I’m trying out a new commenting tool on my blog: LiveFyre.  I’ve seen it work well on a friend’s blog, so I thought I’d give it a go over here.  One of the things it’s supposed to resolve is tying together Facebook and Twitter comments with the blog’s own comments.  So they’re all in one place.  That seemed really cool to me.

So feel free to either comment here or in the Facebook or Twitter forums.  I might have to change my “syndication” hosting some to maximize this, we’ll see with further testing.

Thanks for your patience!  In the meantime, enjoy this picture taken today from our spouses’ club golf scramble!  Today was perfect weather, and the event went off without a (visible) hitch!  It was very well-done!

Cute cake, right? Made/decorated by my friend Steph (of Disney Half Marathon and 80s Party fame).

A closeup of the little alligators! There are 2-3 gators living on the golf course we were at today 🙂

Enjoy the boys’ Spring school portraits.  I opted for the CD with a large digital copy this year.  Grandparents, I’ll be printing some up for you, I promise!

The boys go to different schools so their sessions were on different days, but I tried hard to put them in complimentary outfits and chose the same background.  It turned out really well.

Relatives: click each image and a new website should appear with the full picture, suitable for download and printing.

My handsome Timmy! There's dirt on his nose. Typical.

My handsome Jacob!

 

If I could do this, so can you!

This was an idea that was making the rounds on Pinterest just before Easter. Dave had a couple of VERY old ties in the closet so I thought it’d be fun. In this case, you want to start with RAW eggs, they will boil with the silk for 20 minutes and will cook then.

Since I didn’t know about the need for RAW eggs, I only had 6 raw eggs left in the house by the time I thought to do this. And one of the eggs had too many cracks so I didn’t use it.

I did this project immediately after our Kool Aid eggs on the Saturday afternoon before Easter, so the kids were done dealing with eggs and I was left to try this out on my own.  This is a more labor intensive project, although I could think of much much fancier Easter egg art that would take even more work!

These are the three ties Dave said I could sacrifice for this project. Thanks Dave!

Make sure the ties you choose are 100% silk. This doesn't work otherwise...

Break out the scissors! You want to cut the tie up the back seam to separate the silk from the backing.

The steps I had for this project suggested cutting up a white pillowcase to cover each of the eggs, but I read another blog that suggested just saving that pillowcase and use the muslin backing instead.

Open up the tie, cut off a chunk and make sure it's big enough to wrap around the egg...like a pouch.

I used dental floss to tie off the top, and used rubber bands to help keep the silk in contact with the egg as much as possible.

I loosely wrapped each pouch in a piece of the muslin, then set them carefully in a large pot.

Cover with water at least an inch higher then the eggs, bring to a boil -- not simmer -- BOIL for 20 minutes. When finished, move the eggs to an ice bath to stop the cooking and cool them enough to unwrap.

This is the ice bath, but by the time I took this picture, most of the ice had melted.

My finished eggs. This isn't as great as they could have been...I learned a lot from this experience. For starters, deeply-colored ties work best. Recommend you raid the neckties at your local thrift shop for the best choices and cheapest options. Secondly, I need to work harder at getting the silk to touch the egg surface better.

10. April 2012 · Comments Off on Dyeing Easter Eggs — Two Ways! Part 1: Kool Aid Eggs · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,

This year I let GeekMom.com and Pinterest drive our Easter egg efforts.  As I’d said over the weekend, we enjoyed coloring our eggs with Kool Aid and a couple of Dave’s old silk ties.  And I had promised some details.

Here we go!

Kool Aid Eggs

This is really easy.  Add a packet of non-sugared Kool Aid to a mug with 2/3 c. of water — it doesn’t matter what temperature.  Stir and just add eggs!

In the case of the Kool Aid, the kids did most of the work. It was quite nice!  Pardon my crazy-cluttery kitchen!

We chose a variety of flavors to give us rainbow colors.

15 minutes on the timer!

VERY bright!

I want to speak about these eggs in particular. This is what you get with the "grape" flavored Kool Aid. Brown with blue speckles peeking out.

I LOVE strawberries!  So while the paint is drying from the latest wall I’m painting (in the living room behind the TV), I’ll share pictures from our strawberry picking trip last Friday.  Like last year, we headed out to Akers of Strawberries in Baker, Florida.  You can compare this year’s trip with last year’s!

Each boy had one box they could use. I helped fill both boxes.

These berries were HUGE this year. That's my hand holding that monster berry!

This is what we ended up with -- about 18 lbs.

So far I made a pie with about a pint and a half of the berries, and I used about 2 quarts for a batch of jam. I didn’t take any pictures of the canning of the jam, since I shared all about it last year.

This year, however, I had a boil-over accident and I ended up not boiling the berry mixture long enough — I had to reboil and then re-process the jars again to get it right.

But here’s that picture of the pie (again) 🙂 This was for an Easter pot luck party at a neighbor’s house.

Sadly, this strawberry pie didn't set very well either. It's was more like a pile of strawberries in a cooked crust. Oh well. The berries were still delicious!

Good morning friends and Happy Easter!

(I started this post this morning, but I’ve been fighting with my photo software all morning, then went to church.  I’m now about to head out to visit friends for the afternoon so I will just publish what I have here and go into more detail later).

It goes without saying that as the kids get older, the whole Easter egg hunt experiences becomes quicker and quicker.  The boys did their entire hunt while I was brushing my teeth, so I don’t have many pictures at all.  But here are some pictures of our weekend so far.

We colored eggs with both Kool Aid and Dave’s old silk ties. I’ll write more details about how we did them later.

Dipping eggs in Kool-Aid-based dye. Smells, well...FRUITY!

More »

06. April 2012 · Comments Off on Another Test Post · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

Here’s ANOTHER test post, testing some publishing-related plug-ins.

Thank you for your patience.

In the meantime, I’ve included a random picture for you to enjoy.  This is a “stained glass” project that Timmy did in art class.  Sharpies on a piece of transparency film :-).  This was shown in a Santa Rosa County Public Schools art show 2 weekends ago.

06. April 2012 · Comments Off on My Easter Egg Plans · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

Thanks to Pinterest, and a GeekMom who actually tested it last weekend, I will be trying a new approach to dyeing Easter eggs: Kool-Aid!

I had written about Kool-Aid while we were living in Nebraska (since Hastings, NE is home of Kool-Aid!) but honestly I don’t get it that often.

But this display at my local commissary gave me a change of heart.  I bought 6 packets.

It had a display all to itself today! It was a sign that this was how we needed to color our Easter eggs this year!

So check out the recipe for doing this — recommend you click on the Pinterest link above, then click on the picture to go to the original post. We’ll let you know this weekend how it goes.

This week we’ve been painting the great room and kitchen of our house.

Yes, it’s a rental, but all this time it’s been sterile white in color…EVERYWHERE and frankly it was getting on my nerves.  For starters, it shows EVERYTHING.  Every smudge, every scuff, every bump by a backpack, piece of furniture, etc.  Secondly, I like color.  I just do.

It took us a couple months of phone and e-mail tag with our property manager and homeowners, but last week we got a go-ahead.  Dave and I didn’t waste any time getting the paint on Sunday.  As of tonight we’ve done about half of the job.

Enjoy this before-and-after of our north wall, which includes the fireplace.

Before:

All I could find of this particular wall was from Christmas. But you can see how white it all is...the fireplace is barely noticeable.

In progress:

The variations in color are from the paint drying at different rates.

Finished:

When the color dried. Nice and even...

With everything back in place (except for that bookcase on the left).

I'll be working on the wall to the far left next. Our TV/entertainment stuff is along that wall so hopefully I can just pull it forward about 2' and work behind it.