Alright, I admit it: I'm going to pat myself on the back for the second time this week. What are you going to do about it? It's my blog, neener neener.

So Madalyn's class is putting on a play about the Oklahoma Centennial today. All the classes at her school have participated but they have broken it down into multiple performances so only a couple classes do the play at once. For the play the kids are supposed to wear either an Oklahoma Centennial t-shirt (there's an official Centennial logo that is available on various types of clothing) OR an outfit that people may have worn a hundred years ago when Oklahoma became a state.

I have know about this for a couple of months but, as usual, I managed to dink around and find myself with only five days to go till the play and no costume in hand. I didn't want to take the cop-out route and just do the t-shirt if i didn't have to (plus I'm not sure where to get one around here). I had looked on eBay at pioneer costumes and found them unreasonably expensive (we're talking $60 range for something she'd wear once) not to mention I'd have also had to pay to get someone to express ship and I was dead broke this week. My ultimate backup plan was for her to be a cowboy, which would be pretty easy to manage -- just need a Western shirt and a cowboy hat and we already have jeans. to go with the jeans we already have.

First, however, I decided to go scour the local Salvation Army. Much to my surprise and delight it yielded everything I needed to turn Madalyn into a pioneer lady. I found an old-fashioned style blouse, a long skirt and a pair of boots. The skirt was too small in the waist but it has one of those overlapping-closure waistbands, so I simply moved the outer button to expand the waist and the fabric from the overlap covered where the gap would've been had it been a single-button waistband.

I still wasn't sure how the complete package would look until Madalyn got dressed this morning. Once she had the outfit on I thought, "You know, that looks pretty good!" -- especially considering it was purchased at the last minute for a grand total of (drumroll, please): $8.

Incidentally, when JZ first saw Madalyn in her costume he said, "You look like Georgia O'Keeffe" which, first off, OMG, did my four-year-old just say that? And, secondly, that's about the time period we were aiming for, so I guess I did okay, after all!

Now some pictures of my pioneer lady. The outfit:

And the following two because she is totally incapable of being serious for more than 0.7 seconds.