Easter Snuggles

 Let's have a little Easter Embrace the Camera, shall we?




Yaya made Hazey the sweetest Easter outfit! It's seersucker. It's lavender. It has leggy bloomers. I mean come on.
Hazey's been a little puny lately, which means extra snuggles with Mama. I'll take it.
She's feeling better today thankfully.

 

Look at my wee sweeties. It's suuuuuper hard to get a decent photo of the whole brood, but this'll do just fine. I am totally smitten with this little crew. We have one huckuva good time. 

Hope all had a happy Easter.

Kickin' It.

The cutest thing ever to happen throughout history occurred last Saturday.

It was PeeWee soccer. And Dizzy was all over it.  

I know coming from me this means nothing, but he was kind of a natural. And no one is more surprised about that than me. We totally expected our clumsy kid to just goof his way though it. But he really got it. It was his first time out and he dribbled, passed, and didn't use his hands.

Here was our exchange that morning:
Getting Eli jazzed for his first soccer practice and game, we reviewed the basics:
Me: you can never touch the ball with yoooooour?
Eli: hands!
Me: follow theeeeee? (looking for ball)
Eli: rules! (I'll accept that)
Me: listen to yoooooour? (looking for coach)
Eli: HEART!
Love this kid.

Creek pee break for Amos.

Where did he learn that move??? Incidentally that little girl was the baller of our team. She kicked circles around every other kid on the field.

I don't know. But at least the game hadn't started yet.

Eli self-determined as goalie. He was put at middle back by his coach, but took the job of protecting the goal very seriously. So did the kid in white who was on the other team and got a little confused and came to help Eli protect our goal. Ooops.

Eli knew he was protecting the goal, even though nobody told him to do that. And he even prevented a goal by the other team. The only goal that was scored was when he had subbed out. Mama's proud. 

Love the parents' celebration tunnel.

I know it's not supposed to matter, yada yada, but our team, the Mighty Giraffes, did reign victorious. Final score: Giraffes 2, Other Team 1.

In a total coincidence I got an order for a soccer themed cape for a little boy named Edward in England. When Eli saw it, he naturally assumed it was for him, and who could resist. Guess I gotta make another. (Shameless plug - if your Super Kid needs his or her very own custom cape themed around their own interests, you can find them in my etsy shop - right here!

Guest Post!

Hooray! Another guest blog post from the lovely and talented Sarah from Baltimore!

Happy Easter, everyone!
Greetings from Charm City (Baltimore, Maryland) where the flowers are blooming and the trees are leafed-out early this year thanks to our unseasonably warm spring. In our neighborhood of Bolton Hill, neighbors meet up in the early afternoon on Easter in Rutter Mill Park for an egg hunt for the children, followed by a festive potluck lunch. Neighbors are asked to bring a dozen plastic eggs filled with candy or gifts and a dish to share. This year, I will be taking my husband's favorite deviled eggs, sliced ham, and these cupcakes (pictured). When shopping to fill our 10 year old's Easter basket at Target, I spotted this store-brand edible Easter grass and imagined it formed into a nest atop cupcakes. The mental image was easier to create than the actual nest was to make. I realized there's probably a world of edible products with which to create a nest (so, consult Google).  You could even use store-bought cotton candy as long as you prepare the nest cupcakes close to the hour they will be served. For the eggs, anything from jelly beans to candy-coated chocolate mini eggs, looks color/size appropriate.  

In the background of this photo you will see my attempt at a home-made egg tree. If you have a playful cat (as we do) this idea might not work for your household. Future large-scale egg trees at my home will be best suited for display out-of-doors. My naked-tree-branch stuck into a pretty vase and hung with hollow decorated eggs proved too great a temptation to Boo the cat, and what you see in this photo are the eggs that remain.

Hope you have a wonderful holiday celebrated with family and friends wherever this Easter finds you-
Sarah Ramirez Cross  

Thanks Sarah for the fun idea! I'm gonna put a pin in it for next year!

A New Easter Tradition...Cascarones!

My new friend and writer Jennifer introduced me to a fun new Easter tradition. She told me about it yesterday - as in, the day before Easter. I decided to put a pin in it to save for Easter next year.

But it got the best of me and last night after the kiddos turned in, I went to making a batch of Cascarones! Here is the article Jennifer recently wrote about this fun Easter tradition.

Cascarones are hollowed out eggs that you fill with confetti and small edible and non-edible treats. Then you gently break the egg over someone's head (in theory) to bestow on them good luck and score the treats inside. It's like a mini-pinata.

Here's the step-by-step:
1. Cut a dime sized whole out of an egg (I used an exacto blade) and pour out the insides. Gross.
2. Clean out the egg real good and allow to dry.
3. Make some confetti by whole punching colored paper.
4. Put tiny treats and confetti inside each egg.
5. Paper mache tissue paper all over the eggs with a flour and water glue solution, reattaching the removed piece of the egg if you can.
6. Bust open those eggs and have fun!

I told Eli about the busting-over-the-head tradition and he was all for it.

But turns out I got a little too zealous with the paper mache portion of things because ours were too tough to break over the head without inducing concussion. Next year, just a thin layer. 

 A tree...

 ...or the driveway works great.

Happy Easter!!!

Peek of the Week - April 7, 2012

Take a peek at this...

What's Peek of the Week you ask? It's our semi-regular Friday feature where we hear all about what cool things you other crafty families and blogging types have been up to. Tell us about your projects, finished or in-progress, a funny kid moment, a personal accomplishment or just something that made you smile.

Each week I'll get the ball rolling by sharing a Peek from our week and then invite you to do the same by linking up to your own post.

So, I think the above photo should be called "Pintrest Takes Over." I asked Eric to snap it the other night while I was decoupaging Easter Eggs and when I saw it I was like, "Daaaaaaamn, that's a lot of pintrest in my living room." Just in this one non-staged shot are the following pintrest projects:
1. Tape masked name paintings
2. Holder for charging cell phone made from old lotion bottle
3. Fabric decoupaged Easter eggs
4. Duct (or masking) tape race track
5. Tube car ramp track
6. Paper roll installed under kids table with tension rod

And there are like 7 others out of frame.

I even have a Pintrest Board called "Saw it on Pintrest and Made It." See? Does everybody actually make the things they see on Pintrest, or is it just me? Because I currently have 251 pins including 19 on a board called "Do This Now" so I may have to quit my job.

Alright. Your turn. What's in your living room?
You could get peeking in three easy steps:
1. Blog about your Peek of the Week - whatever it is. Whatever happened that made you proud, laugh, smile, inspired, excited, or just plain happy - now that's worth sharing.
2. Include a link to this blog or put the Peek of the Week button (on the sidebar) in your post.
3. Link your blog post using the InLinkz button below.

If you don't get a chance to get here on Friday, feel free to link your post up later.
The InLinkz button will be active for 5 days.

Embrace the Fab Five

The other morning I was unpacking some new IKEA mirrors to get them put up on the walls and I perched sweet Hazey on one to get to peek at her sweet self.

She thought that was pretty fun. 
And then whadya know, without any herding, bribery, or cajoling of any kind, we were all there, gathered together, gazing upon each other with, serendipitously, camera in hand.

Don't you love how Hazel's the only one of us not still in her jammies and she's all decked out in 50's vintage? I do. Girl knows how to dress for an impromptu photo op.

This smacks of Embrace the Camera, don't you think?

Start Your Engines

Whipped up this little duct tape race track the other day while the boys were alseep.

Yup. Pintrest. 

I just laid the track and little by little they brought out all the necessary cars and accouterments. 

Hours and hours...

and hours of fun.