Sabrina

The ladies and I went to several places for the annual Doors Open event, when historic sites are open to the public for free. We decided to do pre-hoop mid-century Victorian dresses and I busted my butt to make the white striped 1845 dress in time. We wanted clothes that would be close in time period to the sites we were visiting, but nothing that would be cumbersome and get in the way for other visitors. I don't actually have a lot of pictures. I was more interested in looking at things and avoiding bugs. (I learned that bugs are attracted to white. I had little flies all over my skirt throughout the day. EW. When I got home I threw everything in the dryer just to be safe that all my stuff was bug free. And now I never want to wear white costumes outside again.)

Our first stop was the first Protestant church and cemetery in the area, built in the 1850s. It was extra interesting for me because I had done some work in the local archives years ago on the people connected to this church and the house we visited after, so I knew some personal stuff about the people having read their letters.



The next stop was a house built by the brother-in-law of the missionary who founded the church. It was also the first post office in the area.

Weird fact: the guy who built the house was named William. He had a sister named Jemima. He married a lady named Jemima. His sister Jemima married a guy named William. When the William who built the house and his sister Jemima died, his widow Jemima married his sister's widower William. SO bizarre and hilarious. I had a CRAZY time with that while researching in the archives, trying to figure out who was who.

The following pictures are all Dawn's, who always kindly shares her pictures with the group in a very timely fashion. Some post office stuff:


Behind the house where there was a lilac tree:


And then we headed to a nearby other house, a site we'd been to before. I'm checking out their plants. They had some great bleeding hearts and a gorgeous lilac in front,


It was a fun day, in spite of the bugs. It was neat seeing 2 sites I had never been to before and fun making the connections between the archival materials and these other material objects relating to the same people.

I went on a train ride in costume with friends over a week ago and have just now uploaded the pictures. The weather was pretty terrible that day, very windy and rainy. I had perfect, super curly bangs when I started, but they disappeared quickly because of the weather. The rain also had a rather disastrous effect on my hat and made the sticking-up loop very sad and droopy. We have a historic train that runs locally called the Prairie Dog Central. It's a steam locomotive and the car we were travelling in was built in 1901, but there are cars from different years. We had a peek into one built in 1908.
Dawn and I on one side. My sleeves are being big. :)

Shirley on the other side. She had a fake book to store stuff in that I thought was super cool.

( Read all about the adventures here. With pictures! )
After this rather exhausting excursion, we took the train back home. Here's the train station. It stopped raining by then, so I could get a picture of it.

I had a WONDERFUL time! I loved being on the old train in costume. It was so much fun!