Junior Rangers sashes

Last year Miriam and I made a sash for Benjamin to keep his Junior Ranger badges on (as a present for his 10th birthday). He's still wildly obsessed with the idea of becoming a National Park Ranger and his enthusiasm is rubbing off on Zoë and Alexander, who requested sashes of their own. Knowing that we'll be hitting a number of national parks this summer (beyond the ones we visited at the beach), Miriam (and I) decided that we should finally make sashes for Zoë and Alexander.

So I ironed the fabric, traced the pattern (which was just Benjamin's sash), and cut out the fabric.

Miriam embroidered a gorilla for Zoë and an owl for Alexander and sewed everything together. 

She did a much better job heading up the sewing part of the project than I did last year (when I did the bulk of the sewing and all she did was the embroidery). The sashes turned out super cute and Miriam had a couple of very satisfied customers.

Here she is getting ready to embroider Alexander's owl this morning:

And here are Zoë and Alexander with their sashes:

Zoë has been learning all about gorillas lately. I'm not sure that I ever shared the gorilla poem she wrote...but it was very cute. Perhaps I'll share it one day!

Here's a close up of her gorilla:

Miriam "traced" the gorilla but free-handed the grass and flowers and things.

And here's a close up of Alexander's owl:

Here are the three Junior Rangers together:

Miriam even sewed on all the patches they've collected (sometimes they get a wood badge/pin and a patch when they complete their Junior Ranger booklets).

And here are a few more close-ups just for good measure:

This should help us keep track of all their pins/badges/patches...rather than losing them at the bottom of the diaper bag, or whatever. And they won't have to remember to take them off their shirts before throwing their clothes in the laundry. And...let's just say there are all benefits to having these sashes. I can see no downsides.

Thank you to Miriam for being such a wonderful big sister (and talented sewist, to boot)!

And just because she's cute, here are a few pictures of Phoebe trying out different ways to wear a hat. She doesn't really like wearing hats, but she's been getting curious about putting hats on...for a few seconds at a time...as she has watched her siblings begin to wear their baseball hats and sun hats this spring.

Does it look better forwards...

Or backwards...?

She put the hat on all by herself both times, let me take a picture, and then asked to see herself (so she could see how cute she looked?), so clearly she's beginning to understand what cameras do, little cutie.