Easter in NE

We hopped on down to Nebraska this year again for Easter.  It's always nice to hang with our family from down "south"!  Not to mention it's more fun for Grady to have other kids his age around.  My side of the family doesn't have any "kids" under 26 that make it to our Easter dinner = incredibly boring for a 3 year old!

Easter morning we woke up at Grandma & Grandpa's new townhome & found Grady's basket.  He was spoiled.  He got the "Rise of the Guardians" dvd, a new basketball, a Bingo game, book, a couple of Star Wars candy eggs, and his favorite, a "Master Splinter" action figure.

After church, we headed out to Eli's aunt Amy & her family's house.  The weather was in the 60's (as opposed to 30's at home), so we spent most of the day hanging outside & enjoying the sun!

Now for some pictures...because that's the fun part!

Time to pack up the pastel colors until next Easter!

A nice bonus upon returning home...we can now see little patches of "grass" amidst all of the snow in our yard - woohoo!  I think the temp is supposed to reach the 40's today so hopefully more of that white stuff will disappear while I'm at work!

PS, Look who's project was featured on Apartment Therapy this week!!!  What an awesome surprise!

Scrap wood art project

Grady's been home sick with a temp & cold all week.  (Another reason I'm ready for this winter to be over.)  As a parent, I feel awful when Grady isn't feeling well...but at the same time, it's kind of nice cuddling on the couch & spending quiet time together at home.  :)

We were looking for something to do to pass the time, & Grady suggested painting.  The kid LOVES to paint.  I didn't have any canvas board or nice paper, but found some old floor boards in the attic that we had just removed in order to take out an old fan & replaced with new plywood.  Use what you have!

Grady is in Easter mode, so he wanted to paint a bunny.  Correction, he wanted to paint the board, & wanted me to paint a bunny on it for him.  Here's what we came up with...the bunny was inspired by something we found on Google images.

The little artist "orange-washed" his board, then wanted to paint over it with pink, & leave a little bit of orange peeking through.  (PS, you can see the little slit of orange peeking through by the bunny's left ear - on your right.  Funny kid.)  His words, not mine.  Hehe.

After he was done with his orange & pink & white layers, I traced out a bunny & painted it with watered down craft paint.

It was looking a tad Precious Moments-y, so I tweaked the nose a bit & turned it into a rabbit nose.  I think it turned out pretty darn cute for being a collaborative piece of art by a 3 year old & a 30 year old!  The most important thing was that we had fun doing it together...

I wasn't sure at first what I wanted to paint on mine, so I started by cleaning off the surface & whitewashing it.  After a few minutes online I had found a quote from "Fantastic Mr. Fox" that I thought was cute & googled "fox illustration" to find an image to inspire me.

The quote reads: 

"We're all different.  Especially him.  But there's something kind of fantastic about that, isn't there?".

After whitewashing, I sketched out the quote & fox using my Burnt Umber colored watercolor pencil.  Back when I was doing mural painting we used these pencils all the time to sketch on the walls.  The color is perfect for blending in to almost any art, and any mistakes can just be wiped away with water!  You can find them at most art supply/craft stores.

I was trying to be imperfect & quick with this art.  I didn't want to commit too much time to it & knew that Grady's attention span wouldn't last that long anyway.  I quickly dry-brushed some color on the fox & painted the lettering with some watered down brown paint.  After I finished it was looking a little bold for my liking, so I whitewashed it again, right over what I had just painted.  I'm not sure where it'll go yet...probably in Grady's room?

Seeing Spots - Polka Dot Eggs!

This year we tried something new with our egg dying - dots!

I'm sure it's been done before, but I had the idea to stick circle stickers on our eggs, hoping that the sticker would block the dye from seeping underneath & create polka dots once we peeled them off.  I kind of worked.

The stickers blocked the dye for the most part, although some of them did fall off once they were in the colored water/vinegar mixture.  The biggest issue was in taking the stickers off the eggs.  A couple of tips: f you did it too soon, the sticky backs of the stickers stayed on the egg instead of peeling off.  If you left the stickers on too long, they were really hard to peel off.  If we waited a few minutes (so the sticker was still a little damp) it seemed like they still came off easily enough, but didn't leave much sticky goo on the egg. 

It was super simple, Grady had fun with it, & I think they turned out pretty darn cute - winner!

Start with prep: I laid down some paper on our table, and set out the stickers, eggs, & dye first.

Next, we "dotted" all of our eggs, dunked them in the dye for a couple of minutes, dried them with a paper towel, waited a few minutes, & peeled all of the stickers off.

Some of us "accidentally" cracked the eggs so they could eat them.  I won't name any names, but you know who you are...& I have a feeling it wasn't 100% accidental.

Pretty darn cute, no?!

I have a feeling we'll be doing this again!!!

Free Easter Printable!

Yesterday, Palm Sunday, we spent a lot of the day creating Easter art & dying eggs.  Tomorrow I'll post about our polka dot egg experiment, but today I thought I'd share a free download of some quick & simple Easter art I came up with this weekend.  Feel free to print as many as you'd like!  (Scroll all the way down for the link!)

Click here for my "He is risen" printable!

Happy Easter!

Over the river & through the prairie...and through the prairie...and through the prairie...to grandma's house we go!

We made the trip down to Omaha again this Easter...although the drive is usually h-e-double hockey sticks-ish (that's heLL-ish for those of you not from the tundra), this time it was even worse on me after my rec volleyball injury last Monday. The PT thinks it's my ACL, but I don't technically see the doctor until next Monday, so we'll see what he says. Yuck.  No matter how long the drive, it's so much fun for Grady once we get down there. He LOVES his cousin Greyson, and enjoys running around with the bigger kids, staying up well past his "bed time", and getting spoiled by Grandma and Grandpa Starzl.

Before we left on Friday we colored eggs at home - Grady is a super serious egg dyer. Although he loves doing it, he rarely smiles until he's all done and showing them off! He was the same way last year...a serious face on him at all times. Funny kid.

We got to Omaha at midnight on Friday and crashed for the night pretty much immediately.  On Saturday, Grady's cousins, great grandparents, and aunts came over to visit and color some more eggs.  Sunday morning, we packed up the car and headed to Amy's house in David City for lunch, an Easter egg hunt, and an entertaining game of "spoons"...which I didn't partake in because of my injury.  (If you saw how this family plays spoons, you'd understand why I didn't play - "spoons" is a contact sport for the Nixon's...no lie!)  Here are a few photos of the little man enjoying the holiday weekend...

 

 

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter holiday!  Grady surprisingly did remember that Jesus died on the cross and that "they rolled a big rock in front"...but he was more impressed (and amused) that the Easter bunny on "Hop" pooped out jelly beans.  :)