Grandma's Annual Egg Hunt

Every one coming down! So Excited!
Macie showing me the egg she found

The search is on!

Opening all the eggs to see what candy they got :oD

YUMM!

Love this!

I will be doing this almost immediately!

I have 3 5x7 photo albums w/sheet protectors already attached that I was going to put family pics in for a quiet book~ But combine that with this... I'm SOOOOO EXCITED! We tried file folders the last few weeks but they zoom right through them and get up for a new one and it creates a circus! I might put the folders in a binder like I've seen done a few times, but this will be slick I think!

You can even print out your childs photo in the cartoon/color book setting on your computer or in a computer photo program so they can color themselves! How fun is that!

http://iammommahearmeroar.blogspot.com/2011/04/guest-post-quiet-book-from-icandy.html

Coloring Easter Eggs

Every year we get together with the Harris side of the family and color Easter Eggs. Shana (step mom) boils 10 eggs per child... if you do that math for my family of 8~ we have a TON of eggs! :o) The kids LOVE it! ~Contrary to the look on Micailey's face-it's the photo she loves till you remind her that she is going to look like that on the blog for all to see :o) She smiled for a re-do pic, but it was blurry :o) So here it is, posted for all to see

This is a few of the cousins that were able to come, the others are at the other table in the background. Shana is a brave soul to invite that many kids to dye eggs in her beautiful home!!!

Macie had a little too much unsupervised fun! She didn't make a mess, she just enjoyed dipping her egg wand in the dye and "stamping" it on the paper towels. She was quite content for quite a while as you can tell by the lovely shade of blue that she dyed her hand :o)

We have so much fun with this tradition and the kids LOVE it!

Thanks Dad & Shana for risking your kitchen to let your grandkids enjoy this tradition together!

More Easter to come another day....

Easter Family Night

When I was trying to decide what to have for dinner, I thought it would be fun to make a big round loaf of bread similar to what Christ might have eaten and dip it in oils and spices. Then I thought, what kind of other food might they have had. The closest possibility we came up with was a recipe from Morocco for chicken that Rich loves (we still need to figure out the"ONE" we had, but this recipe is close), grapes, and a cabbage salad & sorry ~ no wine, just apple juice... wanted grape juice but I didn't think of it in time to buy some. During dinner we talked about "The Last Supper" and who was there, & what Christ asked his disciples to do. Afterwards, Micailey gave us the "Easter" lesson with the 12 eggs that have a piece of the Easter Story in them that she had made at Achievement Days. She got a taste of what it is like to try to keep 8 monkeys quiet and still for a lesson :o) which was a good thing because sometimes she needs a little reminding. She kept saying things like ... "Is anyone even listening?", or "grr! This is taking forever!" hahahaha... sounds SOOO familiar! But she did a good job!

This is or yummy Easter Dinner

These cute little cupcakes I copied off of a blog.

They were so easy & fast & turned out so cute!

They are also debuting my tiered Easter plates I made :o)

So fun!

The girls holding their little chickadee's

Don't mind the naked girl :o)

We strip the little ones when they eat to save on clothing stains:o)

I hope everyone has a Happy Easter on Sunday!

"Recycled" Jean Skirt~

The girls have 2 cute skirts that we bought at JCPenney a long time ago that inspired this idea.

We have a ton of almost brand new pants of the girls with holes in the knees (cause apparently after 1st grade you just HAVE to crawl all over the school floors till you wear holes in them). So I decided instead of throwing them out I would let them pick out some fabric and turn them in to skirts (that we don't have enough of). So this is Brin's pick. This one took 2 hours last night after bed because I didn't really know exactly what I was doing :o) ...hopefully I can make Mackenzie's much faster! There are a few thing's I'll do a little different too ~

Spring Projects :o)

I'm having a little trouble finding a lot of Easter/Spring projects that I fall in love with, but here are a few :o) These are empty pickle jars with a new purpose! Love it! I've actually started making this one.... but I ran out of white spray paint so it's on hold for a bit. :o( http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/2011/04/pickle-jar-project.html

This is a fun one too. These are paper mache eggs & wood implements that have been painted. They used the hole reinforcement tabs as a stencil to make the dots. {clever} I found these on a link party and can not find them anywhere now...

I'm also going to make a version of these treat bags. I think they are bright & fun.

http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/2011/04/looking-back-easter-projects.html

I like these free subway art prints too. They have had one for every holiday since Thanksgiving. I just print them out on the computer in 8x10 and rotate them in my frame. They have them for birthday's too. http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/search/label/subway%20art

I've really been into these cute tiered serving dishes lately. I have the stuff to make this cute one, plus a couple for Easter, and a more formal one. ~ Now I just need to plan a party so I can use them :o)

http://thecraftingchicks.com/2011/03/diy-treat-stands.html

Our Conference Candy Trial...

So, in my last post, I said we really wanted to try doing the candy bucket idea :o)

Rich was gone all week to Tennessee and I was in charge of a huge Wizard of Oz production for the Relief Society Birthday dinner in our ward, so needless to say... I did not have time to go buy cute little pails and stuff... I was lucky enough to have Rich slow down on Friday so I could jump out of the car and run in to just get the candy... BUT~ we did it!

So I'm here to report :o)

I remembered I had these little colorful buckets in my Easter stuff, so I tried to make little tags for them... next time, we'll forgo the tags ~ at least till more of the children can read. What I really needed was a Picture of the word, then the little kids would have had a better chance of listening for them.

Brin actually did really well, it was Jordan, Cohen, & Macie that needed the extra help

So, once we established the rules, this is what they did :o)

I don't know how much they got out of it other than they heard most of they key words, but they did listen the whole time and we didn't have any complaining and the "when is it going to be over" or "how much longer" comments, so that was a plus!

When we started this little game, the peanut M&M's (Mom's favorite) were in the "Family" word bucket. That was all fine and dandy until the Primary President gave her talk... she said "Family" about every other word!!! We blew through the little bucket of M&M's and had to replace them with something much smaller (and less desirable)... jelly belly's :o) It seriously turned into a joke, the kids couldn't even get back to their seats till they were back up for another "Family" treat! It gave them all the giggles! :o) So they better remember at least her topic right! :o)

Oh, and we had a little snitch too!

And she knew exactly which candies were the "good" ones :o)

All in all~ most of the kids liked this little game better than bingo and the pages.

bad thing... you go through a lot of candy for each session... when you have 7 kids eating it anyway :o) But, we're doing it for tomorrow too, so we'll see if it changes the 2nd time around :o)

Hope you all are enjoying Conference Weekend!

I am SOOO going to try this for Conference!!!

I found this idea at http://www.brownpaper--packages.com/ ~ I love this idea! We always try to do the Conference Bingo and packets, but every one always ends up whining that So & So is copying them or their Bingo cards get spilled and they cry. I think it's a fun little twist to make them listen. I'm even going to add it to FHE night & if they are listening and can answer surprise questions they get to pick a treat. I don't know if it will stop the whining (does the whining EVER REALLY stop?) but we'll see how it goes :o)

They picked the words they wanted their children to listen for and everytime they heard one of those words they got to go up and pick a treat from that bucket.

You can check it out here... so cute!

http://www.brownpaper--packages.com/2011/03/general-conference-treat-buckets.html

Our St Patrick's Day 2011

If I don't do this post tonight with the kids in bed, it won't get done till next week and then it will be old news :o) What a fun & busy St. Patrick's Day we had!!! The kids loved the meal though! Every thing was delicious and they all gobbled it up! It's funny how making food into fun things puts an excitement into the air!

Our Pot of Gold at the end of the Rainbow

Our Lucky Leprechaun Hats
actually REALLY yummy!

Delicious 4 Leaf Clover Bread

One of my favorite things is hot fresh home made bread!!!

Our Yummy Meal... minus the Green Pistachio Dessert in the fridge

Happy St. Patrick's Day 2011 from the Smith's

Brinley and Jordan attend a fun little preschool in our neighborhood and they set a Leprechaun trap yesterday at school. Well today, he had messed up the classroom and had broken out of the trap but left behind some chocolate!!! They were SOO excited when they got home! Brin was insistant that we needed to make a trap and PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE could she keep it as a pet when we caught one!!! She was SO excited and SO serious!!! Her teacher must have been so convincing! :o) So the kids spent the next several hours building and setting traps out. Before bed we checked them and the sneaky little Leprechaun had escaped the trap but left rainbow colored skittles behind in his hurry to escape! What a fun day they had!

Last minute St Patty's post...

My friend asked me what we were doing for St. Patty's and I told her to check out my blog and realized I never finished posting the rest of what we were having- so here it is.

For dessert we are going to try this bad boy!

Hope it's delicious! I love Pistachio pudding so my mouth is already watering!

I'm half done with these except I'm not using green licorice and yellow candies...

I'm just going to use green and yellow frosting.

and this one I want to do for next year!!!
I love how bright and colorful it is! I already had our menu picked and bought before I saw these. So, maybe next year!

And, I can report that the 3 things in the previous post for St.Patty's got done and are all ready for today! Happy St. Patrick's Day Everyone! Enjoy and hope you are wearing GREEN!