An Egg-citing Easter

 It had been a L O N G five months since we had been back to the farm.  Mostly because we celebrated the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays at alternate locations AND since my folks had been frolicking down south for the past 3 months. It was so nice to get back to my familiar childhood home, but mostly to see mom & dad again!

I brought along a few projects for the cousins to work on together.  One project was "Fun-in-the-middle" cupcakes.  It was a multi-step process to mix up the batter, partially fill the cupcakes, squeeze in some fun chocolate into the center, cover with more batter, bake, frost & decorate, but the kids did a great job.  Nixin was the most excited because he was in charge of adding the sprinkles to the cupcakes.  He was so careful about it.  Of course, everyone LOVED eating them the most.  Nixin was adamant that if you didn't eat a "Fun-in-the-middle" cupcake, then you would NEVER have any fun AGAIN! I didn't want to miss out on fun so I ate TWO!  hahaha 

  It wouldn't be Easter without dyeing the eggs.  Some of the eggs used were brown eggs from Kaleb's faithful hens, which made for some interesting color combinations.  The kids were pretty creative and the  fairy dust glitter not only made the eggs sparkly, but pretty much everyone's faces too. Nothing like a little glitter to make your nose itch, right?

 One of my favorite reoccurring conversations of the weekend was with my seven year old nephew, Nixin.  He was constantly surprising me with his unique talents.  When I complimented him on how great he was with puzzles, he told me he was a "Puzzle Master".  Then when he mixed up the cupcake batter, he became a cupcake Master.  Soon, I realized there was nothing this kid couldn't do.  He really is a MASTER & I love him to pieces!

Lest you think the weekend was all baking & crafting... I want to assure you that there was some good old fashioned redneck recreation.  This included speed target shooting with Steve, Russ, Kaleb & me giving it a go.  Nothing beats the smell of gun powder! Russ was the champion, hitting 5 targets in 3.3 seconds.

When Sunday morning rolled around, I sadly discovered that we had forgotten the garment bag with our Easter Finery hanging back in Fergus Falls.  This left three of us with nothing fabulous to wear... Abby smartly packed her clothes in her suitcase, so she was the only one with her intended outfit. A quick SOS call to my niece, who happens to live across the street, and I had a dress.  I borrowed heels from my mom and I was good to go.  Kippy had to be a little more strategic, but the pj's she just gotten from Grandma Rose doubled as a dress.  Abby lent her a cardigan and presto - a cute Easter outfit. Steve recycled the button down shirt he wore on Friday and went with jeans.  Not a very coordinated family, but we made due and that is all that matters!

 While we were at church, Russ & Kristy the Easter Bunny was busy hiding 165 eggs filled with candy throughout the farm.  I know there has never been such creative hiding in the history of Triple R Farms.  The crazy bunny even hid 3 real eggs that were stolen from under the hens!  There was a least an hour of running around hunting up eggs with Nixin being the clear winner.  Remember, he is a MASTER at finding eggs.

Mom prepared a wonderful feast and Uncle Bob & Aunt Judy were able to join in.  Lots of laughter and many wonderful memories = an Egg-citing Easter.

Easter Activities

Easter morning, we were ready to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ, but first we needed to get to the church. And that meant being able to drive through water, too bad we couldn't have Moses' staff to just part it.
Steve took over driving the Ridgeliner because my mom was almost hyperventilating just watching Randy's Ford drive through the water.
So once Randy's family safely made it across, Steve carefully drove us through and got us to church on time.
After church, we made a brief stop to get a few pictures of our family. Carefully changing out of our knee-high- waterproof-mud-boots to put our fancy shoes back on.

But the kids put their mud boots back on for Egg Hunt 2011. The Easter bunny got pretty creative with hiding those candy-filled plastic eggs. Some were spotted even up in the tree. The kids were happily swapping candy with each other and getting glossy-eyed from their sugar coma shortly after the 108 eggs were found.

My mom put on a bountiful spread of food for Easter dinner including ham, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, numerous salads and pie, pie, pie (thanks to my SIL, Anna). Lots of laughter and stories were exchanged by the attendees which included: Uncle Jim, Aunt Judy, Uncle Bob, Randy, Anna, Kaleb, Logan, Russ, Kristy, Nixin, Noah, Grandma/mom Rose, Grandpa/dad Rod, Steve, Abby, Kippy & me. All those mouths to feed and there were still oodles and oodles of leftovers.
I think my boots look rather snazzy with my Easter dress, don't you?

Making Easter Eggs

I love picking up different egg dye kits to try out. Sometimes the kits are a fizzle (like the tie-dye eggs), but this year the cousins (Noah, Kippy & Abby) had a blast. Noah taught the girls to hold the eggs halfway in the dye to make beautiful variegated colors. Even grandma Rose got in the act!

The best part was making the eggs into little characters by adding sticker faces, hats and even hair.

We could have had a little egg-puppet show when we were done!

When I was taking a picture of the final creations, I began talking to the eggs. I said, "Stay still! Stop moving around. Ok, now say CHEESE!" Nixin thought it was great to treat the eggs like little people and he kept on telling them what to do and to behave as well. So fun!

A little Easter egg-citement.

I resorted to using my super-powers to get the family to cooperate for some outdoor Easter pictures on Sunday after church.

Are you wondering what my super-power is?

Lean in closer and I'll whisper into your ear how to get your children to cooperate and allow you to take many, many pictures in order to get a couple nice shots....

..... it's called bribery.... It is magical and it is highly effective!

It went something like this.... "No one gets to hunt up any Easter eggs until I get some NICE family pictures taken."

And what do you know? Perfect obedience! I changed venue 3 different times. I took over 30 pictures with my camera on a tripod. I previewed and putzed and not one complaint. I love my super powers.

And then the hunt began.

The competition was fierce.

There were lots of smiles.

And a lot of dashing around the yard.

and then the loot was divided and they sunk into a blissful sugar coma.

Hope your Easter was wonderful!

Not my best idea.

We tried something new for coloring our Easter eggs this year. The package promised vibrant beautiful "Candy Apple" eggs. The results? Bright, sticky, gooey Easter eggs.
The concept was cool. And it came with a custom pallet to mix the colors in along with two brushes.

The brushes included in the kit were junk, so we used some brushes of our own.

The eggs were slippery and more than one accidentally got dropped and got just a little bit chipped.

The paint/dye mixture was gloppy and sticky, but eventually we got the hang of it and were able to make some cool looking eggs.

The shiny finish and bright colors were great. The colors also blended well.

There was plenty of concentration and creativity invested in these eggs.

Smiley, happy egg!

The girls and I waited and waited for the eggs to dry. We even tried drying them with a paper towel. Finally we put them back in the fridge still tacky.

The next morning those darn eggs were still sticky! Abby said, "Mom, next year let's just use the kind with tablets that you dip in the color."

Sounds like a plan.

Eggs-traordinary cookies

What do you get when you take a couple of tubes of refrigerator sugar cookie dough, a tub of frosting, a package of $1 dollar Easter cookie cutters and mix in some 6 creative girls? You get eggs-traordinarily beautiful cookies and a ton of laughter!
The three older girls took one tub of plain yellow frosting and added some food coloring to create 4 vibrant colors. Eggs-tremely Spring-y colors, too: teal, lime-green, dusty rose, tangerine.
Add a mixture of different sprinkles, jelly beans and frosting writers and you have options galore.

From the dump 'em all together option....

To the change-a-bunny-cookie into "Inky" the ghost option....
To more traditional Easter egg inspired options...

The girls worked hard on their egg-celent cookies. Kamiryn is debating her next sprinkle color.

Abby is squeezing hard on her frosting writer.

Kippy is egg-cited about her bunny.

Dani is crafting a beautiful egg cookie.

The end result of all their creativity is a rainbow of color.

And a tummy full of sugar!! Great job girls!

A quick Easter crafty

This craft is super easy and the idea is compliments of my bestie, Lori, who made these cute Christmas coasters!
The supplies: a couple sheets of Easter themed scrapbook paper cut down to 4.25" squares, white ceramic tile (got these for 10 cents each at Ben Franklin Crafts), felt circles (self adhesive), and good old Mod Podge.
I Mod-Podged the paper to the tile and smoothed out the bubbles with a credit card; coated with three coats of Mod Podge (letting dry in between, of course), added the felt pads in the corners and spray painted a couple light coats of clear varnish to make sure water proof. Tie 4 of them up with cute pastel ribbon and put in an Easter basket. Or just use them around your house as a cute pop of Easter to rest your favorite beverage on.