Egg Bunnies and Butterflies

The girls and I had a go at painting and decorating hard-boiled eggs
this morning. It's the school's Easter egg decorating contest tomorrow
and they are both super egg-cited!

We've never painted eggs before; it was messy and very fiddly. 

Lucky that we used kids' washable paint. It made cleaning those

messy little hands much easier and although we had to paint

several coats and it took ages, the colours came out all right once

they've dried. 

As you can see we used egg cups when we were painting. They were

very handy - the girls painted one end first and when it dried, we turned

the egg over and did the other side. 

So what did we make? Well, meet Lulu's three little egg bunnies. They

have craft paper ears, googly eyes and pom-pom tails and noses.

And these are Markie's butterflies. They too have googly eyes and
craft paper for their wings and like the bunnies, they have cupcake
holder beds.

There are so many brilliant ideas for decorating eggs in Pinterest
and that's where I saw those bunnies. The butterflies are our own
little creation. We'd have tried making a ladybird too but we didn't
have any polka dot paper. Oh well, we'll try that one next year.

These were all a team effort - they painted, I made sure they covered
all the surfaces; I cut out the ears and wings, they glued them on together with the eyes, tails and noses - and we're very pleased with them all. The girls fancy themselves winning tomorrow. There will be
 one winner per class including nursery and the prize is a giant
chocolate egg. If it's up to me they'll both win because they did an
egg-cellent job (sorry!). Those bunny tails should earn extra points
just for cuteness! But, of course, I'm biased. We'll have to wait
and see tomorrow. Wish them luck!

Pancake Joy

Today is Shrove Tuesday, a day to enjoy pancakes, and we did. We had
ours for lunch earlier; they were small, slightly on the thick side, and
 very tasty especially with a drizzle of maple syrup and topped with fresh fruit. These are the sort of pancakes I had in my childhood and ones I still prefer. My husband likes thin, crepe-like English pancakes served
with sugar and lemon. The girls would rather have French Toast if given
the choice and this is why we don't make pancakes very often in our house. Today, though, they liked their pancakes which was great and
it pleases me even more because I was the one on pancake-making
 duty (husband is at work). They now call them 'Mummy's pancakes'
and of course, I am very, very pleased.


How about you, what kind of pancakes do you prefer? Fat or thin?
Sweet or savoury? Whatever your favourite, I hope you enjoy them today.

Easter

Happy Easter to you all! I hope you're all enjoying this Easter weekend.

My husband and the girls have been to church this morning and now
they're off to spend the day at Nanny and GrandDad's. I'm staying at
home with an ear infection and it's annoying me that I'm missing out
on all the Easter fun - and food - today. Poor me. I think I'm going to have a cup of tea soon and help myself to the girls' mini-eggs. I bet
 that will make me feel a bit better.

The rest of our week has been better, thankfully. The girls and I have
decorated an Easter tree, our first ever. I haven't done much Easter
decorating before. When the girls were younger I just didn't have
the time or the energy. Now that they're a bit older and they like
to get involved, I decided I should make time for it.

We used whatever Easter-y things we could find around the house.
The cute wooden bunnies and flower pegs were from last year's sales.
Good thing I remembered them and where I've stashed them away. Markie helped make the little flags. She loves washi tapes too.
We were going to make pom-pom chicks but I decided our pom-pom makers were too big so we just made simple pom-poms instead.
 Lulu helped me with these. She said they look like sea monsters.
Do they? My husband agrees with her.

Markie decorated a hard-boiled egg (with a little help from me) for the school's Easter egg decorating contest. They chose a winner for every
class. Markie's egg didn't win. She wasn't too bothered by it though
which is good. I think she did a great job with drawing the face and
decorating the dress.  She's still very much into drawing flowers and
butterflies right now. It used to be rainbows and princesses.

I walked down to church on Good Friday.  My square of fabric and
everyone else's had been sewn into a long patchwork panel to make up
the Garment of Suffering and at one point during the service it was brought to the altar. Anyone who has been bereaved over the past
year was invited to help bring it to the front. It was very moving.
I felt grateful to be there. Later on I felt so tired from walking home
but it was Good Friday and a little suffering  wasn't something to
complain about. I also realized I'm quite unfit. I haven't done quite
enough walking up and down the hills of Sheffield lately. I used to
do this a lot, while pushing a buggy too. I blame driving, though
I don't blame Lulu for not wanting to be in a pushchair anymore.

Sorry, I think I've gone on enough now. I hope you're all having
a great Easter day. I think I'll go and have that tea now.
See you soon!