Easter Babies!

It was such a treat to have our new baby chicks and ducklings arrive two days before Easter! It is so fun to have babies in the house!! We bought 8 chicks and 4 ducklings from a NH woman who sells them on Craig's list. We are so excited to see how the Speckled Sussex chicks are going to look as adults. They are the reddish ones in the pic below. We also bought 1 Barred Rock which is the black and white one and 1 Buff Orpington which is the yellow one with it's head turned back. The Buff Orpington was a must to replace Mollies chicken Fluffy who didn't survive a dog attack:(

Here are our beautiful little Cayuga Ducklings! They are so sweet and cute and soft!! They have a much different personality than the chicks, far more easy going and docile. I chose this breed after researching a little and finding out that they are much quieter and tend to be more docile than other breeds. Plus the male becomes a beautiful greenish back color when full grown. They are also very hardy in colder climates.


Our other babies are veggies!!! This is the grow table that Pat built so that we could start lots of seedlings inside without having to put them all on the kitchen table. We also added artificial lighting to help the plants to not become leggy. Under the shelves on the floor is our brooder. We can keep the chicks and duck warm and heat the soil for the seedlings at the same time!! Nothing like multipurpose!

Here is the side view and James checking on the chicks.

Our real Easter babies on Sunday morning at church were the cutest though!!! The girls are sporting the little cardi sweaters that I started as Christmas presents but ended up not being finished until last week! They were perfect for Easter though! The pattern for the sweaters and the little purses can be found on the Lionbrand Yarn website.

Easter Outtakes and Pic's 2010

It was too beautiful yesterday not to take advantage of it and try to get some new pic's of the family. We were all dressed up in "matching" style for Resurrection Sunday (AKA Easter) and the back yard at our church provided a beautiful spot to snap some pics.

There are bound to be some "outtakes" when trying to get everyone to look pretty at the same time and usually there are way more outtakes than in!!!

The OUTTAKES:

The "IN" Takes:

(and I do mean IN because the sun was in their faces the whole time!)

I really wanted the river in the background so we tried to make it work.

We tried to move out of the sun but as you can see it didn't quite work!!

At this point the kids were done and church was starting soon so we gave up and hoped there were a few good ones. Not as nice as I would have liked...maybe next time!

Thank you God for a beautiful day to celebrate your Son Jesus!
We were blessed to be surrounded by family and friends and had a wonderful meal together!!

Easter Houses - Gingerbread Style

Mimi purchased a fun mini gingerbread house kit a Christmas time and of course with all the hustle and bustle of the holidays there never was time to make them with the kids! So she decided it would be fun to make them into little Easter houses! Check them out:

James and Emmalie

Ethan and Mollie

Thanks Mimi for the fun project!

Easter Pictures

First I had to take some pics of Emmy's Easter "Up-do", I was so happy with how this came out and everyone commented her on her hair at church. I am so happy to be blessed with little girls that I can play dress up and hair with!!! I had been looking at a lot of "hair blogs" for some inspiration on what to do with her hair and this is really a combination of a few. I did a messy bun in the back, some cute little twists on the sides, and left the front which is bangs and some extra hair out to frame her face. Here she is:

I tried to get some cute pics of all the kids together after church but "princess" Emmy would not hear of it and threw a fit, so here are some of James, Ethan, and Mollie which didn't come out great=:(
After only a couple of shots Mollie was done too! It didn't help that the boys were putting things on her head and begging me to take a pic!

I like this one of Pat and Uncle Zack doing up their ties.

Auntie Sarah and Uncle Zacky... they are so cute!

Here is Emmy later on at home after she had something to eat acting as cute as a button and willing to pose and dance for the camera!

PS - Please don't look to close at the messy under construction kitchen!

Cake Pops and Egg Decorating

Muria turned me on to this web site called Bakerella and she does some AMAZING things! We loved her Easter cake pops and decided to make some. Ours did NOT come out like hers, although we did not really intend them to but they were fun and the kids really like them!

First we started with a baked box cake a large bowl and can of frosting.

Then comes the fun, the kids were shocked when I told them to dive in with their hands and crumble the cake into the bowl. They loved it!!!

Her they are with their messy hands! We then mixed in most of the can of frosting (for exact directions you can check out the link to Bakerella at the top).

Mollie even got a taste here and there, I know she's not 1 yet but oh well!

We used the small Pampered Chef scoop to make the balls even in size and the kids and my Mom rolled them.

James has got some great rolling technique going on here:

We then placed them on a cookie sheet and put them in the freezer to harden a little and realized how late it was so we decided to call it a night and decorated eggs and the cake pops a few nights later.

Here are our finished cake pops!

And a couple pics of egg decorating too!

Hope everyone had a great Easter!!!

Easter Recipes

Sometimes being overwhelmed by bunnies, eggs and CHOCOLATE it seems like we easily forget the focus of the approaching holiday so...we are going to try out one or both of these fun recipes that also help remind us of the Easter story and thought we would share!

Have a Happy Easter!

Empty Tomb Biscuits

and

Easter Story Cookies

Check out more recipes at the Grocery Cart Challenge Recipe Swap!

Spruce Up Old Plastic Easter Eggs

I saw this project on someones blog somewhere and was just going to link to it but I can't find it anywhere so I decided to post the whole thing!

You need some Mod Podge, plastic eggs, a paint brush and some fabric scraps.

(Let me know if you want any scraps we have tons!!) Piece by piece add the fabric scraps by layering Mod Podge then fabric then more Mod Podge until the whole egg is covered.

We used an empty egg carton to dry them in.

Here is James with his, Ethan ditched us to play outside (in the MUD).
It seems like the dark colors worked best, you can see through the light blue and white but maybe if I had matched the light blue with a blue egg it would be okay.

Check out the Kid-Craft Jamboree at Kiddio for all kinds of SPRING crafts!