14 Fir Street: March 2012

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Easter Egg Hunt

The children and I headed over to the library for there Easter egg hunt. We had been looking forward to this all week. The boys love hunting eggs. After they find the ones around our house they re-hide them and will continue doing so for the next few days.

The first event they had was dying eggs.

We have yet to do this at our home so they were super excited. Evan wrote on his with a special crayon then dyed it two colors half and half.

You can guess it only took a matter of minutes for them to get dye on their clothes. So this turned out to be the last stop for us. I had planned on taking them for pictures with the bunny but now with their multi colored clothes I will wait. I did wash them as soon as I got home and the dye did come out. They did end up making cute eggs.

Next was the anticipated hunt. They were ready to go. Can you believe I did not even think to bring baskets? ugh.

They had grocery bags to use, but next year I will remember. I hope.

Faith was so upset I would not let her down to crawl around and find eggs. But it has been rainning this weekend and the ground was a bit muddy. I did not want her to ruin her clothes and get trampled by the bigger kids.

He brother still shared the candy with her and I will make sure she can hunt some at our house on Easter.

They found many. Evan even found 1 of the 12 special eggs that had a ticket in it for a large prize. He won a bag of jelly beans.

Besides candy they had darling cookies. My babies helped themselves to a few.

I am so glad the weather held off from raining any further. Even with a little dampness it was a lot of fun. The kids are sugar high and looking forward again to next year.

Friday, March 30, 2012

Easter Resurrection Garden

Another great Easter craft is the resurrection garden.

Source: theencouraginghome.com via Susan on Pinterest

I knew it would be another thing my kids would love to do and watch grow. Plus pretty inexpensive you probably have everything you need.

I bought the saucer and terra cotta pot. Because that is what I saw in every other project. I am not sure if you can use a plastic one. Maybe but I stayed with what I saw just in case it was terra cotta to help with the water part. Also I bought the smallest pot walmart had and it was to big. Luckily I had a smaller terra cotta one in my shed

I went out and gathered a few twigs and used a hot glue gun to make the crosses.

I made extra because I thought they would break.

Then we went outside to make it.

Lay the pot on the saucer to be the tomb. This is before I switched to the smaller pot. Remember the dirt has to go on the sides and over the pot. With this size it would have not been possible or it would have looked like a pyramid. Fill the dirt on 1 side of the saucer.

Have your oldest watch the 1 year old so she stops making it a hundred times harder.

I found the only way to make the dirt stay and go over the pot was to turn it into mud.

Move 1 year old way back because she loves and did find the mud.

Take the grass seed and generously press in into the mound of mud. Wet it with a spray bottle afterwards to help it ad-hear.

Place the crosses how you would like add a few stones in front and wait. In ten days you should have a grassy hill.

It was a fun easy project. I just hope the birds don't eat the seed.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Flower Photos

That's what my son called them. He said when we were done it looked like we made photos on fabric of the flowers.

I saw a cute spring project online. One that would look nice hung out or in probably for Easter. One I knew my boys would love to help with.

My sweet oldest was having a bad moment. He was rather upset. Nothing was working he was determined to be upset until he got back the new toy he just had took away for good reason. But the day was beautiful we were basking in the upper 80's sunshine. To nice to not enjoy.

I asked him if he wanted to do an art project with me and he said yes, cheerfully. Well more cheerful than the mood he was in. He even turned down ice pops a moment before. So we got together all the materials.

hammers and or mallets
paper
scissors
fresh "juicy" flowers and bright weeds
white fabric not to thick
little helpers

Notice the grumpy oldest shirt? We made it last year. Yup kinda crafty with the kids. And the shorts both are wearing, you guessed it I made them too. So they say. I cut there holy jeans and "made" shorts. They love them. But I did turn the pieces I cut off in to special things for them, essentially purses, they call them hunting pouches. And they store their treasures in them.

After you gather everything and everyone the first step is to cut pieces of white fabric in to squares. I cut long strips on top of each other to make it not a sharp cup but a bit more frayed. Then I gave the boys the long strip with a starter cut and said rip away.

See that smile changing?!!

They loved to rip them. What boy wouldn't. And it gave the whole square the older look imperfect look. They were cut and torn into 10x10 squares. You can make them any size you want.

Last week was my birthday so we had a bouquet of roses and these purple blue flowers. But that by far turned out not to be enough flowers so we ~~stole~~ gathered spring flowers from my snowbird neighbors. They will never know or care. After we ran out of all of their flower that were not their white one, white ones will not work, we found colorful weeds like dandelions and they work great. The fresher the flower, the more internally wet "juicy" the flower the better it works.

Lay the paper down on a hard surface that can take a beating. Then design the flower on the paper how you think you want them to look. The paper protects the ground this is messy. If you use card stock you could keep the paper as something pretty like note cards or picture backgrounds whatever. I used printer paper and it was destroyed by the boys. It could not be used. It could barley be pulled off the cement and we would use a new paper for each fabric square.

After you like your layout place the fabric on top of the flowers and beat away. Smash the flowers so they bleed on the fabric.

When you are done wala...

You have beautiful bright flower photos.

And a happy very proud little boy. Whos mood was changed for the rest of the evening and thoroughly enjoyed the whole project.

Hang them up or lay to dry in the sunshine.

I plan on putting them together like a large bunting. But I have not decided how to yet. I am trying to figure where I want to put them and them I will complete the how to hang them.

It was fun and so personal. I know it will add a special touch to our home and Easter.

A Party for a PRINCESS

First birthdays are so special. You all made it through the possible ruff times of the first year. You don't forget the infant stage, the late nights, the constant appointments, round of diapers, accidents, and all types of baby food everywhere. Sometimes that can be a ruff year. With Faith we really did not experience most of that. She was a great baby. An awesome little baby. May everyone be blessed with such a sweetheart of there own. Even with out the worst we had a few downs lots of breathing treatment that she does not like, a couple of boo boos and bumps, a few late and long night, occasional sick bugs, and a few incidents with paint.

This past year Faith has just brought us an overwhelming joy. She is such a light in our lives and all others she sees. Faith and her big beautiful eyes just drawl you in. She loves to pull dads and my face close. She giggles, she growls, she snorts. She sometimes does not make lady like noises and she is astonished she does. But not as surprised as the rest of us in denial that such a big noise can come from such a tiny body.

Her tiny body has grown to 22 pounds and 30 inches. Much larger than the big 8.6 pounds and 21.5 inches she was born with. When you think how much growing that is in a year ouch. But she takes it with hugs, kisses and smiles. The sweetest disposition.

She LOVES her brothers. She follows them around the house and loves when they play with her. Smiley is her best friend in the whole world. They are my troublesome two some. That can and do get into everything together. But they are so much fun to watch playing hide and seek, peek a boo or cuddled up playing on the kindle. They snuggle constantly. They will find each other and just lay their head on the other it is so cute.

However she loves mama the most she is 100% my girl. How could she not be. I waited so many years for this princess. I love her with all my heart. I am with her when ever I can be she sits, with me plays with me, cooks near me, and she still sleeps right in my arms every night. We have had 3 beds for her and she never uses them only my bed by my side. And I don't feel like changing it.

I love her big bows, flowers and dresses. She is pretty in pink. When she finds headbands laying around she tries to put them on herself. When we put them on she often pulls them off. And we all put them on her. Her brothers find the ones they like best and finish her outfit.

She does not walk yet but is so close. She is a little one and wears between 9-12 month old clothes. She loves to be held close and will move around in night to snuggle in closer. She loves attention all the time. She is calmed by her binky. And finds it funny to drop food on the floor. She loves sweets and peeps like her mommy. She makes the funniest faces. And certain funny scaling ones when you try to feed her something she does not like. She loves to swing and recently has found the slide. She loves going down and crawling up.

Faith there are so many reasons to celebrate your birth to celebrate you. We know you will never rember your first birthday but you enjoyed. We enjoyed it. At this age it is more for her family like I said to celebrate we have her. We had a small party for her and our family.

I am 1 today, I am 1 today, this party is for ME!

I wonder what is in them?

Don't worry baby sister, what Smiley call her and tell everyone her name is. I will help you open then then claim the ones I want for my own.

Okay but I can have the balloons?

Hum..not really me and you other brother are soon going to use them as punching bags. We love the way they bounce back up. And she soon found that she loved doing that too.

But it seems as it was what she wanted. What a happy girl.

And here are all 4 in age order Faith 1, Smiley 2 1/2, Evan 7, and Greg 8 1/2.

But more important than a party is having cake.

I had wanted to make her a special cake. Yes one I saw and pinned but this week was crazy. I don't just mean busy crazy I mean the kind of how did we survive crazy. And we barley did with to ER trips. But will write about that later. So for lack of time we went to the grocery store and looked at cakes. The first one I did not find anything I liked. Plus they were all chocolate and 2 of us don't like chocolate. So on to the next and it was worse. Mind you we were cake shopping at 8 pm the night before! They had all generic white cake it a colored frosting border and roses. Ugh. It was going to be an all night and I was going to make her a special cake. But we looked to the side at the flip through cake order book and we saw this cute pillow pet cake that had sprinkles, rainbows, girly colors and a unicorn pillow pet. Just then God intervened (he has so many times this week) and a person from the bakery came over. The bakery had been closed for hours but they just finished cleaning. She took my order and even said the cake decorator could have it by my request of noon tomorrow since there were no other cakes lined up. Yes. It was so super cute and her brother picked it and it was perfect. We picked it up and it was not as dear as the picture but it tasted do good who cares.

Little princess loved her cake.

She turned 1 and her little diva door opened. She has been displaying and new I am bigger and cutier personality these last three days. It is to funny.