But I had to work that day. So here are a few little photos. I took the one of the tree and the one of the girls on the sofa. My husband took the rest so I could see what fun our kids had.
They got the bunny ears from their great grandmother. The hat (visor) kits from their grandma. I also got the wood bunnies and flowers for my Easter tree from the same grandma.
Looks like they had fun.
I have had a busy week! I have worked over 36 hours for the week with commutes at 4 hours or more every day, so roughly 24 hours in commutes, for a total 60 hours. This is not counting hours of normal chores and homework and all my normal "Mom" things to do. Plus, because their janitor is on vacation, I worked at my second daughter's school to earn some credit on her school tuition for next month so that bill won't be as big; so add those 4 hours into the above total. Good thing about that one is all three kids helped; my husband would have, too, but he was at his own job. The kids were great to help mom out so it would not take me so long. I love my family; they are great at pulling together. They placed the chairs on top of desks and helped vacuum and emptied trash while I cleaned windows, mirrors, desks and yucky bathrooms. No shame; it is honest, hard work. But that said, it is all I can do to stay awake 'till 8:00 p.m. Then I wake at all weird hours of the night; proof by the post time on this post.
Not much crafting lately other than lots of floral arrangements, which are a type of crafting.
Made a lovely funeral spray yesterday that was all red roses and just four white ones; that was fun to do. Very elegant looking when done. I tried taking a picture with my camera phone, but it didn't come out well. I need to take my real camera with me to work so I can show a few of the nice things I get to make for people.
Today my family gets to go to the church Easter egg hunt and family breakfast at church, then to the family Easter egg hunt and lunch.
The reason I say my family gets to is I will be at work; by the time I get off at 3:30 or later, all the festivities will be done. The family even postponed my birthday party 'till next month because I will be at work. So, Easter is family and I love mine and hope they have fun and know I am with them in spirit, even if it's not possible in body.
Look; colors came back to my blog! It was all the fault of a missing (;). Don't ask me how it went missing, but looking at the code this morning I noticed it. So, my blog has color again, just in time for Easter pastels. Take care and enjoy the color; I am!
I have accepted a part time job at a local Floral shop in the town where my kids go to school (25-32 hours a week). So, looks like I will be a Florist/Designer again; I put myself through College and the University being one. There are other places that wanted to hire me, but they wanted me to work Sundays, and that is just plain not a function in our lives. That is God and Family day, and that is how it will stay.
As for the part-time job (9-10 hours a week) teaching at my children's school, I did that interview, and I feel good about it. I hope to still get that job, but I won't know that for one and a half to two months, and I have bills to pay now. So, if I do get it, I believe and pray that the two jobs will work together well, still giving me nights and Sundays with my family. Saturday, well that belongs to the flower shop. If the two jobs don't work together, I will have to cross that bridge at that time. From everything I have heard from the owner of the flower shop, she tells me she is understanding about me wanting to be with my children and wanting to help in their education.
I also want to give a big shout out to my sister-in-law without who's love and help none of this could happen. She is the one who will be collecting my youngest every day from K-grade for me. That part is tearing me up! I will miss her excited face as she says bye to all her little friends and all the little kids telling me thank you for helping every day. I feel like I have let them down somehow. I was only a room mom, but I was the room mom who was there every day 15 minutes before class and 10 minutes after to make sure I could help in any way I could.
Yesterday, to top it off, one daughter was locked in her classroom for two hours (somehow four of her classmates had broken the class door and locked every one in), and she was so excited to see me after they shattered a window to get them out of the classroom because the locksmith wasn't working fast enough. She came running to me yelling, "Mae Mae" (which means "mom"), worried that I would be mad that she didn't come right out when school was over (I already knew what was happening), and she was excited to see me at the same time and tell me of her adventure. I wasn't mad, I was just concerned that she was okay and not cut from going out a broken window.
My middle daughter had someone pull the fire alarm at her school, so she was scared, too, because they where not sure if the school was really on fire or if it was a childish prank. Either way, not good to a second grader. She was glad to see Mae, too, and know she was safe.
The third was trying to loose her second tooth. In our house that can mean lots of blood because of VWD (Von Willenbrands Disease, similar in concept to hemophilia). So she had blood on her hands, all over her face, and was scared because she saw her reflection. I finished removing the tooth from her mouth, cleaned her up, and stopped the bleeding so she wasn't scared any more. Then to see her excitement afterward that, hey, the tooth fairy is coming tonight! From scared to happy in all of 10 minutes. Now I have to miss some of this and all the children at their schools who I have helped every day. Sadness and lack of sleep don't even come close to describing me right now.
At the same time I am excited about working again, and the interaction with people and all that brings; just a little ball of emotional nerves, I guess. New job starts in four hours -- wish me and my family luck and love that we can get through these changes because all my children have ever known is Mom is always there home, school, church, anywhere; and now, that isn't the case.
I wanted to thank all my readers who sent well wishes and thoughts and encouragement. It has meant a lot to me.
The Easter Lilly on this page came from my youngest daughter's teacher at school as a birthday present to me. An Easter lily; a symbol of Christ and all he has done for us, and how he knows all our pains, and of rebirth. I will leave this post thinking of that.
I am offering all my readers a 15% discount from now till Easter in my store. This discount is on the entire order and can be used several times up until Easter. Also, it is on top of any sale prices, so if something is already on sale this will lower the price more.
Just type in the word Easter when it asks if you have a coupon.
Thanks and have fun!
I have made a few garlands the last few days and they are in the store. I am still making Valentine's and Thanksgiving; then I will go on to Halloween and Mother's Day. Those hearts for the Valentine one are taking me a little bit more time to make. All of the garlands are a little longer than 2 yards a piece.
Currently there are:
Patriotic (One)
Tonight or tomorrow night we are going to decorate our Halloween cookie house. We have made other haunted cookie houses in the past, but I forgot to take pictures of them. However, here are some we made for Christmas and Easter. My girls are all excited to do this together. So, after we make this, I will post photos of their completed work.
We have made alien ooze in the past at Halloween time, too.
Today is my Vavo's birthday; she is all of 93 today. Wish I could be there with her, but it is a 4-hour plane flight, plus lay-over, plus 1-hour drive; or a 12 hour drive, neither of which works with kids in school.
To the left is one of my favorite pictures of her; just love that bow. This was taken at her Holy Communion back in the teens of the previous century (1900s). That chair is pretty cool, too.
If you want to wish her a happy birthday leave a note here, and I will send this off to her later. She got a real big kick out of it last year, and I would like to do that again.
Penny over at Penny Sanford Porcelains sent me the loveliest brooch/charm I have seen made out of Porcelain. She makes these herself. She gave this to me as an award titled "The Happy Penny Award". I think it is very sweet. I love that she is doing hand work because I do tons of that. Penny does sell these; if you are interested, follow links to her site.
When we went to my in-laws for a late Easter egg hunt, my mother-in-law gave me a birthday present. I think it is so cool; I just wish I had a little bit of time to sit down and play with it. Life is so busy at the current time. I really love this item; I discovered the other day that in Japan they sell a larger and smaller version of this and also heart and flower ones, too. I just can't figure out how to order them yet.
I was in a fat-quarter swap at MJF forum with nine other women. The fat quarter I sent in is the third from left; it is a vintage fabric my Vavo purchased. It's always fun to see the variety you get in a swap -- thanks, ladies!
Suzy homemaker who is also at MJF sent me this lovely Easter card with a fat quarter of fabric. I am going to have so much fun with fabric in the near future. I love this fabric; it is so soft and delicate looking. Would be lovely as a Mother's Day item. Hmm... I might think on that one a little.
I have a few more items to show and say thank you for; I just didn't have time to photograph them all, so you will probably see them later. A box and envelope of fabric from levisgrammy at MJF. Also a box from This Vintage Chica with real cute items in it.
This stuff below are the items from "This Vintage Chica" and an apron from her, too. I still need to send her fabric and yarn for the exchange; sorry I'm so long in doing this. I just love roosters; aren't those just the cutest plates. The white sheer item is a curtain that I may make into an apron later after I get a chance to try and remove the stain. I knew about the stain before she sent it. I think it will still work out lovely.
This is one of those times when I wish I had a mannequin or dress form or something to drape clothes on; this is real cute and the lighting didn't do it justice nor did laying it on the floor. It is a vintage apron, but the colors are still popular today. I would love to make a quilt someday in this color scheme. This is about three shades of pink and three shades of chocolate; it's hard to see in this photo -- bad lighting. But super super cute!! 
We actually went to California for Easter. It wasn't something mentioned on the blog. We left on the 4th and came back on the 9th, a very quick trip to say the least. Took two days to get there, stopping to see my sister, and a 14-hour drive home, it is only supposed to be 11 hours (only, yikes)! Construction outside of Barstow -- yuck!!!!!!
We stopped in Baker on the way out and back to give the kids a rest. I always forget to take a picture of that town's major landmark, so this time I thought I would. As you can see, it is a very large thermometer. If you look at the upper right picture closely (click on it) it reads 81 degrees Fahrenheit; yep, definitely near Death Valley. It is hard to tell in these pictures how tall this item is; I hope the cars give you a reference.
I was at a local grocery store, Smith's, a few days ago when I saw this. You can never make enough gingerbread houses or, in this case, chocolate cookie houses. This was our family fun for Monday night activities. The pictures to the right here are the ones from the packaging.
This is a pretty neat kit; it came with four types of candies, two colors of meringue frosting (just add water), and four cookie bunnies to live in the house, plus the house walls and roof, of course. It is amazing how much time this saves. I have made houses the old way; it is fun, but boy does it take a real long time. The interesting thing about this house that I didn't realize 'till after I bought it was that it has a plastic base so you can set the house up real easy. 
This is the house for the person who has no idea how to build a house or is just in a hurry. With three kids, I am the last.
If I was the Easter bunny I would want to live in a house like this. 
The only problem would be I would eat myself out of house and home, literally. Then boy, oh boy, would I have the dentist bills. You know, I don't know if I had ever seen an Easter house before. I have made haunted Halloween ones and the traditional Christmas ones but never an Easter one.
Funny thing about our kit is that the lavender frosting looked brown to us. That was fine it was just odd as the box looks lavender. The box read that you should have purple frosting and the package of frosting tells you it is mauve but it sure looks brown and nothing like any shade of purple.
I am in charge of a swap at MJF. When the items came in this time, I decided to take pictures of the big groups instead of waiting 'till after I sent everything back to everyone. This way you can see what everyone got, not just the items I kept myself. There are ten people in the group; each makes ten handmade items and sends them to me, then I sort them out and mail the boxes back to each person with 10 different items in them.
First one to arrive was momof2jrt. She sent some cute bookmarks for every one to have; no two are exactly the same.
The next package to arrive was from Suzyhomemaker. She sent handmade bags for everyone, with a bag of handmade bath salts in it. My house has smelled so nice I hated to see them all go to their homes. 
She also gave everyone sunflower seeds to start their spring flower beds. You also see a corsage made out of felt and a yo-yo that was a extra gift she sent as a thank you for me hosting; I love it.
Kitchenwitch's box was the next to arrive. She thought hers didn't come out well. I think they are quiet lovely. I love all the soft colors. There are actually two images per egg. It is just impossible to show the front and back of the eggs at the same time. 
I wish I knew how she made these; I love flower fairies. It was a hard thing to give these up, but since there was only one that could me mine, I picked a purple one. Not an easy decision.
At this point I lost track of the order the items came in so I will just post them.
I didn't know summerbreeze was a glass blower. When these items came I was just floored. When I get my store up and running this will be a featured item in the store, so look for that around May first or sooner. I wish I had taken better photos; next time I will because these are gorgeous in real life. You would think glass would be fragile, but these are thick and solid yet still look fragile. I just loved them; so did my family. 
When in the upcoming months I open my web store, it will be dedicated to hand made items from all different types of artisans. I hope to carry lots of different things like this
Ktknits sent two different items -- bugs and pillows. There are two types of bugs but each person gets one bug, so it will be a surprise which bug each person gets. My kids just loved the ladybugs because they collect them, but we kept a caterpillar. For the farm girls involved, you may not recognize the yo-yos but I do; they are from another swap at MJF a while back I was in charge of that one too, every one sent in four different colored yo-yos to be traded with 12 other women (everyone made 48 yo-yos or something like that). So the yo-yos on these pillows represent a lot of farm girls not mentioned in this post.
Willoetreecreek sent these sweet little Easter egg pins for everyone to wear. I think they are darling. She machine stitched decorative details with pink thread and machine stitched on ribbon. She hand stitched a pin on the back of all of them.
Leslie made doilies for everyone. I think she crocheted them then added the daisies. They will be cute as a decorative accent at Easter time.
It has been a real interesting swap; I think the variety of items in this swap is the greatest I have seen thus far. It never ceases to amaze me the different talents people have, especially when they say at the beginning of the swap they have none.
I made hair clips for everyone. Funny I don't even know if everyone has long hair; oh well, I have no problem if they give them away. Some have crazy daises on them, others Easter egg yo-yos, and some plain yo-yos with buttons on a few too.
Shmeg made bath salts for everyone, and she also handmade stitch markers. Stitch markers are a knitter's thing. I think they came out real nice. I kept oriental-looking ones.
My kids wanted to keep all of the item that Mommom sent. She made two hand crocheted dish/wash clothes for everyone. These are some of my kids favorite things for in the tub. You should have seen the disappointment on their faces. Mommom is so sweet she then sent each of them one, too. Excitement galore!
These are made using the daisy loom that I have the tutorial for. These are using double sided baby-width satin; also used is rayon crochet thread as the embroidery around the center of the daisies. These are considered a type of weaving. I want to make some more because I think they would be lovely in pasted colors with crochet holding them together as a lace edging on a little dress for Easter or a little Easter cardigan jacket with trim at the waist. You can see an apron I did using similar styled flowers made out of Hi-straw instead of double sided satin.
I don't know about you, but when I was a child we hunted for tin eggs. I am not an old person (mid thirties) so this wasn't to terribly long ago. During the time it took me to go from being a child to having a child they seemed to have stopped making this type of Easter decoration and converted to plastic. I have been looking for tin eggs since 1998. I know that may seem silly, but they hold fond memories for me, and I have a hard time likening the plastic ones to Easter even though I own a ton of them. I have found all of these tin eggs at thrift stores. So here is my requests from anyone who reads this blog. If you know of places on the Internet to buy them, please let me know by leaving a comment to this post with the location on the Internet. Thank you.
The other item pictured is a real large paper mache egg that I covered with antique scraps about eight years ago. I just thought it was neat and figured there had to be other people out there who like scraps, so I showed it.
My flowers decided to bloom after all, just a few days late, but that is all fine with me. I went out to take pictures, and there was a little bee in one on the flowers. So I have little bee bum in half my pictures. Oh, well!! At least the flowers are happy about it. I guess that is all that really matters on that one.
I got inspired by the flowers to make some flowers of my own. Look at the mosaic picture; the stuff in the top left photo is called Hi-Straw and Swistraw. My supply is from the 40's through mid 1960's. They are made out of Viscose Rayon so they can be washed just like clothes. I just love thrift stores!
I got this idea around 4 am this morning. "Why" you ask, "was I up at that time.?" Well, my kids woke me because of their fevers. After I took care of them, I couldn't go back to sleep. Yep!! I started making flowers on my looms. The looms are on the top row, middle picture. They are from the same time period as the straw and were actually meant to be used with it. In addition, you can use ribbon and yarn with the looms, too. I think they would work well with wire work like beadders use; pretty much any thing you can wrap around them without breaking the pegs.
The next picture shows the smallest loom with a flower almost completed on it after having been woven on the loom and embroidered with pearl cotton to form the center. This is considered a type of weaving, just not very complicated weaving.
That same blue flower is show again in the first picture on the second row. Then I decided this was too boring; I needed more variety and not just in color, so I started making a variety of sizes.
In the last picture of the mosaic I have a nice little stack of flowers ready to be added to the apron. OK, so I go over board; I am used to that. The apron I used I have had for about 10 years; I purchased it at a craft store called Mac's. I loved that store; too bad they went out of business about 5 years ago. I think the apron came out rather cute -- sort of spring, St.Patrick's Day, Easter and Mother's day all in one.
Looking at these photos gave me another idea. "Oh, NO!!!" you say. Take it easy; it's a good idea I promise, and you can do it if you can find the supplies at a thrift store. Actually, I think they are selling looms like this again. But if you can't find them there is always eBay; that is where I bought the brass one about 7 years ago. Do your search under flower loom, bloom loom, crazy daisy, knit wit, studio twelve looms -- any of these will work to find something that can make these flowers. Either way, the supplies are not hard to find.
N
ow for the idea: Wouldn't these just be sweet on a sheer little girl's bedroom window? Hey, I have three little girls; too. To bad their windows already have blinds and curtains. But maybe I can still change that. We will see; maybe I'll get some sleep instead.
Also the flowers made on the brass loom are the same size as yo-yos made from a standard size CD; oh yes, the wheels are spinning with ideas there, too.
