Spring Crafts and Decoration

Now that the weather has been feeling much more spring-like, I have been inspired to reflect these feelings inside the house as well!  Since I spend 90% of my life in this house, I am obsessed with decorating for each season.  Mix that with my obsession with Pinterest and we are in big trouble!  I found a few pinterest ideas and had to try them out.  Here is what I came up with!

I swear I "pinned" this at some point, but I couldn't seem to find it, so I just recreated it from memory.  So easy!  I had the vase sitting around, grabbed a package of Peeps at the grocery store along with some colorful Jelly Beans (I think these were Skittle or Starburst Smoothie Flavor?) and picked out some (SUPER CHEAP-O) tulips from the dollar store.  Dump them all together, and Bam...instant Centerpiece.  Very cheap too.  Maybe a cute gift to bring to teachers, or your Easter Dinner Hostess?

Next up, I decided to spruce up my Stove/Oven/Range/Hood...whatever you call it.  Can you tell I'm so savy in the kitchen???  I call it my new Spring Decor Shelf, that's what I call it!

This may have been the cheapest of all my Easter/Spring decor.  

I had all the supplies in my scrapbook stash to make the banner and the bunny frame.

I used some Kraft then white Cardstock to make each flag, and fun spring-y cardstock to make each letter.  We had some twine in the garage and I just punched holes in each flag to tie to another large piece that attaches to the top of the cabinet. ( It is a very scientific process:  I tied the twine to some heavy serving spoons and tossed them on top of the cabinets hoping they wouldn't fall.  Yup, very scientific)

Hobby Lobby had all their Easter stuff 30 or 40% off so I picked up a few of these wooden eggs for some color.  I think they were $2.99, so around $2 a piece??  Not only am I scientific, but I'm really good at math in my head.

The bunny frame was a must because after all the rest of the decor was up there, I had a big empty space right in the middle that needed to be filled.  I just Googled "bunny silhouette", printed out a this little bunny, then traced him on black cardstock.  All you PL-ers...do you recognize the patterned paper from Clementine?  Used a frame I had sitting around and BAM...another free little accent.  

I "pinned" this adorable tree months ago and knew immediately that I wanted to make this.  (you know, because I love labor intensive, arthritis inducing crafts)

It didn't turn out AS cute as the original crafter's, but I still love it.

Like I said, this was very time consuming, lots of steps, lots of work, but I had fun doing it.  There is a great tutorial here, but I snapped a few pics of the steps to discourage you from trying encourage you to make one!

The longest part was making all the leaves.  I cut out some cardboard as a template to try to make the leaves as uniform as possible.  Then rummaged through my paper stash and found some Spring-y colors and patterns.  Trace, cut, trace, cut, trace cut, ignore your kids, trace, cut, trace, cut.

 Gather some good branches from your yard and try to arrange them to create the fullest efffect.

 Again, the tutorial shows how she glued the two sides of the leaves together with a wire running down the center to create the stability and give it something to attach the branch.  Then you just wrap the wire around the branch to create the look you are going for.  I broke several branches during this step and had to keep shortening my branches.  Find good sticks to start with.

I'm glad I made two different sizes of leaves so it gave the tree some variety.

I've been thinking of spray painting the vase, but that seems like a ton of work.  So it will stay this way...for now.

So things are looking a little Spring-y.  Here's a few more Easter Decorations.  

Felt banner was $3.99 at Target...Love!  Loving this weather!  Loving the time change and having daylight at 7:30pm.   Loving this time of year!  

Easter Sunday

After starting the day a smidge late, we went to Church (where we showed up 15 minutes late and had standing room only in the back...of course), then headed to Muskegon (where the kids fell asleep in the car and I drove to keep them asleep, then got lost and had to drive even longer to get back to Mee-maw and Papa's house), we finally arrived and started our day of fun!  Sheesh!

Thankfully I remembered to snap a family picture before we were all filthy. :)

Quick picture of all the kids before the Easter Egg hunt began.  I love these kinds of pictures where we herd all the kids together "real quick" and expect everyone to cooperate.  Lets look closely at this picture shall we?

Classic!

 Once the egg colors were chosen, the kids took off.  Notice how there are no kids in this picture.  They buzzed around that pond in about 30 seconds flat.  Well...all except one.

At first, she wanted no part of this.  I had to hold her, squat down to help her pick up her eggs, all while trying to take pictures of it.  Got my work out for the day!

She eventually warmed up and started to have a little fun.  {a little fun}

Bryce loved it...naturally!  He was cracking me up because he didn't bother to put his findings in the basket.  He immediately opened up each egg to see what was inside and carried his candy around with a death grip. 

Maddie was nice enough to help Bryce get one of the eggs out of the tree, and I love this picture of Bear and her dad. :)

After dinner {which could quite possibly have been the most amazing meal I've ever eaten}, we celebrated Miss Charlotte's 3rd birthday!  She had the coolest ice cream bunny cake.  Happy Birthday Charlotte!

...and of course that meant more treats for these two.  I was convinced one of my kids would puke last night, but by the grace of God...no one did.

Every single chance he had, Bryce could be found doing this...

We could not get him away from that thing!

We had a really great day.  {and with a little photoshop help, I was able to manipulate catch a picture of all 4 of us smiling.}  This is my new favorite picture.

Cute Easter Craft

Thanks to the always inspirational blog eighteen25, I whipped up some adorable little treat bags today! Peep Toppers!  This was too easy!

I downloaded their free printable, but I also made my own version (because I secretly hate peeps and I wanted to eat candy while I made them) using this as inspiration for the design.

Aren't these too cute?  Just thought I would share. 

{to all my "peeps"}