Easter Eggs.

First off, if you haven't seen the egg decorating shenanigans from last year, check out this post.  Hilarious.  

Yesterday's 12 Days of Easter finally said we could decorate Easter Eggs.  (actually, I work from home on Thursdays and I planned it that way...  )

I tried a new technique that my dear sister, Teresa, told me about.  It is tie-dying eggs with silk ties.  They turned out gorgeous.  I wish I had found more ties.  Maybe a DI hunt this weekend.  They turned out amazing.  

Check it out here: Silk Tie Easter Eggs

They turned out gorgeous.  Especially the red ones.  I will definitely do this next year.  

Then, onto the fun.  Before getting Mister ready, I cooked the eggs and wrote on them with a white crayon so they would be a big surprise when they came out of the colored water.

At first, he didn't want to wear his oilcloth apron (see below), but it was DARLING (thanks, Aunt Jodi) and necessary.  He was used to it soon enough...

I love this picture.  Just his cute little bum and the apron.

I let Mister take out eggs, put them in other colors, and just generally have an amazing time doing whatever he wanted.  He was actually very gentle and we only had one fatality, but that was Mom's fault.  

We used Neon food coloring this year and it makes ALL the difference in color.  

Notice that there are a lot of brown eggs?  Because they were dipped and redipped in all sorts of color combinations.  He LOVED it!!

The Surprise part of the egg!

When we were all done, he sat back, exhausted.  This was the shot as he was sitting back against the wall.  He said, "Whoa." 

I agree.

More Easter Fun

Sorry I haven't really written about our Easter stuff.  It has been super, super fun, though.

Day 6 - We watched an Easter movie.  We watched Thomas and the Easter Surprise.  Then I watched The Robe.  It was a wonderful and fairly Sunday appropriate.

Monday we had a late day with a doctor appointment, but we were lucky enough to have stories at the ready.    We went to the library on Saturday and picked them up.  How lucky I am that Aiden loves to read!!

Tuesday we made "Carrot Cake".  Okay let me set the scene.  I had made the pound cake earlier in the day and had carved it.  I PROMISE it looked amazingly like a carrot.  Really.  When I set it on the table to frost, "someone" tore the point off.  Then it looked like a potato.  I tried to fix it, really, but eventually I figured it was a baby carrot.

Homemade frosting!!! (Lemon)  Delish...

Please remember that a toddler helped me frost it!

Our little Carrot Cake!!

It was fun playing the game of "try to get the jelly beans on the cake before the toddler takes them off..."

He probably ended up with 20 or so before we were done.  

For anyone who wants to do this, be forewarned.  After much searching, the only place to get single-colored jelly beans is Zurchers.  

Then, Mom gave Aiden a haircut and then a dunk in the bath.  Not too bad for someone who doesn't wield scissors well.

Yesterday, we "egged" or neighbors.  We filled a bunch of eggs with candy and dropped them off with this sign: 

Today we FINALLY get to decorate Easter Eggs!!!  Yay!!

A little insulted

This morning, I was driving very early to a work-sponsored breakfast.  I was listening to my normal morning radio program and there was a writer being interviewed.  She has written a recent novel which she classified as "angry fiction" in defense of all the young up-and-coming writers who never "get a voice".   This woman (by the way, I had never heard of her and hope never to hear from her again) began to criticize every person in the huge world wide network who blogs or has a personal website that crowds out the "artistic voices".

I know that I will never win a Pulitzer for my blog.  Or any of my blogs.  This one is very much geared toward family and friends who want to casually glimpse our lives.  For the friends and family in far away places, this is a way to catch up without having to call.  I try to be light-hearted and realize that most people don't really care about the deep thoughts here.  My other blogs, definitely.  But not here.

Does that make my time putting this together less important than the poet who is trying to be creative on a blog elsewhere?  I browsed some of her "up-and-coming" writers and I found a few little gems from their  poetry blogs:


-Dingy life.  Hopping from disappointment to minute disappointment.   Frogs lead better dreams.


-Singing the praises of the rain.  Wash away my hope.  Leave me in despair.  It is my nirvana.


-Kaleidescope eeriness.  Laughing to the moon god who takes my vital signs and pours sand in my brain.  I realize I am nothing if not ape.

AND THEY ARE ALL LIKE THIS!  All these "poets" smoking crack and writing.  I am sorry, but I will stick with my mundane narrative of my mundane life and hope that someone will think me, if not verbose, than at least sincere in what I write.

Especially this:  I love my life.  I am very happy.  I love my family.  I love my friends.  I love my religion regardless of popular opinion.  I love myself.  I love my son.  What else matters?

Day 4 and 5

Nothing screams Spring like planting in a garden.

Alas, we live in a garden-less apartment.  But our 12 Days of Easter activity for Friday was planting herbs.  We have room for that!!!  So that is just what we did!

Mom went to the dollar store and purchased chives, tomatoes, basil, green peppers and dill.  They are very cute little start pots and Aiden loves this!  (We have done this before and Mom totally forgot to water the plants... my bad!!)

Aiden loved it!!

 No, he didn't eat dirt.  Okay he did. 

Day 5's activity was Go See Baby Animals.  Because Mom had a Primary activity that had to be done in the morning, we couldn't go to the zoo or to Thanksgiving Point.  Therefore, we went to the store.  We have a really cool farm supply store right by our house that has a lot of farm animals inside the store that we can pet.  They even have a goat that just roams the store.  They had chicks and bunnies that the store owner let Aiden hold and pet.  He would look at the chicks and say, "teep, teep, teep!"  It was hilarious and very heart-warming!

When we arrived at the store, Aiden was sleeping.  So I just put my seat back and had 1 1/2 hour nap.  Ahhh... I love the Spring.

It was very dark and my camera ran out of batteries, so I had to use my Iphone.  Bad pictures.  Lovely time.

Tomorrow we are having a very Sunday-appropriate day and reading Easter books.  We may also decorate cookies.  We'll see...

Tonight for dinner?  Fresh veggie soup and steamed radishes.  Can life be any better than this?!

Day 2 and 3 - okay, maybe not day 2

Our grand Easter Adventure continues.  First, I have to explain that Day 2 consisted of coloring.  Aiden loves when I get out the crayons.  He loves to put them in categories - all the light ones and all the dark ones.  He loves to say the colors as he holds them up (he is AWESOME and yellow and purple, but can't say the easy ones... go figure...).  He does not like to actually put the crayon to paper.  He doesn't like coloring.  He will do one or two swipes to appease his mother, but not really his thing.  So, Day 2 was a bust.

But yesterday, Day 3, was so fun.  I bought a little egg kit from Michael's Crafts and, since it was 60% off, we just went to town decorating little foam eggs with little foam art.  One side is sticky and there was a time or two that Aiden couldn't get the sticker to the egg and we had... well, frankly, a toddler meltdown.  But overall it was so, so fun!!

Totally stuck.  And ensuing meltdown.

Finished project!

Day 1... Chocolified

The definition of fun has to be "the act of participating in creativity with a toddler."  Absolute hilarity.  My son and I opened Day 1 of our 12 Days of Easter.  And the omnipotent egg informed us that today we would be making tuxedo peeps - which includes nothing more than marshmallow peeps, white chocolate and dark chocolate.  And lots of sugar rush...

So this is how it started.  Aiden thought that separating the Peeps included removing the ears from perfectly acceptable bunnies.  

You can't see the white chocolate dripped all over him, his mouth, his onesie, the counter, but it was chocolatey fun.  For sure.

Then we buried the bunnies in the white chocolate up to their necks.  Peeps torture.  Don't worry.  They talked.  All of them.  They told us all about the Easter Bunny.  And his evil plans.  

Then they got a "coat" of dark chocolate.  They are starting to look quite debonair, no?

And finally, the buttons.  Sorry about the really bad pictures.  They are taken with my phone and absolutely bad lighting.

When Aiden's sugar rush finally wore off, he was bombed.  It was really, really fun.  I can't wait to see what tomorrow's egg tells us to do.  

Spring! Spring! Tee Hee

I am DYING for Spring.  I want baseball.  I want tulips.  I want Easter.  I want warm!    I am so excited for the Spring that I can hardly contain myself.  The last week, with the snow and cold, has made me all the more nervous for Spring.  I am prepping my tent trailer.  I am fussing over Easter preparations.  Oh, how I love the Spring.

This weekend, I created a new Easter tradition - a remake of a Christmas tradition.  I am going to do the 12 Days of Easter.  Easy because Easter eggs come in convenient 12-pack cartons, right?

So... here goes...

Decorate the cheapest eggs you can find.  I used Dollar Store number stickers and scrapbooking flowers.

Fill with goodies and age-appropriate stickers (or fun things... bubbles, mini-slinkies...) and an activity for the day. 

I found this stand at Target for $4.  Sweet.  It holds exactly a dozen eggs.  Coincidence?  I think not.

The things we are doing this year:

Tuxedo Peeps (find the recipe on Tipjunkie.com)

Decorating Easter eggs

Coloring pages

Going to see baby animals (at our local IFA store)

Easter Egg hunt (we have an annual family one, but this is just Mom and Tater...  Maybe we will invite the dog.)

Making Easter cookies

Reading an Easter book (I found Peter Rabbit on an online auction...)

Watching an Easter movie.  (sadly, Thomas does not have an Easter Movie.  We will watch a church movie instead)

"egging" a neighbor (taking a basket full of goodies anonymously)

Making "carrot" cake (pound cake... see recipe at tipjunkie.com)

Making a foam Easter Egg wreath for the front door

Easter Sunday - Having a ham and potato dinner (family tradition) and reading the scripture story of the resurrection.  I know Aiden is too young to really know, but we have a lot of Jesus pictures that will help tell the story. 

So... there ya go!  I was not raised on the Easter Bunny myth of Easter.  I must say, I never really missed it.  I loved that my mother loved Easter so much that she let us experience the spiritual side of it.

BTW - we had to say goodbye to Nama Sharon yesterday for a while.  We love having Aiden's only living grandparent here!