Easter 2014

Lily and I did a few crafts leading up to Easter, but somehow couldn’t find any of them. Honestly I didn’t work to hard to find them because I figured this post would be picture heavy enough without them. So we’ll start with pictures of painting eggs.

Since we’re moving back to Montana (oh yeah, that’s happening and I’ll try to post about it at some point) I figured I’d get Papa in on our last Easter with him. He was a great sport and joined right in.

For this next egg (which is wooden) I used my trusty glue gun to put 3 flowers on it. I wasn’t sure it would do any good or make any kind of difference, but it turned out really nicely.

Like I said Papa really got into painting the eggs. I wish he’d have done this one on a wooden egg, but at least I got pictures.

Papa’s eggs.

Daddy’s eggs.

I spent so much time handing out eggs and taking pictures that I only painted one egg.

I found some of those egg wraps like I used when I was little and bought them on a whim to see if they worked better or worse than I remember.

To my amazement it worked better. Yay.

On to Easter.

Lily is all about cowgirls right now thanks to Sheriff Callie. We saw these boots on clearance at Target and Lily just had to have them.

We were waiting for Daddy to get downstairs so Lily can go a’ hunting.

This series of pictures just kills me. For some reason Lil sitting on the counter, she just looks so darn big. I don’t know when or how that happened. I certainly didn’t authorize it.

Yay, we finally got outside. This is Lily going through her basket.

Hunting.

3 generations on Easter

Us.

I love this crab apple tree in the backyard.

It’s so bright and beautiful.

Papa didn’t get home until the egg hunt was almost over so Lily hid eggs for him. He was again such a good sport and searched out all the eggs.

When Papa was done hunting for eggs we went inside and Lily opened her treasure eggs.

After we were done messing around with eggs we decided to go to a local school so Waldo and Lily could launch the rockets they have been building for the last week or so.

For some unknown reason the rockets didn’t work. So Lily got to play on the playground.

Random Mobile Shots

My newest kick is making yogurt. I found a nice yogurt maker at a thrift store and my obsession started.
Since we don’t give Lil cow’s milk I started out making rice milk yogurt, that didn’t work so well. Next I tried almond milk yogurt, sill nope. So we decided to try cow’s milk. I mean we give her regular milk yogurt all the time, I just thought it’d be nice to cut out that one last bit of cow’s milk. I can’t be upset about this cool milk container though.

Here’s the milk cooling in the water bath.

The yogurt is still in the maker so I have no idea if it’s going to work or not.

Even though I posted a video of Lil enjoying her french toast I had to include this picture.

We made valentine’s day cookies this week.

Lil insisted that we have lips for valentine’s day. In order to get the lips I had to buy a set with a mustache and glasses. Lil loved them.

The Valentine Princess is busy at work icing cookies.

All the best Valentine Princesses have bunny tails.

Some of our finished cookies.

Waldo wanted a mustache cookie, I traded him for a picture. We decided that he’d make a great cartoon villain. 🙂

Easter 2013

It’s so far past Easter at this point, I could kick myself because I don’t remember half the things I was going to say.  I’m actually working on a bunch of posts like this and it’s driving me crazy. Oh well, maybe some day I’ll learn how to post in a timely-er manner.

Lily mentioned making a bunny hat once so I figured this was the perfect time to do that. I drew the lines for the ears and she cut them out perfectly, I was so damn impressed.  After she cut them out she colored the inside of the ears and then glued cotton balls to it. After the glue dried I realized that the ears were way to heavy to stand up on on Lil’s head so I cut strips of poster board and glued them to the back. Then we glued the ears to the headband.

Easter bunny ear hat

Lil loved these ears. She wore them around for days.

Easter bunny ear hat

For the last few years I’ve been having Lil paint wooden eggs so that I can keep them. I think the pack I bought has a dozen eggs in it, that’s way more than I meant to do each year. Oh well.

painting wooden easter eggs

painting wooden easter eggs

painting wooden easter eggs

I know that traditionally Easter eggs are dyed with that crazy little dye pellets, but I hated it the time that we tried it. Lil thought it was incredibly boring and not fun. So we always paint our eggs.

Easter 2013

This year I decided to try and figure out how to keep the eggs from rolling around and messing up Lil’s paint. I cut up a couple of empty paper towel tubes. This is the best thing ever, you’re welcome.

Easter 2013

Easter 2013

Easter 2013

Waldo mentioned that it would be good if we had something that would spin the eggs so Lil didn’t have to keep touching them. I run up the stairs and grabbed a lazy susan from my craft stash and spin art eggs were born.

Easter 2013

Easter 2013

Waldo, Lily and I painted 2 dozen eggs, a few of them didn’t survive the whole process. I also bought about 3 dozen plastic eggs. I didn’t hide all the plastic eggs, but I’m pretty sure I hid at least 4 dozen eggs.

This wasn’t the dress I bought for Lil to wear for Easter, but it was what she wanted to wear so whatever.

Easter 2013

Lily with her new Easter Hello Kitty.

Easter 2013

This was Waldo’s egg. I was very impressed.

Easter 2013

Easter 2013

I think I emptied her bucked at least twice because all the eggs wouldn’t fit.

Easter 2013

Easter 2013

Easter 2013

Easter 2013

A few months before Easter Lil and I were talking about hunting eggs and she mentioned how some of the eggs would have TREASURE in them. After talking to her for a while and trying to figure out what on earth she was talking about and where she learned about treasure eggs I got a little info, I never found out where she heard about them. But treasure eggs apparently have beads and things like that in them. I never had any intention of giving Lil easter gifts, but she was so set on this treasure egg thing that I couldn’t let her down.

Easter 2013

We went to Target and I grabbed a huge amount of little inexpensive treasures. Bead necklaces, tiny animals (squinkies or something like that), a ring that lights up and blinks and a few other little things.

Easter 2013

Easter 2013

Easter 2013

Easter 2013

I hope you enjoyed my very late Easter post. I’m sure I missed some really important things I wanted to say, but this at least got my pictures and a few thoughts in order.

Lily turns 4 – the last part of the day

For the last part of Lily’s birthday we did do something very slightly Christmasy. Well maybe more wintery with a slight Christmas bend to it. Anyway we went to the Boise Botanical Garden Winter Garden aGlow event. I had seen a few commercials for this event last year, but didn’t even know where the Botanical Garden was so we didn’t go. I also saw the little brochure they sent us and it had a few nice pictures on it. Between these two things we decided it would be fun and we were so right. I could never have imagined what we would find and we were so happy with it all. My pictures will not do this wonderland any kind of justice, but I had to share them.

Almost every available surface had lights on them.

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

They had a awesome toy train display setup. We went once and then again before we left. Lil loved it.

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

We were freezing our butts off. They had fires in cans setup all over the place, it was a very welcome addition. They also had Santa that you could take pictures with, but Lil totally has no interest in taking a picture with a strange man. Even better than Santa, they had a real live reindeer. That was pretty cool.

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

After hanging out with Dancer for a bit we decided it was time to leave. I grabbed a few more shots before we headed to the trains and then our car.

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

At one point we ran into a Garden employee and she informed us it take something like 6 of them working 40 hour weeks from September to November, plus a few volunteers to get all of the lights set up. I say it was worth it.

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

4th Birthday at the Idaho Botanical Garden lights

We loved this so much. I’m going to try to make this a yearly tradition. So much fun! I’d say that Lily’s 4th birthday was a smash hit.

Lily turned 4

I seriously can’t believe that Lily is 4. I swear that it was just yesterday that I was in the hospital having her. I don’t know where the time goes, but I’m totally scared that I’m going to blink and she’s going to be all grown up. So I guess it’s good to remember to make as many memories as possible.

Since Lily’s birthday is 3 days before Christmas I try to make sure her birthday is totally separate from Christmas. I mean we do have a Christmas tree and decorations all over the place and there’s just nothing I can do about that, but for her birthday celebration I try to keep it separate. Since Lil’s birthday was a Saturday this year I wanted to make a day of it so started planning a few months ago. Not that I spent every waking minute thinking about this one day, but there’s a cake to decided on, tiny bits of decorating to think about and fun things to do to pick out. All year Lil tells me what kind of cake she wants and it changes all the time. At some point in November I told her she had to decide for sure and she knew without a doubt she wanted chocolate cake. She also said she wanted Minnie Mouse decorations, this surprised me since my Girl loves Hello Kitty like nobody’s business. But whatever, Minnie is a new find and so I ran with it. AT the end of the day my Girl had a wonderful time and I’m super happy with how everything worked out.

The day started out with balloons strung from the ceiling. I wouldn’t have done it again since we did it last year, but Lily insisted that is how birthdays are suppose to start.

Running through her birthday balloons

Lily was thrilled with her hanging balloons. I missed her first opening the door because I got up earlier than her to do my makeup so I’d be ready to go, but she was a good sport and ran through them for me again.

Once it was time to get ready to start getting ready for our day she was very excited to put on the special birthday outfit I put together for her. Lily and I went to Target and found a cute pink shirt that I could decorate and she picked out the perfect black pants with a skirt attached which her new uniform these days so they were perfect. She loved her special birthday outfit.

Finished 4th birthday shirt for Lil

To go with the Minnie Mouse theme I ordered Lil some amazing Minnie ears.

Admiring her birthday outfit

Lily loves the mall escalators and asks to go there all the time. We don’t shop at the mall that often for a multitude of reasons so I figured we’d go and ride the escalators a bunch for her birthday. We also decided to go to build-a-bear for the first time for Lily’s main birthday present. Two birds, 1 stone and all.

At Build-a-bear Lily picked a cat to make; which really didn’t surprise us at all.

Making Lily Kitty for Lily's 4th birthday

4th Birthday

We made it in and out of the mall before 10 in the morning. Even the weekend before Christmas it was just starting to get crazy right before we left, it was prefect.

I had originally planned to start Lil’s birthday with donuts for breakfast, but we decided to do a good diner lunch after the mall instead. And it was delicious and Lily was very happy with the food. After eating we went home so I could finish getting ready for Lily’s little party. I did everything I could before went to bed the night before, I just had to do the last few final things.

For almost the whole week before her birthday I spent night after night making Minnie Mouse heads for a birthday banner. I’m really happy with how it turned out. It just had to get hung up behind the table once we got home.

4th Birthday

I made the cake and cupcakes the day before and put a crumb coat on them to keep them from drying out and to seal the crumbs. I also made the buttercream the night before. The recipe I found for the buttercream said I could refrigerate it without any problems. That was a LIE! When I got the buttercream out it was hard as a stinking rock. I thought I’d put the Minnie Mouse banner up and let the frosting come to room temp and everything would be fine. I was wrong. It refused to soften up so I put it in the mixer and thought I’d whip it up a bit and we’d be good to go. Boy howdy I was fricking wrong. I have never seen a frosting (or anything other than a glass) break so fast. The butter separated out and it quickly went into the trash.

I ran upstairs and looked up a super quick frosting recipe to replace the broken buttercream and Waldo ran to the store and got me the things I needed. When he got home I had just enough time to whip the frosting together, but it worked out great. While he was gone I convinced Lil to let me take some pictures of her and I’m so glad I had the time to do it.

Lily's 4th birthday party

Lily's 4th birthday party

Lily's 4th birthday party

Lily's 4th birthday party

Another thing I made the week before were little chocolate Minnie Mouse heads for the cupcakes. They were very easy to make and super cute. Once the cake and cupcakes were frosted I grabbed the Minnie heads from the freezer. They started to melt almost immediately, but they were tasty.

Chocolate accents for Lily's birthday cupcakes

Chocolate accents for Lily's birthday cupcakes

Finished chocolate accent for Lily's birthday cupcakes

Then I grabbed some pictures of Lily with her cake and cupcakes before Waldo’s brother and his family showed up.

Lily's 4th birthday party

Lily's 4th birthday party

Lily's 4th birthday party

This next picture is a face that Lily was doing for a while. It was an adorable face and I’m glad I got a picture of it before it went away.

Lily's 4th birthday party

Lily's 4th birthday party

Lily's 4th birthday party

Lily's 4th birthday party

Lily's 4th birthday party

After Waldo’s brother and his family showed up we did gifts and then cake. I really went back and forth over singing happy birthday or not and in the end we sang and it nearly killed Lily. Unless she’s hates the spotlight less next year I think we are going to skip it.

Lily's 4th birthday

Lily's 4th birthday

Oh and then there’s the whole stress of blowing out the candle.

Lily's 4th birthday

Thankfully Daddy’s are great helpers.

Lily's 4th birthday

Lily's 4th birthday

After hanging out with Waldo’s brother’s family for a while we got ready to do our last birthday celebration thing. That will be a separate post though because it’s going to be very picture heavy.

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