We hung dress-up clothes from our clothes lines for the children to dress up in as they arrived at the party. My niece was proud to stay by the clothes to help the children choose their clothing and get changed.
Our first activity was embroidery. I read the children the book, Summer in the Big Woods, before introducing the activity. We gave each child a small embroidery hoop with a piece of embroidery floss knotted onto a needle. We drew heart patterns, and they embroidered using a straight stitch.
The children then moved to the next quilt to make scented satchets. Each child chose a piece of cloth which they filled with their choice of dried lemon and orange peels, dried rosemary, dried chocolate mint, and dried lemon balm. Once they filled their squares of cloth, they tied them together with yarn.
We then moved to the clothes washing area. The children LOVED this activity. They took turns washing clothes using a washboard and then hanging them on the line. After the party activities were over and the cake was eaten, they all gravitated back to this area to wash more clothes!
They had fun hammering nails into this piece of wood.
The children loved walking on these logs that we arranged in the shape of a 6! My dad cut these logs for O to use as seats at her party, but since they were wet from rain, we decided to set them up as an "old time" playground! My mom thought of the idea to set them up in the shape of a 6, and O was very excited about this!
The next activity was making butter! We gave each child a small jar that was filled about 1/3 of the way with heavy cream and a marble. The children shook the jars until they had butter. One child's marble broke through the glass and cut her finger, so be careful if you do this activity. Luckily, we had a grandaddy with a first aid kit nearby!
We put an old butter churn next to the butter making station to add to the authenticity. After the butter was made, we spread it on biscuits for the children to enjoy. My mom also made fig preserves (with figs from our fig tree) to spread on the biscuits. This was a huge hit!
After they finished their biscuits, the children shopped at the mercantile. We gave each child a tin bucket (from Target) filled with 20 pennies. Everything at the mercantile cost 1 penny each, so they were able to buy lots of goodies! O and E were the proud shopkeepers at the mercantile (O said this was her favorite part of the party!).
We've been making goodies to sell at the mercantile for the past few weeks (the girls love to play "Laura and Mary" while they craft). We had a tray of lace, button lamps, and corn husk dolls on this table.
On this table, we had small balls of yarn, large pickles, cookies (molasses cookies and tea cakes made by O's grandmother), and candy!
We had apples and biscuits on the next table.
We made homemade lemonade (using the lemon squeezer in the picture) to serve in mason jars at the party. The children loved the lemonade!
The idea to set up a mercantile came from this blog via Pinterest.
After the children finished shopping at the mercantile, we had cake and ice-cream. O has been planning her cake decorations since February, and she was very pleased with how it turned out! She originally wanted white icing so she could pretend it was snow, but I suggested tinting it green to look like grass since it is summer. She thought that was a good idea. I laminated Laura, Mary, and Jack paper dolls to put on the cake, and O drew a log cabin which I also laminated. She drew lines with a butter knife and said it was the garden, and she asked me to put the candles in the garden.
The children played with the hoop and stick and dropped clothes pins in old glass milk jugs as the last activity.
Four of the children at the party (one of them was O) were wearing dresses made by Cheri at Ashleys Attic. She is offering a 10% discount to readers of Chasing Cheerios. When you check out, put chasingcheerios in as a coupon code to get 10% off your order through August 15th!
In honor of O's birthday, Cheri has offered to do a GIVEAWAY of an apron and bonnet set!!! To enter the giveaway, go to her Etsy store, Ashley's Attic, and browse around for a while. Come back here and leave a comment telling me which item you like best in her store. A random number will be drawn to choose the winner 1 week from today (July 22, 2012).
Our girls received these pioneer nightgowns for Christmas, and they love them! O's pioneer dress is similar to this one, and it is perfect for our little "Laura."
Btw, I've had this blog closed to comments, but it's (obviously) temporarily open for comments again in order to host this giveaway :)
Links to Amazon are affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Chasing Cheerios.
