Author: Sarah

Friday Photos

Sarah Cakes

It took most of the day, multiple batches of icing, killed my hand mixer, and caused me a bit of worry…

Four leveled layers, waiting to be stacked.
It wasn't leaning, the photo is just at an odd angle.

But it was worth it in the end!

A perfectly rosy cake!

Instructions and inspiration found here.

April Snow Showers…

Sarah Anna, Carolyn

…bring the first snow day of the year?

We had to find all the winter outerwear again.

Well, we’re not going to complain about that.

It was more water than snow, and soaked through everything.

Besides, building a snowman on the deck (there wasn’t enough accumulated on the lawn) and giving him a carrot nose and cheerio eyes? In April? Sounds fun to me!

What else would you do with a deck full of snow?

(Carolyn didn’t fall for my April Fool’s “you’re going to be late for your bus” prank. But she didn’t believe me when I woke her up this morning and told her school was cancelled due to snow. Go figure.)

Earrings!

Sarah Carolyn, Growing Up, Milestones

Carolyn got her ears pierced last night – a gift from her Grandma & Grandpa for her upcoming First Communion. She chose a very cute pair of sparkly pink daisies for her piercing earrings.

Getting ready to have her ears pierced...
...and now she's got sparkly earrings!

I can’t believe how fast she’s growing up!

First Communion Banner

Sarah Carolyn

Carolyn had to create a banner for her First Communion.  She looked over some designs and came up with the plan, we both cut and glued the felt bits, and I used puffy paint to add her name and the date.  Before we even started, I bound the edges with a bit of muslin to keep them from fraying.  I think it turned out well!

I especially like the color scheme she came up with!

Kool-Aid Dyed Eggs

Sarah Food, Holidays

We’re not a kool-aid drinking family, but I’ve been collecting various flavors colors to use for homemade play-doh and (someday) yarn dyeing. And then I stumbled across an idea on Pinterest to use it to dye eggs!

Just don't *drink* the Kool-Aid!

We mixed each packet with 2/3 cup of water.  I read somewhere that lemon didn’t really make a deep enough yellow, so we added a tiny bit of a packet of orange to the lemon.  I probably should have measured so we could duplicate it next year!

For as messy as this looks, clean-up was super easy!

We had some decent results – as good as or better than the egg dyeing kits – from most of the colors/flavors:

Pretty colored eggs!

But we couldn’t quite manage purple. When we mixed tropical punch and berry blue, we just got a weird speckly brown. It’s quite possibly the ugliest dyed egg ever, honestly.

Reddish + blue = brown???

But other than the lack of purple, it was a pretty inexpensive and vibrant way to dye eggs, and I’d definitely do it again!

Also, I tried baking the eggs instead of boiling them, which worked out better than I expected.  325°F for 30 minutes, then an ice cold bath.  There were a couple of brown spots under the shells after peeling, but they peel very easily.  They also crack very easily when being transferred to the ice water.  But 14 of the 18 survived the process intact, and the rest were yummy.  :)