Here comes Peter Cottontail...

After Valentine's Day I needed something to get my house ready for Easter and Spring. While at the Dollar Store shopping for my son's birthday party, I was drawn to lots and lots of cute Easter decor. I couldn't resist, so I grabbed a bunch of things and threw them into the cart. After the birthday party and all of the Valentine decor was put away, I pulled out the items I bought and got to work.

First, I grabbed an empty vase I had laying around and filled it with Easter grass. I added a few pieces of styrofoam (for stability) and stuck a few of these adorable sparkly eggs in randomly. I finished it off with some more grass on top and wrapped the middle of the vase with the egg ribbon that I actually purchased last year.

Because that turned out so cute, I was on the hunt for more vases to put more eggs into. I remembered some green glasses that I got for my wedding and have never used. This time I filled the bottom of the cup with styrofoam, stuck in the eggs and added some grass to the top. Finally, I tied some more of the egg ribbon around the glass.



In the dining room, I used the tree and sparkly eggs to create a centerpiece for my table.

Finally, I added an egg shaped candle to a hurricane filled with grass.


Along with all of the paper decorations that I crafted last year, the house really looks springy and ready for a visit from our favorite bunny!

Easter 2011

My daughter woke me up at 6:30 am, ecstatic that the Easter bunny had come and left her a basketful of goodies. She dove right into her basket, eating as much candy as she could.

Aidan was equally excited to see his basket when he woke up a few minutes later.

The kids then got to try out their gifts from mom and dad. Reese got Just Dance 2 for the Wii and Aidan got a four wheeler:


They would have ridden that thing all day, but eventually we went in to get ready for the day. Here are my babies all dolled up!

We got in the car and drove to my uncle's for brunch with all of my aunts, uncles, cousins, and their kids. We only see some of these people once a year and it is always great to get together.
Before leaving to head back home, we got together to take a family picture. How long can it take to get 18 people together for a photo? Quite awhile! We asked my cousin to take a family photo with my siblings and all of our kids at our recent Easter brunch. She thought it would be funny to document the process of getting our whole group together:


Still gathering kids who were having too much fun to be bothered with photography!

The gang is all here, but we need to fill in the gaps.

Passing babies around! My god, our family multiplies like rabbits!

Looking pretty good, but why is my brother-in-law hiding in the back?

Finally, almost everyone is looking at the camera! My daughter is crying, Parker looks like she is chocking and my husband and I are too tall to be standing in the front, but we have proof that we were all toghether for Easter!

Though I knew the kids were tired and cranky, we tried for a photograph of just our family:

My daughter is still crying, my son looks like he is trying to look down my dress and my husband looks like he has been goosed! My husband did not understand why I wanted to even try taking a picture because he knew that it would not turn out. I said it is not about having a perfect picture, but actually to remember the moment! I will always remember that the kids had a great time running and playing with their cousins and were just worn out and overstimulated from the days activities.

After a quick nap in the car the kids were nice and refreshed for the remainder of the days activities. We had an egg hunt with their cousins from my husband's side of the family.



Then the kids played which allowed us a nice chance to visit with family. It was a wonderful and fun day with all of our family!

Paper Crafting Easter Decor

I have very little in the way of decor for Easter. Of course I have my stick wreath which I change out for every season. You can see my 4th of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas wreaths here. I had a purple and green ribbon for it, but it just looked too boring and bland. I found some coordinating scrapbook papers in purples, greens and blues and freehanded an egg shape which I used as a template. After cutting out all of the eggs, I slid some of the eggs into the wreath using twigs to hold the eggs in place. Immediately, it looked much more interesting, but I had something else up my sleeve! I then dug through my scrapbook paper scraps and created a little paper bunny to peek out of my wreath.

He is so stinking cute! I love it!
I had several paper eggs left, so I decided to create a garland much like the candy corn garland I created for Halloween (I just realized that I never posted pics of this garland, bad blogger). I cut out the letters to spell, "Happy Easter" and "Welcome Spring". I glued the letters to the eggs and then hot glued the eggs to a coordinating ribbon to create a garland. I hung one from my mantle:

I used the other garland on the china hutch in our dining room:

This project cost me no money because I had all of the supplies on hand. This is the second time that I have used my scrapbook papers to create holiday decor in my home and I think that I will probably be making a paper garland for each holiday. These little touches really helped to bring a little bit of the brightness of spring into our home and also a little bit of whimsy for the kids. I have another project that I would like to attempt for spring, but am waiting to get together the supplies. Do you decorate for Spring/Easter? How?