birthday prep!

I got Sloane's birthday pictures and knocked out some custom birthday cards using Shutterfly. The cards were pretty cute and it was pretty easy to make which was nice. Plus I had a free $30 gift card from an old Photoworks site so that doesn't suck! I still like Paper Coterie for my photo books but these cards are perfect! And with a kid and photos this cute, how can you wrong?!

5x7 Folded Card

View the entire collection of cards.

Stay tuned for more birthday fun tomorrow!

easter bunny, here we come!

We started the Easter festivities with one of our favorite family traditions - making and frosting sugar cookies! We did cheat a little bit. They had an Easter cookie-decorating day at my work which the kids were too sick to attend. Runny noses, fevers, the works, so they stayed home with their germs but I brought home a few stacks of cookies so we could decorate them. Tagg and I made frosting and he picked the colors - pink (he chose that because of the Lightning McQueen red in the bottle, just for the record), turquoise (Nemo) and purple (just becasue).

I make some pretty mean frosting (thanks, Mom!). As you can tell by Tagg's reaction, he's a fan. Seriously eating it off the spoon, out of the bowl, licking it off the cookies. Even the candy sprinkles didn't distract him from job one...eating the frosting!

Next up? Dyeing Easter eggs of course! Or as Tagg calls them "ooster eggs." We ran into a few problems here. One? I usually buy brown organic eggs. I wasn't sure if or how those would color up so I sent Scott off to the store for some traditional white eggs. Check. Two? You should always check to make sure you have appropriate vinegar before embarking on an Easter egg dyeing adventure. I have tons of vinegar, usually. Of course, this is the day I'm down to about 3 tablespoons of white vinegar. So we filled in the the other cups with seasoned rice wine vinegar, white balsamic vinegar and cooking sherry (hey! it was that or full on balsamic and that, I am certain, would not have turned out well!). It was colorful!

The final result? Amazing! Tagg was a little rough with some of the eggs but the resulting cracks and fissures made for some beautiful artistic creations.

After the kids went to bed that night, Scott and I stayed up late putting together Easter baskets, filling plastic eggs - Tagg's with candy, Sloane's with raisins and craisins, making fruit salad and french toast for brunch at Marc and Becky's.

My mom hid Easter baskets for us until I was about 30. Scott thought that was a bizarre tradition! I would agree about the fact that she did it till we were so old but I think it's a cute tradition, especially if you live in a place where there are pretty good odds for snow on Easter! I have a feeling my mom must have missed some hidden eggs at one point when we were little and this became a safer, less stinky replacement tradition. He'd never heard of it and he was cracking up as I was trying to find places in the living room that were "hidden" from a 1 and 3 year old's perspective. (epic fail, by the way. we totally had to show both kids where they were, and Sloane's was right in the middle of the floor!)

I tried not to put too much candy and junk in their baskets so I got a little balloon-animal making kit, and Scott was a genius at it! Balloon hats for all the kids, including Morgan!

We went over to Marc and Becky's house for brunch and an Easter egg hunt with the kids. Becky is a riot! She is like uber-mom. She had cinnamon rolls with candy bunnies, mini pancakes with green frosting and jelly beans, green scrambled eggs, peeps and rabbit ears for the kids. And I was feeling lucky to have managed Easter baskets, eggs and cookies. Dammit with the one-upping, super moms! Give us regular people a break!

She got all these cute animal eggs for Tagg to hunt in the yard with a Lightning McQueen egg for the grand finale. Thoughtful, fabulous and even though Tagg was not a natural egg-finder, he had a ball.

And then the girls got their turn! Eggs of all shapes and sizes placed obviously in the grass.

They did a pretty good job at finding all the Easter eggs in the yard. And happily the weather cooperated. It was probably the nicest weather day we've had in a long, long time! Which was nice for us...we all go to lounge in the sun sipping mimosas while the kids played in the yard.

Sloane really had a better day than this photo shows!
Sure she had a cold and it was nap time but this face!
My goodness! Did you not hear about the candy?!