A Return to Fairy Grove

Last May, I took Lydia to the Grand Opening of a fairy themed nature playscape at our local nature center.  They were having lots of fairy and gnome themed events, so I dressed Lydia up like a fairy.  I had a lot of fun taking pictures of her while she interacted with all the unique natural structures. (You can see more adorable fairy pictures from last year by clicking here)

 This year,we returned to Ijams Nature Center and found Jo's Grove almost unchanged and blissfully empty.  (The grand opening last May had been a huge success, but Lydia was really small and the crowds of kids were kind of hard to navigate.) For most of our visit last weekend, wewere the only people in the play area.

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  The grove itself is a wooded hillside with several paths, some dirt mounds, a few stumps and stools for the kids, several benches for the grownups, and a really cute playhouse.  Everything is natural and fits the environment, but everything is also completely open to the interpretation of a child's imagination.  Looking around Jo's Grove, I could tell that, in the year that it had been open, holes had been dug, mud had been mixed (and thrown), sticks had been moved and piled and yet nothing had been "damaged".  Jo's Grove was obviously well designed by the grown-ups at the nature center, but with an understanding that children want to interact with the space in ways that we can't necessarily predict.

 This year, Lydia became a "dinosaur hunter" and climbed the hills to look for hiding dinosaurs.  She decided I was a dinosaur at some point, so I had to chase her over all those hills (did I mention I am now 6 months pregnant?).  The adorable log cabin style playhouse quickly became a safe house to hide from dinosaurs.

She played a little in the crazy igloos made from sticks and twine (stick-loos?) but not as much as last year.

 I suppose fairies must be home bodies, while dinosaur hunters need wide open spaces and room to move!

Thinking About my Cousin (and Counting My Blessings... Again)

Facebook has become that place we all go to air our everyday joys and sorrows.  Typically, a post about feeling sick will be met by well wishers and maybe a few offers for help.  Usually, by the time friends ask if you need anything, you are already feeling better but it was nice to know they cared.

That's the way it is supposed to work.  Especially when you are young and relatively healthy and the illness you had was sudden and short and more of an anecdote followed by a rant about the price of tator tots.

Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the way that things are going.  News came yesterday that my cousin's husband, who had been casually complaining of a slight illness (and of the high cost of tator tots) went to the ER. I assumed the illness had become more annoying and the ER was the only thing open on the weekend.  I've been in that situation a few times myself. You go because it is late at night and you get some type of care and you come home and you joke about it afterwards.  At least, that is the way it is supposed to work.

I don't have many details, but it appears that he is not coming home. My heart aches for my cousin, his wife who is losing her partner, and for their two young children are loosing their dad. I am reminded of a similar situation, less than a year ago, when a high school friend lost her husband (see original Counting My Blessings post).  Within the last month or two, PJ has lost two of his high school friends (one to illness and one to an accident).  This news hits a lot closer to home and the idea that people my age are not immune from the really big tragedies is seeming even more real. I don't know what to say or do, but I will be hugging my loved ones a little tighter today.

Lydia's Easter Purse

While I like to sew, it has never occurred to me to sew our Easter (or Christmas) outfits.  I do like for our family to coordinate and I usually end up adding some fun, handmade accessories to help unify the look.  This year, Lydia was wearing a gold and silver cotton dress and I found a grey dress with some lace trim.  PJ had a gold and grey striped shirt and a golden yellow blazer already in his closet.  We not only coordinated with each other, we coordinated with the "What is it Going to Bee" party color scheme!  I figured I would make Lydia a hair bow and also use the ribbon to make her Easter basket match her look.  But when I saw this little straw purse at a thrift store, I decided to work a purse into the outfit too.

First, those old, ugly flowers had to go.  (OK, they didn't really go away.  I am saving them for some other craft project someday.  They have a nice vintage feel, they just don't work on this project.)

The purse already looked MUCH better in its stripped down state!  However, there was that one area of more open weave pattern at the top that was just screaming for some type of accent.

I wove a thin grey ribbon through that area and tied it in a bow. Big improvement!  At this point I had also made a hair bow to match the silver and gold in her dress while coordinating with the grey in my dress.  I laid the purse and the bow next to the Lydia's dress to see how everything looked. I decided that the purse looked OK as it was, but that it would look EVEN BETTER with a fancier bow, like the hair bow.

I slipped the clip from the hair bow through the middle of the grey ribbon that was tied to the purse and decided that it was worth the effort to make a second hair bow to have the purse look a little more finished.

Here is the finished ensemble.  I asked Lydia to pose for a picture and then I asked her to hold the purse so that I could see it.  I love her VERY LITERAL interpretation of my instructions!

That's better!  Happy Easter!

"What is it Going to Bee?" Party Details

 Our "What Will it Bee" themed gender reveal was combined with our annual Easter dinner.  We served our usual Easter lunch, but with as many bee related foods as I could manage (honey-baked ham, honeyed carrots, honey lemon iced tea).  I used the bee themed paper products to make cute labels for all the food, but the real fun came with the sweets table. 

I set this display up in the living room, near the entry.  I made the sign using my Silhouette machine.

Here is a close up of the theme related sweets.  I got an assortment of yellow cookies with chocolate stripes.

The main thing that I crafted were these really cute edible bees.  I got the idea from Hostess with the Mostess via Pinterest.  They used black Jelly Beans and sliced almonds.  It looked cute, but sounded like it would taste awful!  Instead, I decided to use chocolate covered peanuts, for the same look, but an entirely more appetizing chocolate and nut taste.

First I laid out my ingredients.  I went ahead and matched up similar sized almonds for the wings.

I melted yellow colored chocolates in a plastic bag and cut a small opening in the corner so I could use it like a piping bag.  I piped stripes across a row of chocolate peanuts.

The only problem was that the yellow chocolate didn't curve under the chocolate covered peanut.

The solution was simply to lift the chocolate covered peanut so that the yellow chocolate would slump down under the round shape.  I waited for the stripes to cool and harden and then used a little blob of the melted chocolate to attach the almond "wings".

Here are some of the chocolate bees on the lemon bars I made.  I was SO happy with how well they fit the theme.  Speaking of which......

The sign that I made as a decoration also doubled as a tally board for guests to vote if they thought that the baby would be a boy or a girl.  Each guest wrote their name on a hexagon and then taped it under either the HE or the SHE column. As you can see, voting was tied.

After dinner, it was time for the big Easter egg hunt.  Everyone knew that the answer to the big question was hidden inside the eggs.  They didn't know if there was one egg or multiple eggs with the answer.

PJ and Lydia hunted for eggs.  Lydia didn't understand about the gender reveal.  She just wanted to find a golden egg.  Meanwhile, one by one, our relatives found and opened their eggs until they discovered one like this......

We wrapped up the day, by handing out the photo cards with my maternity pictures and the baby's name.  I couldn't "BEE" happier about how it all turned out!

What IS it Going to Bee?

Now that we have announced the big news to family, I can FINALLY share the gender themed maternity photos that I had taken a couple of weeks ago.  ENJOY!

Hint.

 Bigger hint.

And now you know!

Most of the photos above, came together into this photo card.  After our Easter guests discovered the gender of baby number two, via an Easter Egg hunt with the important information hidden in a few eggs, we handed everyone these cards.  Everyone knew that we were going to announce the gender, but announcing the name was an added surprise. 

 This was a very touching moment as baby Joshua will be named for PJ's grandfather, JR, who passed away about a year ago.  The J. in this case, comes from PJ's name (Peter Joshua) and Reed is Old English for "red headed" which I felt was an appropriate way to connect to my side of the family.  So, there you have it, one of the many secrets I have been keeping lately, finally revealed.  I still have a few things that I still can't talk about, so you will just have to settle for LOTS of party pictures and ideas for the near future!

What is it Going to "Bee" Paper Products!

PJ and I always host our immediate family for Easter dinner.  When we were pregnant with Lydia, we surprised the family with an Easter gender announcement.  We decided to continue the tradition this year, with our second pregnancy, but this time, I wanted a "What is it going to BEE?" theme.  I made this simple invite and emailed it to all the guests. I really liked that the bees on the graphic were more cute than sophisticated.  I wanted a few other items with bees on them, so I used this simple bee shape as a jumping off point.

  I have been collecting bee party images for some time and even posted a few ideas for the party here.  Most of what I was finding was in a black and yellow or grey and yellow color scheme.  They seemed a little sophisticated for my event, and didn't really say "spring" or "baby" to me.....or maybe I was just too busy with my secret project to actually act on what I was finding.  Either way, I waited as long as I could and then mounted a final internet search early Thursday morning (yep, still waking up at 3am on LOTS of occasions).  My insomnia was rewarded with this.

World Label has all these FREE down loadable templates to use with the labels that they sell.  They had two different bee themed baby shower label templates, a boy design and a girl design. Each set had EVERYTHING; Invitations, Thank you notes, address labels, circle labels, blank cards, and water bottle labels.  I LOVED the fun, less sophisticated feeling of the design and thought that the bee illustration fit perfectly with the image on my invite.  The only problem was, we were doing a bee themed gender REVEAL, so pink and blue didn't really work!  Fortunately, my mad photo-shop skills DID!

I replaced all of the blue and pink with the golden yellow color that was in the bee.  I am SO happy with the results AND with the color scheme for the party.  I already have TONS of green party stuff, so now I can add in white and two different shades of yellow.

I didn't need sticky labels, so I just printed all of these images on card stock.  I have been cutting out these circles and playing around with adding streamers as fringe.  I'm not sure what I will use these for, but I love the festive look.

I discovered that 20 ounce soda bottle labels are the SAME SIZE as water bottle labels!  So I added text to the labels for the different drinks that we were serving at Easter.

 I just wrapped and glued the new labels over the old.

I think that this is going to add a nice touch of uniformity to the party.

I decided to use the blank note cards as menu cards.  I added text boxes before I printed and then used a lace punch on the edges.

I can't wait to see everything come together on Sunday!

Eggselent Easter Eggs

I knew that this would be a tough week, and I was correct!  I still can't spill the details, but now that I am back in the swing of things I wanted to share some of what has been keeping me busy since returning home to Tennessee.... on the red-eye (ugh!)

I was off from work on Monday to recover from the trip, and the red-eye, so that made for a three day work week (with school closed on Good Friday)  I decided before I left, that this week would be PERFECT for making Easter Eggs with my students.  We used to do Ukrainian Easter Eggs every year, but when we moved to our new building in 2008, those supplies got packed up and never revisited.  Likewise, I haven't bothered to pull out my supplies at home since Lydia's first Easter in 2009.  As you will see, the technique is difficult (dangerous) with small kids around.

The egg shown above is one of the last eggs that I made.  It was designed for Lydia on the occasion of her first Easter.  Sounds like next year I will have to make a plan to design an egg for the new baby's first Easter.  For now, it was challenging enough to teach over a hundred teenagers the process, while recovering from jet lag!

If you aren't familiar with the process, here is the basic idea.  This is a wax resist process, so you start by loading bees wax into a special tool with a little metal funnel.  In college, I saw someone demonstrate this technique but didn't catch where to buy the tools.  The Internet was still a relatively new concept, so I couldn't just google it!  I actually made my own tool by wiring a metal icing tip (basically a funnel) to the end of a handle (a paintbrush).  It sort of worked, but thankfully my mother found the real deal at the Ukrainian Gift Shop.  If you follow the link, it will lead you to my favorite starter kit of tools and special dyes......unless you would prefer to make your own!

Next you melt the wax over a candle.  So in addition to trying to recover from the most insane weekend ever (and a red eye flight) I was also making sure that a hundred high school students did not burn themselves or the school!

Once the wax is hot, you can draw any design on an egg.  Whatever color the egg is when you apply the wax, that is what color the design will be.  I only had to say that to my students four thousand time and several still gave me a blank stare.

So you apply wax, dye the egg a light color, apply more wax, dye it a darker color, apply more wax, dye it a darker color, etc., etc.  Makes sense right?  Not if you are in high school! (BTW my nails are a casualty of my busy weekend trip. They have not been fixed yet, but will be fixed soon!)

The last steps involve emptying the egg (a really disgusting process requiring both hands, so no pictures) and melting the wax off of the egg to reveal all the beautiful colors.  (Traditional Ukrainian eggs use a special kind of dye that gets really dark permanent colors)

So here is the one and only egg that I was able to make this year. Next year, I have vowed to show Lydia that process.  For now, I will end by showing you all the eggs I have made in the past.