Because of Him

I'm up early and putting the finishing touches on my Easter lesson for my little Sunday School kids, making sure the Easter baskets are filled, treats all in place.  I've watched this video several times and love the perspective it gives for what Easter is really all about.  Enjoy it and we hope you have a wonderful day filled with family!

Bunny Treat Cans

Tonight, very last moment of course, my daughter and I did a fun craft together!
These fun Bunny and Critter Cans will not only be a little treat but also a place setting of sorts
for our Easter Lunch tomorrow with Grandma and Grandpa.

We did some earlier this month with my little church girls and they were so fun and easy
that we decided we needed to make some other little "friends" too!

The little pattern came from a book my Sunday school teaching partner had from 30+ years ago
so I'm not sure of the source.  Pieces are cut from felt and then adhered to little
tomato sauce cans with just a glue gun.

The possibilities are endless here with pom poms, feathers and googly eyes.

We made 2 bunnies, a lamb, a duck and a blue bird.
Quite Springy and they hold just enough treats to make anyone happy!

I'm making my favorite Carrot Cake tonight called 
Sam's Favorite Carrot Cake from Allrecipes.com.
It sure is yummy!  Also a huge thanks to Pillsbury for featuring our Jelly Bean Topiaries!  They have some really cute ideas for jelly bean uses!  Go check it out!

We hope you have a very Happy Easter!

Pink Lemonade Cookies

Normally I'm not the biggest fan of boxed cookie mix or frosting
but Pillsbury Pink Lemonade Cookie Mix and Frosting has made me a convert.
                     
At church on Sunday my good friend Diane brought these tasty treats to all the little kids~good thing I was substitute teaching and was at the right place at the right time to happily sample these treats.
They were so yummy I immediately texted her after church begging for her recipe.
Her reply:  "I was afraid this would happen. LOL.  It is a box mix from Target.  It is back in the Easter section.  It is called pink lemonade.  The frosting is right by it.  LOL. Good stuff."

Yes, I did laugh out loud at that one.
First thing Monday morning I was in Target snatching up the remaining 2 boxes and 1 box of frosting.
Come on Pillsbury, how can you hook me and then say I only get it this time of year?  They are so easy to make and a perfect treat to make with your kids.  There is another sinfully delicious recipe for pink lemonade cream cheese bars on the box that my daughter and I will just have to try tomorrow when the cookies are all gone.  And yes, diets don't count during spring break.

Here though is my brilliant tip~I wish I could claim it as my own but I picked it up from another amazing friend at a "favorite things" party~have you heard of them or gone to one?  (SO FUN!)
                                               

Instead of trying to get cling wrap to stick to a plate of cookies and how irritating it is to get at them once they are wrapped up and clung into place...try using a shower cap.  Yes, I said shower cap.  You can grab them, 3 in a bag for a $1 at the Dollar Store.  I'm a believer now!

Happy Wednesday friends!

Reader's Digest Easter Link

                     
So I have no idea where the last two weeks went!  We are both grateful that this week is Spring Break
for our kids which means cleaning, cleaning, more cleaning and a few fun activities in between.;)
                          
We have some fun Easter crafts to do with the kids but until then we thought you'd enjoy this cute Easter Crafts slide show that Reader's Digest (thank you!) was kind enough to feature our Jelly Bean Topiaries in.
Head over to Reader's Digest and check them out HERE~

Meanwhile, if you haven't tried The Pioneer Woman's Sweet Roll Recipe~then you should.  I fell off the diet wagon a couple of weeks ago when I made her Orange Marmalade Rolls.  Today to kick off Spring Break my daughter and I made up a batch of her Blueberry Lemon  Sweet Rolls.  One word~DIVINE!

They really are quite tasty and easy to make!  Now back to cleaning.....

Bunny Silhouette Pattern

It's been a crazy week for both of us Crafty Sisters~
Candace is busy prepping for teaching a class on Church Nursery ideas
while I've been busy filling Easter orders and putting together my daughter's school yearbook.
I have a whole new appreciation for all the amazing volunteers at schools, PTO's and PTA's!
We've had several email requests for a "pattern" for the cute bunny silhouettes we used last week with Wood You Like To Craft.

So with my low tech computer graphic skills....this is as good as it gets.:)  Yup, a scanned pencil tracing of my patterns.  I know, I need to take a class or something.

You can size the bunnies to any size you like but ours were just about 8" at the tallest and almost 4" wide.
If you don't want to tackle cutting the bunnies yourself, I cut a few sets extra out and listed them in my shop on Etsy.
                          
Candace will have some cute ideas to share in the next few days from her class~she gets so nervous about teaching but she's a natural with gathering and sharing ideas.
Now for me, back to organizing year book photos......

Easter Theme WYLTC

It's time for Wood You Like To Craft!
This month's theme is A Christ Centered Easter.
Krystal started us all off with her adorable 12 Days of Easter Advent Calendar

It turned out so great!
Come on over and see how we put together our version of an Easter Countdown....and yes, it involves bunnies!

Jelly Bean Tree

I'm not sure which we get more excited for~Easter candy~eating or decorating with it!

How could we resist to play with Lifesaver's Easter Jelly Beans again,

this time we made a Jelly Bean Tree!

Remember our fun Jelly Bean Topiaries we did a few years ago?
We were so happy with the fun colors that we knew we needed something
a little bit bigger to display them on.....

Every Spring we end of doing a lot of pruning in both our yards, but in mine I have the most beautiful Apple tree branches that were perfect for this project.

After stabilizing your branches into a vase or pot of your choice

all you have do is get out your glue gun and start gluing those little guys on.

Try to refrain from eating them up as you go!

My daughter was very unhappy that there weren't enough pink ones for her to

gobble up....I'm thinking there are some missing on my tree.....

You're going to end up with a ton of glue strings.

Don't you just hate those suckers!

Best tip I learned this year was from Craft Wars~

they recommended using a hot hair dryer to melt them into oblivion.

Ya know what?

It totally works~AWESOME!

We had to make another one just to show the difference in pots.

I'm down at the farm feed store all the time getting stuff for my ducks

and this metal pail seemed to be a perfect fit.

                         

Stay tuned this week for our Easter themed Wood You Like To Craft!

There's guaranteed to be some fun stuff!

Happy Sunday Friends!

Spring Boutiques

I quickly snapped a photo with my phone camera

of the cute little boy's Easter basket I finished up today

before I mailed it off.

I just loved the colors and personalizing it with his name!

While Candace enlisted our Dad to help her

attach her gorgeous Head Board to the wall

I have been busy preparing for a Spring Boutique 

that starts this Thursday.

I absolutely love working with Emily & Monica

who put on the Holiday House Boutique.

I was even more tickled that they had 

our great friend Krystal from Sassy Sanctuary

give their blog a makeover.

Make sure to go over and check out her nice work!

Plus for those of you local~make sure to enter their drawing for

boutique bucks to spend this weekend!

Meanwhile....I just got to keep working!

Happy Monday!!!

Bunny Silhouettes WYLTC

This month we are hosting Wood You Like To Craft

and of course we had to do something Easter/Spring related!

We drew our inspiration from some fun 

weather vane type accessories we've seen from Target and Pottery Barn.

We found this great rabbit graphic from The Graphics Fairy.

It was the perfect shape for what we had in mind.
We blew it up to be about 21" wide
and cut it out of 1" pine.

We then gathered our other supplies:
1 7" section of 3/8" dowel
1 chunky table leg from Home Depot
1 cedar fence cap

1 2 3/4" square cut from 1" pine scraps

You can really use anything to build up your base.

Candace used some scraps from her garage and

a ball finial from her son's bunk beds~it's been used

as a weapon being thrown around for a while

so she figured this was a better use for it!;)

After drilling the holes into the bunny and the table leg,
we glued everything together with Gorilla wood glue.
Once dry we stained everything with a coat of stain.
I used Min wax Dark Mahogany Wood Stain,

 and Candace used watered down, dark burnt umber acrylic paint.

When it had dried we tried 2 different paint approaches.

I used some cream acrylic paint that was watered down

to a 50/50 consistency, applying a generous coat.
After letting it sit for a few minutes, it was wiped away with paper towel.
This made the grain of the wood pop through and gave the bunny
a nice translucent weathered warm grey look.

Candace applied some furniture wax to her bunny before

she coated it with a thick coat of cream paint.
The wax allowed the brown stain to peek through quite nicely
when she lightly sanded it.

We always love playing around with paint and trying new things out!
Most of all we love playing around with silhouettes!
We're thinking we might have a whole week dedicated to
all things Silhouette.....
We'll see!
Can't wait to see what Krystal, Melinda and Wendy have
coming up in the next few days!

Mae's Closet Winners!

We're finally announcing the winners

for our wonderful Mae's Closet giveaway!

Don't these bunnies make you want to pull out all your Easter decorations!

Elizabeth was kind enough to offer 2 bunnies to give away and our winners are~

Cary M.

&

Lyndsey

Congratulations gals!

Thanks so much Elizabeth!

Target Dollar Egg Tree

This week we were looking for something fun and easy to do

with the kids being home for spring break.

We didn't get much done besides entertaining the kiddos

but sure had fun with these trees!

A while back, we found Easter trees in Target's dollar bins.  

We went straight over and scooped up three. 

They even have a few leaves attached..that's a bonus for 2.50!  

We knew they had potential, they just needed the right egg on them. 

It was our lucky day when we found foam glitter eggs at Craft Warehouse on clearance for 3.00. 

The eggs did not have strings attached, so instead of hanging the eggs, 

we poked them right onto the end of each branch. 

Really easy, and we didn't even glue them!  

We removed the cheap plastic pot and placed

each tree into a ceramic pot, also from the dollar bins.

Target sometimes has some great stuff hidden away in those bins!   

The pot needed a little extra something,

 so we spliced each egg with a knife and

hot glued each egg half around the top of the pot.

We also picked up Easter ornaments at Michaels,

because we thought the kids would enjoy them. 

The strings were a little long, so we shortened the string to fit the tree.  

An easy and cheap fix for an Easter tree!  

Easter Baskets

Today Candace and I were busy working on our projects for

our new online craft group

Wood You Like To Craft!

We are so excited and we hope you guys are too!

We think it's going to be soooo much fun

to not only do together but to see the twists

that everyone will do to personalize their projects!

The crafting begins March 7th~~~that's Monday folks!!!

So I've been a little busy making Easter baskets this week.

I teach classes here locally, so I'm always looking for a fun

project to make that is usually seasonal.

Well I've always wanted to make a sturdy

basket that would last throughout the years for my little girl.

A couple of years ago I made some of these up for a client

who wanted to follow the tradition her Mom had created

with wooden baskets she had hand painted for each of her kids.

I love traditions like that, keepsakes to hand down.

Here's my egg basket I created.

I thought it turned out pretty fun!

I had originally started with the bunny here,

 I rubbed off the edges a bit and I totally loved it but I wanted a bit more color

even though the little cotton bunny tail just about had me....

I love modge podging paper onto stuff,

it makes everything seem so much brighter and fun!

Do you guys have "heirloom" baskets or other fun Easter traditions?