An Easter dress for Elise

My sweet little girl is quite a character. While some little girls are "girly-girls" she is the epitome of tomboy. I love it! She isn't afraid of dirt, she doesn't mind hand-me-downs and she won't be easily swayed by the latest fashion must-haves. However, we do run into some minor problems on the rare occasion that I really want her to dress up. Take Easter, for instance. It's a good dressing-up sort of occasion. But, Elise thought a pair of school uniform pants would suffice. I decided to put my mommy foot down, and say that, this Easter, she would wear a dress.

Have you heard of Pinterest? It's my new addiction. Well, I typed in a search for "dresses for little girls" on Pinterest and up came hundreds of dresses. Beautiful, elegant, totally-appropriate-for-Easter, kinds of dresses. She liked one. Just ONE! Out of about 300 in total that we looked at, she chose 1. I could have tried to find it in a store, but I just happened to have a metre of the same fabric (green gingham) in my stash, so I thought I would make it instead. The dress I made doesn't look exactly like the one she chose, but it was the same colour, and had no sleeves, so she said she liked it. And she said she would wear it for Easter.

It's not fancy, and as you can see, she has no trouble climbing on fences in it!


Easter isn't here yet, and I've already gotten her to wear it once! Maybe I put both feet down :)

These are a few pictures that I took of Elise in her new Easter dress after church yesterday saying hello to Papa's chickens... you see, this is also the sort of dress that you can run around the grass in, and visit chickens while wearing!





Here's a view of the back - I had a zipper all ready to go, and then I decided that I would rather put 3 cute little ties on the back to hold it closed than fight with a zipper. I've done zippers and they aren't a big problem, but I thought this was cuter.


We were in Victoria picking up our kids who had spent the week with Grammie and Papa for Spring Break. Elise said that if she had to have all these pictures taken, then the boys should be in at least one of them! They happily obliged me, and were so glad they weren't the main focus of my camera that day :)

Family Easter Fun!

Yesterday we hosted Steve's family for Easter dinner. We had ham, scalloped potatoes, baked green beans, corn, veggies and rolls. Delicious! For dessert, Steve's mom brought Paska and some white chocolate popcorn = YUMMY!



After dinner, the kids got to decorate eggs. I had boiled them ahead of time (no blowing out for the kids!!!) We used Stampin' Up! reinkers in water as "paint" and then used flowers from the sticky cuts sheets that are available in the Clearance Rack right now for next to nothin'!! (Check it out :) We put glitter on the flowers and I think the eggs turned out smashingly!!! (thankfully, I had a few extras boiled, because some really did smash!!)

I did it!!

Earlier today, I talked about wanting to decorate some Easter Eggs... here are my eggs :)

I started the process a few days ago with some plain white eggs.

1. Wash the eggs.

2. Poke a bunch of little holes in the top and bottom of the egg using a straight pin.

3. Make the hole bigger. (about the diametre of a skewer).

4. Carefully blow the egg yolk and whites into a bowl. You can do what you want with these, even chuck them if it grosses you out to eat them. But I decided to feed them to my family for dinner. Don't worry, I wouldn't ever do this for company, or in cookies that I might give away!!!! I would only do this for my immediate family - and they weren't actually too crazy about the idea once they saw what I was doing! But dinner was still good :)

5. Once you have completely rinsed the eggs inside and out, dry them well. Step five is to heat emboss on the eggs, or to use a white crayon to make a design which will resist the dye that you paint them with. I did a bit of both - crayon and heat embossing (I highly recommend a good oven mitt if you decide to emboss on them!!). Then skewer the eggs, and paint them using Stampin' Up! reinkers. On some of the eggs, I also used gold and sliver pens to add some detail.

6. Once I was happy with the intensity of the colour, I let them dry on their skewers, standing in a cup.

7. Once completely dry, spray a sealer coat on them. I used a clear acrylic sealer by Americana.
Then they can stand in the glass again... it'll take about an hour for the sealer to dry completely.

8. Remove them from the skewers, and add some bling if you'd like. I used Stampin' Up!'s pearls and rhinestones to add a bit of sparkle.


9. Finally, display and enjoy! Happy Easter :)

Easter Eggs

I am working on an Easter Egg post, and I headed to my good friend Google for some inspiration. Check out all these fun designs... I found these by Googling "Easter Eggs" in images. None of the following are mine, but I am hoping to be able to post something pretty fun in the next day or two that I have made :)

Red and black - one of my favourite colour combinations!

Love this Easter Egg tree!




These intricate eggs have always fascinated me. I think they are Ukrainian. I would love to be able to paint like this!

I cannot imagine having the patience to do this carving. It is so intricate, I would squish it for sure!

This group of decorated eggs is very unique. I haven't seen anything like this before. Love how they are displayed in a bed of rice.

And, if your kids like to colour, here's a colouring page that was provided on there, too. Elise is happily colouring right now!