easter monday

No sewing, just a few pictures from our dinner yesterday.

The napkins are supposed to look like bunnies. The kids figured it out. Good enough for me.

Cupcakes for dessert. I'm not much of a cook - these were made from a box mix and I managed to nearly ruin that. I misread the amount of water needed and put in too much. However, with nothing to lose I threw in a little extra flour and sugar and no one was the wiser. I'm pretty pleased with the save.

If I were a good cook, I'd have toasted coconut for the bird nest on top. Instead, these have smashed miniwheats from the kids' cereal cabinet.

A few pictures from the hunt:

The girls are wearing their bo peep skirts and new sneakers. The general consensus this year was for a relaxed, casual get together. I think this is going to be our new tradition.

the kids

Last weekend's Lunar New Year parade in Chinatown.

merry christmas

from our

to yours

love,

and their mom.

(Thanks to Carol for the garland, grandma and Ellie for the gingerbread house, and Jan for the darling gingerbread people.)

decoupage eggs

Inspireco has a wonderful tutorial on making these paper covered eggs.

Instead of old books, I tore up bits up old pattern instruction sheets. (I tried the pattern tissue too, but it looked awful over brightly colored plastic eggs - even yellow.) A few have some vintage millinery flowers.

I dipped into the vintage button stash for others.

They look darling in the china cabinet. I'd love to make more to have a whole bowl of these for next year. So far, I have eight.

easter dresses

The girls' dresses were finished in time.

I used a basic jumper pattern by New Look that's about 10 years old. The petticoats were purchased when I worked for April Cornell. The fabric used to be a Shabby Chic duvet cover that I thrifted a year ago.

My challenge with these was to try a scalloped hem. It wasn't really hard, just time consuming to clip the curves on all 30+ of them. A stencil from my scrapbooking supplies came in handy for determining the size. In the future I'll make the scallops more shallow and a bit wider when used on a hem.

The pattern is extremely loose, but has side ties to adjust the fit. Perfect for my skinny girls - an easy detail to add to future dresses.

Hope you had a lovely Easter.