Longwood Gardens

Before the Victorian tea in Delaware at the DuPont Hotel, last January, a bunch of us went to Longwood Gardens. There was costumed photography but because I was baby-wrangling and tired, I just went in Muggle clothes and changed later for the tea.

Elena was very recently walking and she held mine and Gloria’s hands and walked, and it was super cute.

Here’s some pics!



Elena wore her robot jumper, gifted to her by her namesake, Jasmin, all the way from England.

The little boots were from my Mom.

Victorian Christmas Tea 2019

Back to costumes! We’re finally at the Christmas season! (And it’s only May of the next year! Progress!)

These photos are from Caroline’s Victorian Christmas tea. I love her parties! Victorian is a huge hole in my wardrobe, so I rewore my 1840s plaid gown, but that’s ok because I like this dress. (I have since bought a couple Victorian gowns on a FB buy/sell group so I’m hoping to mix it up more in the future. Just don’t have much sewing time right now.)

Anyhoo, it was a fun party, here are photos!

(Mike and Gloria of In the Long Run Designs were experimenting with a new lens and I was happy with how these turned out. I also asked them to try and get a shot of my antique Victorian star comb. My earrings and necklaces are classic Dames a la Mode.

Austenland Tea

Ok, I am in need of a happy post, so here we go! Stephanie’s (November) Pumpkin Tea this year was themed “Austenland,” and inspired by the movie. So costumes were encouraged to be less-than-historically-accurate, over-the-top, and the food was the same. It was super fun. Since I had no sewing time, I wore a reddish/pink Spencer that is pretty loud in color and a very tall hat (purchased on Etsy or eBay years ago), and I wore lots of make-up.The necklaces is old school Dames a la Mode and the earrings are In the Long Run Designs. :D

Here are pics!











Taylor embroidered a bag!

Historical Hogwarts party

My friend Chelsea hosted a Historical Hogwarts themed tea this October (busy month, seriously!). Janine, Conley, and I carpooled down to Williamsburg to make a long day trip of it.

Janine and Conley were Slytherin. As were most of the partygoers. The host was Hufflepuff. I was the lone Gryffindor at the party.

I repurposed a white regency dress with some Gryffindor striped clip-on bows I bought at the Kings Cross Gift shop. Plus red and gold sashes, my regency shawl that happens to match, red shoes, a wand, and my gorgeous suede witch hat, which was so heavy it pulled the wig off my head until I gave up and bewigged.

The party was lovely! She had a scavenger hunt for a list of Harry Potter-related things, and had hand-made lots of beautiful decorations!

The Slytherins all teamed up on the Gryffindor, but I came close to winning. :-)

Some decorations:



These House cups actually worked! She made them!







And some of the food! In House colors of course!



These little tarts were SO GOOD



Slytherins:

Summer Shoot at the Portrait Gallery, part 5 – Outtakes by In the Long Run Designs

So, as I posted recently, we did a summer shoot at the Portrait Gallery in August. These are a few misc photos shot my Mike from In the Long Run Designs. They are sort of fun because they show some of the behind-the-scenes! Yeah, I’m on my phone. In my defense my husband and baby were at the Natural History museum and sending me funny selfies. :-)

Here’s Caroline modeling and me hanging out:



Group shot!



Shoe shot!





This one is great - there’s Glynnis posing on the balcony at left, Taylor posing at right, and way in the back, on the lower level, me posing!





And of course this one again, because I like it:

Summer Shoot at the Portrait Gallery, part 4 - Mike & Gloria

So, as I posted recently, we did a summer shoot at the Portrait Gallery in August. Last but certainly not least, are the photos taken by Mike from In the Long Run Designs. (https://inthelongrun.wordpress.com/)

I’ll also repost some of what I had said about my costume! You can skip this section if you saw my other posts. :-)

The short version: I decided to wear my Titanic Jump dress. I recently had to do repairs on this gown. I’d had it on display for a while on a dress form, and the beading on the skirt stretched the netting. It ended up being a pretty easy fix, done at the waistline. I’ll also note that I probably should have scaled the bodice to be a bit smaller and more “empire” of a cut - but I’m bigger busted than Kate Winslet and I tried to proportion the beaded bodice for me. Now I think I’d still make it slightly smaller if I did it again, but what’s done is done! I also think that the netting on the bodice has stretched slightly too under the weight of the beads so it hangs lower than it used to.

Everything on this gown was hand done. The trim, the beaded circles, the beaded bodice. The gown weighs about 6 lbs, and other than beads, it’s just cotton netting, tulle, and silk charmeuse. I did sew some organza in the hem of the skirt to help with the weight of the beads.

I have upgraded jewelry and shoes since the DragonCon wearing too - I think the necklace I actually got from my friend Stephanie’s mom. It’s not screen accurate, but it’s a much better match than what I had. The earrings are replica, bought ages ago when Jill Bailey was producing jewelry. Ditto the comb, which I know wasn’t worn with this outfit, but I had it so I was gonna use it because it’s so pretty. (You can see a close-up pic of these on this blog.

I never landed a pair of the Peterman booties, so I tend to wear my American Duchess beaded shoes, which I think work well with the outfit.

And here are Mike’s photos! (I believe Gloria did the photo editing.) I like the rich reds there too, some alternate shots that are sepia or B&W, and I also asked Mike to get some detail shots for me of the beading, which he did!























And of course the preview I posted of Gloria trying to make sure my hair was in place.