completely did the sleeves and gathered the skirt pieces and sewed them on to the bodice.

We had so much family come to be with us on Arie's special day. Nate's parents and all of his brothers and sisters were able to come. In my family, only Christy and Chad's families were missing (because they are the only ones in the entire group who live out of state).  And, do you see Kelton anywhere...?  Front, back...maybe in someone's arms?  No?  Oh, that's because he ran off to Primary when Sacrament finished.  We didn't realize this until after the picture.

Our family of six!

Arie was given a great blessing by her dad.  He blessed her to be a strong spirit who would be an example and strengthen other's testimonies.  He also blessed her to be a strength and a peacemaker within our family.