my easter table

I got to host Easter this year ( finally )



I got to set my table in my husband's grandmother's china and all kinds of other thrifted goodness. I used old silver from four generations ago and countless thrifted pieces in between.



I baked, sauteed, steamed and flipped for my family. And they came with their arms loaded up too. Oh so much food...

I dyes eggs with onion skins like my Nana always did.



It was so beautiful here, we got to have dessert outside.



Some of us even got a tiny sunburn. It was a marvelous day. Even the dog hunted for plastic eggs. He learned how to open them real quick!



This is my place at the table. My favourite fork, knife and of course, my crowned "E" spoon.

I was so busy that I didn't even get to craft place markers. But I have about a hundred ideas for next year....can't wait.

time is getting away from me.

This is the blur that's been the past week to me.

*We got a new camera, hooray!

*cleaning up the last of the Easter bits. These were our thumbprint bunny place cards. Yay washable markers! Both boys really liked watching those prints turn into bunnies.

*playing with friends until we just fall asleep on the floor has been popular.

*lots and lots of scones from this wonderful book.

*playing outside and finding new buds and bits and bugs everyday. (More on that tomorrow...)

*My beautiful niece got dedicated.

*And grannying along. Here's yesterday's.

And not really blogging. oops. So much for that resolution. Well, it's Monday again, I'll try harder this week, haha!

We had a great Easter filled with blurry photos of kids running (to baskets), climbing(on Uncle Regis), and crawling ( to find eggs). A full house with all ages of family, new ideas, and old-old-old traditions and a long day of laughs.

And even though we never got around to dyeing eggs, we had some snazzy new smocks for the job!

They were very easy. I just fused together four target bags, cut a deep U shape at the top, (so it extended up over his shoulders) and added ties at the neck and waist with some double fold bias tape I had lying around. It's a great practical recycling project. We'll be using these for finger painting for sure.

There's some great fusing plastic tutorials around. Try this one from Etsy labs, or Threadbangers, or Craftzine.

ps. I'm so in on this Granny a Day til the end of May at Meet Me at Mike's.

It's just the motivation I need. Go check it out.

almost Sunday....?

Where did this week go?

Is Easter tomorrow already?

The boys' buckets are laid out on the table and I'm weighing the idea of just hiding the eggs in the living room with the weather we've had. yuck.

The pans and ingredients for breakfast are set and measured. There's fresh cut daffodils from Nana's garden and the ham is defrosting. All is right in the world, haha. We're ready for some spring time, family time, quality loving time.

Happy Easter to everyone!

Luke 24:34 "The Lord has truly been raised" !

hippity hoppity

Both the boys are sleeping and I should be doing dishes and folding laundry but it's rather gloomy out and I'd rather share some bright things with all of you instead.

What's she up to now, right?

Pretty paper.....some sketching and tracing.....snip, snip....add some ribbon..... Tada!



Cupcake picks! (blogger refuses to load this photo correctly. booo.)

Baby spring bunnies, just in time for Easter! I think this may be an Easter tradition, remember last year's?

I had a such a good time making these, I made an extra half dozen for you.

Just leave a comment and I'll put your name in a hat. I'll draw one on (edit:) Thursday. ( so they'll get to you in time.) Link to me and I'll put your name in twice!

Maybe these aren't your favourite colours?


(Okay, I've never done this before, and I don't have any fancy programs to work with, so someone has to try it just to let me know if it works.)


I made a sheet of bunnies for you to print on your own!

Just click over to the flickr page and download to original size. Print to fit an 8 1/2 by 11 page and it should work. They'll be super cute on dessert, but wouldn't they be cute on the olive tray before dinner?

I'd love to see if anyone makes some. Let me know.
Okay, the boys are still sleeping after all this, I think I'll at least switch the laundry now.....

edit: Our winner is Anne Marie! Thanks for all the nice comments everyone! And thanks to Cassi for featuring me at The Crafty Crow.

bag of rabbits.

A recently thrifted find that's bringing big joy in our house.

I found a bag of rabbits :

and eggs at Savers just after Easter.

Being pretty sure that Easter was going to come around again next year, I had to grab it. They're all tiny as if they belonged to one of those little Easter trees. There were three types of bunns inside.

There were a ton of these sweet little brown ones:

But these white ones were my favourite.

They're actually the reason I bought it all. When I peeked in and saw those sweet tiny faces, they had to come home with me.

Harry adores them. He carries them around and talks to them and makes them talk to eachother. He's just really starting imaginary play. I love it.

A mid-spring haiku

the last PEEP eaten

devoured by my brother

an empty tray left

I saved the green chicks for last. It's my favourite colour.
I'm lame, I know.

Egg dyeing

I just saw the best ever tutorial for making some gorgeous natural dyed eggs.
Yay Allison!
Check it out.
She's got some sweet aprons in her etsy shop too.

Harry's first big Easter

a glimpse of what our hands looked like after the Paas and dollar store dye kits.

egg hunting first thing at home.
their second matching holiday. H is wearing his same Easter pants as last year.

W is wearing some pants H recently grew out of.

yeah, he's a big baby.
egg hunting again at Vavo and Grandpa's with all the cousins.
I feel rotten. We were having such a great day, we forgot all about taking photos.

Paas again

I had every intention of trying to make some natural dyed eggs by the video on Craft: but again, no time so we opted for good old fashioned Paas again. It was Harry's first egg dyeing and he had such a blast. We dyed at Grandpa and Vavo's house and then again at home with two aunties and an uncle too.
These were done at the first dye-fest

We also decided to scoff up some clearance dye kits and do this more often. What's a better rainy day brightener than something you usually only get to do once a year?

These were done at home.

there are now twenty funny coloured dyed fingers in the house.

Easter week, signing off.

okay, I had higher hopes for my big Easter week posts, but I decided to do it too last minute and yeah. no good.

Anyway, This:

is supposed to be a sweet little bunny bean bag inspred by these sweet little bean bags. However the magical golden touch and sew has decided that it doesn't like me today.

Here's another adorable bunny instead.

William-bunny says happy Easter. hope the big bunny is good to you.

Chocolate peeps and other sugary goodness.

Peeps are like Kale Soup. They’re light-years better the second day. (I checked and the recipe writer is from my city so it’s real kale soup)

But chocolate covered peeps are almost too good to let cool. I didn’t realize I had almost no chocolate in the house and had to more paint these babies than dip them. They’re yummy either way.

This year, Harry is big enough to egg hunt. Memere has been priming him for months with those plastic eggs that he loves. So last night was my little egg filling party. Guest list: me, the two cats, and one and a half glasses of red wine. And way too much candy. Thank God for the teenage niece and nephews. They should take care of that.

After my latest trip to target, I’m a bit peeved by all the so-called easter candy out there. Put a pastel wrapper on any existing candy and *poof* it’s easter candy. Whatever happened to just Peeps, chocolate bunnies, Cadbury eggs, and Palmer’s bunny money?

If you haven’t yet, check out the Peeps website. It plays silly tuba music and they kind of dance. I love that you can buy them online. And there’s a bunch of fun facts. My favourite is:
“The machines at the Just Born Factory can add 3800 PEEPS® eyes per minute!”
And yes, according to them, the yellow chicks are still the most popular.
The wikipedia entry on Peeps is particularly entertaining as well.

Peeps are huge in our family. Mostly because farm animals love them. When we were kids, my mum would buy them for our baskets and every year they’d sit around until someone carried them out and fed them to the goat or cow or whatever other animal we had hanging around at the time. Finally mum stopped putting them in our baskets altogether, but she didn’t stop buying them. Of course now that we’re older and have gained a taste for them, my mum gets a tiny bit mad when we “steal the goat’s peeps” Go figure.
Okay, last thing. The cute peeps bubble blower I got at the dollar store.

Easter week, the third day of chocolate-driven blogging

Who’s that hiding in the laying box…..?

It’s Edison the baby ami chick, with his little brothers: George on the right and Henry on the left.
He’s very anxious for his brothers to emerge so they can help him pull the ribbon off his neck. He doesn’t think it’s very masculine. And then they can figure out a way to get out of this nest and down to the floor so they can dig in the yard for spring worms like proper young roosters should.

More adorable chickies waiting for spring at flickr:
Hanging out with a cool beanie by Harupi
Cell charms by Tamagurumi
Fuzzies by the amazing planetjune
Disproportionate cuteness by p-tricia
And this one, that is just too much with it’s eggie diaper. Also by Harupi.

Easter week: act two

I suppose I can’t blame this all on Martha. Who can help but get carried away with all the little plants poking their heads out to test the air, and the air starting to smell like warm weather. (Do you smell the change of season sometimes?)

Anyway, Day two is Bunny book day.

I picked this one up at a church book fair that I catch every year. Last year I told Paul I’d be right back, and came home fifty dollars poorer but a heaping bag of vintage children’s books wealthier. And this was one of the top finds:

It’s a wonderful story of a large prestigious family of rabbits called Esterhazy that is having a problem with each generation getting smaller. The patriarch has the inspired idea to send each of his grandchildren out into a different country to find large mates to bring up the size of the next family members. “…all Esterhazys were very, very tiny but very, very intelligent.”
The story follows the youngest grandson in his travels to Berlin, his troubles on his way, and eventually his witnessing the destruction of the Berlin wall. He has adventures of sorts with a dreadful little girl as an owner, living out of a bakery delivery truck, and being a department store Easter Rabbit. Most importantly, it’s written in the elusive way that parents don’t hate it after the fifth or sixth time that they have to read it in a week. One of my favourite lines is “…so I am being forced against my will to live off sweets.” It actually has nothing to do with a giant rabbit bringing an ungodly amount of candy to children, or even God at all. It’s a pleasant story about a rabbit in a city far from his home without being cheesy. Here’s the specs:

Esterhazy, The Rabbit Prince
Irene Dische and Hans Magnus Enzenberger
Wonderfully Illustrated by Michael Sowa
Published by Image Connection 2000
Orignally published in German 1993
ISBN 0-9702768-3-4

It’s out of print, but available used from Amazon, and for some astronomical prices at alibris. You can get a good long preview of it at Google Books here. If you ever happen to come across it in your travels, pick it up. It’s fun and sweet and the illustrations are adorable.

Other bunny books to love:
The ever popular Guess How Much I Love You. I know every thrift store, consignment shop and yard sale has at least two of these but I still adore it. The little rabbit reaching up and pulling down Daddy Rabbit’s ears just gets me right there, you know? It’s a kind of nice book for daddy, too. I know I love both my bunnies all the way to the moon and back.
The Velveteen Rabbit. I loved this as a child and vaguely remember maybe seeing a film version of it once. Maybe. You can also get an abbreviated board book version for little ones with shorter attention spans. Again, check yard sales.
Of course, Peter Rabbit. I went to look for a proper link to put here besides Amazon, and I was amazed to find just how many versions of the story you can get here. Harry has yet to appreciate these, but really, how can I mention bunny tales without Peter. I’m more of a Mrs Tiggy-Winkle girl myself, (one more) and was delighted to find there’s an animal hospital named for her that is dedicated to the care of injured hedgehogs. Now how sweet is that?

Celebrating Easter Week!

It’s Easter week here at my crafty mess, and it’s Martha Stewart’s fault.

It all started with this one photo. Being the cupcake monster that I am, I thought, hey I can make those. So out I went to buy the perfect paper for my amazing picks that would be the pride of the Easter dinner table. And when I got home I went right to work,, and lo and behold, I did not like how they came out one bit. They were a million miles from how awesome I thought they were going to be.

But I was undeterred! And that’s odd for me. Anyway, I picked up a pencil and started to doodle, thinking that I could maybe come up with something cute to take it’s place, and next thing you know I had a flock of baby chicks scratching at my table.

These are the originals:
And I like to think of these as the smiling ones:

And these little birds are here to party:

They’re so excited about Easter coming that they refuse to take off their tiny bunny ear headbands.

Of course the super awesome paper that I bought for the bunnies all had prints that were too large (the chicks are about half size of the buns) so I had to use stuff I had on hand. Wicked frustrating for a Virgo like me.

This little one is my favourite, I think:

But I love how they came out and they’re dying to go to Easter dinner and show off. I think some lambs may be needed as well.
And Oh yeah, happy St Patrick’s Day! Cold Guinness and Tasty Cabbage to all.

The boys were accidentally green this morning.