My favorite thing to do when I was little was play dress-up. I had a huge box of things that I had collected from all over our house (my older sister’s closet throw-outs). I had beads and feathers and old nightgowns and sheer fabric from my mom’s sewing stash and a couple 80’s style sparkly dresses. I also had this Greek style dress made out of an old sheet that I had to have for a class project one year that my mom made. It was a random collection of things. My childhood best friend, Molly, and I would play in that stuff, and her respective collection at her house all the time.

We had quite the imaginations. Molly was always reading, so she would always get these crazy ideas from books that we should dress up and act out. “Let’s pretend that we are from Moscow and we have to leave for America on a ship and leave our long lost loves there. We can send them telegrams.” There was always tension in her stories. Almost always were we writing letters or sending telegrams. She had a bunch of old books at her house, one that had the Greek alphabet in it, so she was always pretending that she was studying to work hard to make money to send back to her family in England or wherever. Her stories almost always had some sort of Titanic (although successful–not tragic) voyage across some ocean or another to end up in America–more often than not leaving somebody behind.

Her backyard butted up to a cornfield, so I remember several times acting like we were Indians, having to pick corn and crush it to make food and making tepees out of sheets. At my house, Kelsey and Jill would play too. We would pretend that we were straight out of “Little House on the Prairie” and we lived in the playhouse in my backyard. I would always get a big bucket of water and have to do all the laundry by hand and hang it to dry. (I only ever washed the tablecloth we had though) We would also get a big pot and make soup out of all the random ingredients we found in the yard. Turnips and tomatoes out of the garden, some leaves, and orange peel, birdseed, etc. (We never ate it, in case you were wondering)

I must say, we were creative children, or maybe we just had big imaginations. Either way, it was fun. Thank goodness for nieces. You can still get away with playing dress-up as an adult. 🙂 Evie though, in the past hasn’t really liked dress up like we did. She is much more interested in sparkle than in distress, living outside, and sending telegrams. Give her time though–she will come around. 🙂

Anyway, I’m getting off topic, this post was supposed to be about inspiration. I guess I was inspired by this, it inspired me to think of my childhood. Anyway, here are some more items from Etsy that look like they would be perfect for Evie’s style dress-up. Colorful and Sparkly. (although I’m pretty sure these aren’t meant for dress-up, but to be worn as a real outfit.)

Miss Ruby Sue‘s shop on Etsy specializes mainly in hair accessories:

I love the fabrics and colors she uses in her hair accessories, I’m sure kids love them!

For all the adults that can’t play dress up anymore, here are some cute accessories from Nest Pretty Things that would be perfect for dressing up an outfit:

I love the look of all the vintage buttons! So pretty and classy too! 🙂