Happy Easter 2012!

I've got to do this quick - my husband needs the computer!

Happy Easter, everyone!

I hope you all had a fantastic weekend with friends and family and that you got to eat as much yummy food as I did! We spent the first part of our weekend in Calgary visiting my sister, followed by time in our hometown visiting my in-laws. Today we had time just by ourselves to start our own Easter traditions.

Tradition #1 that I was eager to do was an Easter Egg hunt. We had done one in Calgary with my niece and hid glow sticks with the eggs and shut off all the lights in the room. The kids loved it, although Gabriel was so excited about the glow sticks that he didn't bother picking up his eggs at first!
While that was good fun and all, I didn't feel like I had given my child nearly enough sugar, so tonight we hid 10 plastic eggs for him, all stuffed with chocolates, and 3 NHL Chocolate Eggs with toys in the center. No, he did not eat that all today. We're in the middle of potty training and the consistency part seems to be the hardest part for him, so we're giving him little treats every time he goes potty with a dry diaper. The chocolates from his plastic eggs will go in the 'treat' drawer that he gets to take something out of after each successful trip.

Tradition #2 I was excited about was making Resurrection Buns. My mom used to break these out every year as my youth group leader and I never was too fussed about them, but now that I have my own kids I was super excited to do them again. And I figured out the secret to making them worth doing every year: Butter and Sugar. It's a super simple concept - take a Pillsbury biscuit tube, marshmallows, butter and cinnamon-sugar. Roll the marshmallows in the melted butter, then coat them in the sugar. Fold the biscuit dough over the marshmallow then roll the biscuit in butter and then coat with cinnamon-sugar. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes and when you crack them open the marshmallow has melted and it's like an empty tomb! HOWEVER, there are a couple tricks to this that I was unaware of until after I had made mine. Many of the recipes I had seen online said to use Pillsbury Crescent Rolls... DON'T DO IT! Have you any idea how hard it is to wrap a triangle around a marshmallow? There were far too many narrow parts to make a clean job of it, and then there was the endless seaming that was, apparently, all for naught. When I open the oven after my timer went, I was distressed to find that most of the seams had burst and my rolls had deflated. Once I finally got a hold of my mom and talked to her about it, she let me on to the wiseness of using the biscuit dough (squares people... totally the way to go) and then she also advised that next time I leave one seam open, so that the air has somewhere to go and doesn't force your seams open.

Lucky for me, I've got a very gracious little boy. He didn't care that his treat looked a little bit flat. He was thrilled to help me put them together and when we opened it up he said, "Where did Jesus go, Mommy?" I love him :)

Dinner tonight was nothing traditional - unless you consider it a tradition to have Thai Coconut Curry soup for Easter Dinner. I needed something that I could throw in the crock pot before church so that we could eat within half an hour of getting home from church, and my lemongrass was begging to be used.

Hubby's in a hurry so I think I'll have to post that recipe tomorrow!

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)

Pink, Pirates and Eggs

ARRRRRR! PIRATE!!!

One of the favorite sayings of a little bunny named Max is frequently echoed in our household. There's just something about pirates that makes all little boys dream of being one someday. We've decided to get it over with in our household and let Gabriel be a pirate for a whole day - the day of his third birthday party.
The invitations have been sent (the Facebook invitations, that is) and the planning has begun. I've decided that since we're going to do a theme at all, we might as well do it right. ...Which is why I bought a wooden model 3-mast, 22 gun ship that's 18" tall and 2' long. Not exactly a necessary purchase, I'll admit, but while I was cruising through Value Village with the pirate theme in the back of my mind, and I happened to see this gorgeous ship at the end of one of the aisles, well... what would you have done??? So, $15 later and I am now the proud owner of a ship - an expenditure which my husband has no wish to censure, and my comment of, "We can sell it after the party" was utterly scorned by him this evening.

As I alluded to above, the pirate ship was not my main reason for being at Value Village. Tomorrow is my niece's 3rd birthday party (she and Gabe are 8 days apart) and the theme that she picked was "pink". That's it - Pink. Everyone will be wearing pink, the house will be decorated with pink, the food will be pink... It's all pink. Well, neither Matt, nor Gabe, nor Nathaniel had any pink clothes, so I opted to hit up Value Village for outfits that would last them for the party. Nathaniel was a complete strike out, but my sister had already offered up an outfit for him - check. Matt got an American Eagle pink plaid shirt that I plan to inherit after the party - check. And Gabe... well that one was hard. Anything pink in his size was frilly, flowery, and obviously feminine. There was nothing of any real potential, except... blue. From several unfortunate incidents involving bleach and nice clothes of mine, I have learned that dark blue bleaches pink. You see where this is going, right? So I picked up a blue shirt, brought it home, made a stencil and sprayed it with bleach. I put a cardboard piece inside to keep the bleach from seeping through the layers because I wanted a different design on the front and the back. First I sprayed it with a light mist of diluted bleach. Then I sprayed a more focused stream quickly across the front, leaving brighter blotches. Next, I sprayed a stream of more concentrated bleach around the stencil to make it stand out more. I let that set a bit, removed the stencil, flipped it over and sprayed a stream on a diagonal across the back. The end product actually looks quite cute! And with all my picture taking today I failed to get a shot of this project, so I'll have to post it another day!

Tomorrow is Good Friday and as a Christian, Easter is one of the most important times of year for me. To celebrate the fact that my Savior not only came, and died, but also rose is huge - it's what my whole life revolves around actually.
I tried to convey that to Gabe in a way that a two year old would understand. He might not fully understand the ramifications of Christ's atonement of sin, but He does get that Easter is a big deal in our household. The rest we'll chip away at bit by bit.

Today we prepped for Easter by decorating eggs. We had never done this with Gabe before so he was rather confused when I showed him a picture of brightly colored eggs. "Why are those eggies silly, Mommy?" Sigh... I love him. Gabe's recently decided that his favorite color is green, and for the first time he's actually sticking by a 'favorite'. Everything from his underwear, to his dinnerware has to be green. Care to guess what color his eggs were?
I opted to dye Gabe's eggs with KoolAid, but I wanted them to be more fun that just a solid color. So once the eggs were boiled and cooled we broke out the crayons. Gabe had fun drawing on the eggs and he even thought that was enough beautifying of the eggs - until he saw the green KoolAid. He had loads of fun gently stirring the eggs in the KoolAid and he kept checking to see if they really were turning color. Unfortunately, after taking out the second egg I went to get my camera, realized it was low on batteries and detoured to take them out. When I came back the third egg was a little... overdone. You can see that it looks flaky in some of the pictures. Fortunately I was able to wipe that off and then salvage the egg by more dying later, but be warned! - That's how it goes down when you let KoolAid eggs sit too long!
Once I got the boys down for a nap (which they both skipped yesterday, which explains the lack of a post from then - no naps = no time for fun projects!) I went about dying the eggs I had blown out earlier in the week. Matt never tracked down a dremel for me to make a clean hole so I could fill them with chocolate, so I decided just dying them would have to do for this year. I followed Martha Stewart's instructions for Marbleized Eggs and I realized something - regular food coloring is not the same as the stuff she uses. I'd probably have to use a whole little bottle of food coloring to get anywhere near the intense color she has on some of her eggs. For the base color you can let the egg sit longer to soak up more of the color, but for the actual marbleized effect, it's a one-pass deal; you dip the egg in, roll it once and take it out - done. Anyway, you can see from my pictures that some of my eggs worked better than others. I'm reasonably happy with the end product, but I think that for next year I'll have to order some crazy strong food dye so I can make some more stunning eggs.
I did 5 eggs with a yellow base, and 5 with a blue base. I love blue speckled eggs (check out my Easter board on Pinterest for proof), but some of my favorite ones I did were with the yellow base. The blue ones all ended up looking too similar. In person you can see subtle differences, but I wasn't able to pick them up in the pictures with the lighting I had (I take pictures on my bench seat in my living room to get natural light in, but it was too late in the afternoon when I took these for really good lighting)((Incidentally, I almost fell off my bench seat today trying to get better angles for some shots...))

Well, it's about an hour after I started writing this, thanks to interruptions from excited little kids who don't understand the importance of sleep. I've still got laundry and packing to do, not to mention I was planning on showering tonight. Oh yes, and at some point, I've got to sleep too!

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)

Holiday Prep

What do you guys think of the new look? It's not as whimsical as the last, but I like the organization better, personally! Let me know how you like it!

I'm lucky enough to have my husband home with me for most of the day today, which means I got out to do some grocery shopping. I picked up the basics: flour, bananas, milk, Guinness... That's right - it's St. Patty's Day tomorrow! I mentioned some of my plans already and while I'm working on finalizing plans today, I'm sure that what I end up with tomorrow will still vary. For now, however, I am still planning on making Irish Soda Bread, Irish Cream Fudge, and now I'm adding Steak and Guinness Pie to the list. I've got some White Tail Deer stewing meat in my freezer that has been begging me to cook it, and while White Tail Deer isn't exactly Irish (Red Deer or lamb is more their pace), I'm sure the Guinness will more than make up for my lack of Irish meat. I whipped up the Irish Cream Fudge tonight, along with a Frozen Strawberry Dessert so with those two things out of the way I hope my plans for the Steak and Guinness Pie will go unimpeded.

I love planning things. Have you noticed that? I love having parties, making big deals out of small things, and using any excuse I can to make some fun food. Sometimes, however, I don't have to stretch too far to have a good reason to throw a party. Case and point: Gabe's upcoming third birthday. My darling boy will be turning three at the end of next month and this will be the first year that we're going to throw a real party for him! Since it will be his first big bash, I'm going to go all out! We're having a Pirate themed party, and are inviting all the kids from our weekly Play Date, not to mention some of our other friends of the family, and so we're expecting to have up to 20 kids, plus parents on top of that. We'll have eye patches for everyone, Walk the Plank games, and treasure hunts. For the food I've found some adorable ideas on Pinterest, including Sand Dollar cookies, Pirate Marshmallow Pops, and Octopus Wieners. I'll also be mixing up my own special POG Grog (Papaya Orange Guava) and topping cupcakes with pirate themed toppers and jolly rogers! I'm so excited to plan everything about this party! I have dreams of decorating my backyard with billowing sails (I've tried numerous times to have a backyard party, and it never seems to work, but it has to sometime, right?) and of 20 knee-high scallywags chasing our poor dog around the yard with plastic swords! Sigh... the sweet bliss it will be!

And somewhere between St. Patty's Day and the end of April falls one of my favorite holidays (in the strictest meaning of the word 'holiday')... Easter! The day of promise, hope and salvation is one of the happiest times of the year. I love the meaning, I love the season, I love everything that goes with it.
This year I plan on doing lots of teaching times with Gabriel and lots of fun crafts with him. We'll read bible stories, we'll decorate eggs, and we'll definitely eat chocolate. In fact, I may even make the chocolates that we eat. I felt a little inspired by Martha Stewart Living for April (I subscribe, so I got that issue this past week). The article that Martha contributes herself each month usually has to do with life around her house, and how she organizes, hosts, or crafts. This month it was about Easter dinner at her house and certain traditions that she always keeps up. One tradition for her was molding chocolates in antique tin molds. The beautiful little bunnies looked so adorable that I instantly went on Ebay and tried to track down some antique chocolate molds myself. While the average price was between $90 and $400, I haven't given up hope of tracking down an antique one at one of the stores in my city. But until that happens, I may order some new plastic molds and try my hand at tempering and molding. Who knows, maybe I'll like it enough to really have fun with it (remember that red wine ganache I made at Valentine's Day? Wouldn't that make a great filling??)
Well, my first batch of Irish Soda Bread is almost out of the oven, so I think I'll skip off now to do some tasting! Ta ta!

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)
Until that sweet day, however, I suppose I'll have to be contented with