Every so often, Easter and my mom’s birthday coincide and this is one of those years. Happy Birthday, Mom! I am making Easter/birthday cupcakes for you with Alton Brown’s egg white foam recipe (but given the several states between us, we will have to do the eating over here in California, and you will have to feast your eyes on this very yummy picture…)

Other Easter festivities: we have dyed some more eggs – this time Lithuanian-style – with red and yellow onion skins. Though, we haven’t quite gotten the chemistry down, as we’re not sure if that lovely chartreuse is coming from the red or yellow skins…

after boiling, we played “egg-wars” where one person tries to crack the other’s egg. I am happy to announce that this year, my little Hercules of a spotty brown egg (I believe he’s the one in the lower right-hand corner) defeated a whopping 9 opponents in total…that was about as much as we could eat…

For some reason, our almost 16-year old decided that she wanted to relive all of her favorite childhood birthday parties before she dove into the grown-up-ness that comes with that new driver’s license. It was a fairy-tale party from beginning to end. It started with all things pink, an Easter Egg Hunt (with cascarones, of course*), a Disney Princess“jumpy thing,” pizza, birthday cake and culminated with the opening day of the new Hannah Montana movie, which was corny, sappy and totally satisfying! Happy Birthday little/big princess!

* Cascarones are eggs filled with confetti for bopping on the top of fellow easter egg hunters. Dads of young children have to pretend to tie their shoes often so that their little toddlers can “surprise” them with a cascarone crunch. Caution: Do not mistake a hard-boiled egg for a cascarone and accidentally crunch one on top of best friend’s head. We’ve been there, done that, right Ellen?

If you would like to add a personal touch to any party, have fun creating easy-to-make photo flowers. They are especially nice if they feature old photographs of the honoree. Not only do they look great, but guests love looking at them and teasing the guest of honor. Always a good ice breaker!

Click here for easy instructions.

Okay I admit it, I had not had a chance to buy anything for Margaret’s party until the night before, so I headed to Walmart hoping that I could buy the entire party from soup to nuts, and guess what?! Bingo! I walked out with everything from pink plates to potato chips to Hannah Montana lipgloss rings!
AND, while I was there I stumbled across some scrapbooks that we designed through Tapestry for WalMart, which turned out really cute! They are 8×8 pre-designed scrapbooks featuring our Little Princess and Little All Star characters and patterns. The 3-dimensional embellishments on each page really pop. The use of glitter and doming effects are my favorite touches. If you have been wanting to create a scrapbook for your own little princess or all star, these look great and are EASY to make! Just pop in your pictures and smile!

Every year at this time, we love to pull out the Ukranian eggs that we have been making since the girls were little. (Well, I was actually told by a Ukranian egg expert once, that our eggs can’t officially be called Ukranian eggs since we don’t officially use the Ukranian egg patterns and symbols. Since we take a more “creative” approach to our design choices, we are supposed to call our eggs “Art Eggs.” So here is our box of Art Eggs.

How to make Art Eggs:
First we blow out the eggs, then we use styluses with lumps of beeswax that we melt over candles. We dye the egg a light color and cover anything we want to save in that color with wax from a stylus. Then we dye it the next darker color and save again and so on and so on. It ends up looking like it is covered in black wax at the end. And then comes the fun part. We either hold it over a candle and gently wipe off the wax with a tissue and magically the beautiful design appears, or recently we figured out a way to do that last step in the toaster oven! Yep, it’s a mess. A big, fun mess. Witha beautiful treasure at the end.

Here are some tips if you would like to take up Ukranian egg making–I mean Art Egg making:

1. Turn on some good old movies that you’ve seen a million times so that you don’t actually have to watch them, because this is a slow and tedious process. Take plenty of snack breaks.
2. One year we learned that you can actually leave the yolk inside the egg and not blow it out, and over time (like 5 years) it will dry up inside. Note: Store your ‘yolk-in eggs’ somewhere that could handle an explosion. This happened once and it was pungent.
3. The year that it did happen, and we had them stored all together, we had to put them outside to air out. Note: Do not leave them outside in case it rains. We learned this the hard way, and the eggs from that year have a sort of washed effect.
4. Buy these great egg holders that I just found this year at Target. Not only do they enable you to store many eggs in a small space, but they look pretty cool when they are full!

This is a tradition that your family might take wherever they may land. In fact, Ellen, do you have some pictures from your Ukranian/Art Egg making in California this year?? Love, Mom

Here they are. Three California eggs…

I really wanted to get my hands on a goose egg or two this year, but I settled on some big organic brown ones. The brown ones can be really nice, offsetting the saturation of the dyes and adding a soft country feel to the eggs.

These zinnias were just pouring over the sidewalk near Ellen’s apartment in Berkeley. Wow, do things ever grow in California. I used this picture as color inspiration for some fun projects we are working on just for girls.

Looking for Cathy’s Products?

Little Pond

We have received so many calls and emails from folks who are looking for Little Pond products, and we are delighted that you are enjoying our Little Pond critters. You can buy Little Pond products, made by C.R. Gibson, at Babies-R-Us. And, you can also find Little Pond items at BabySakes.com. The melamine dish set turned out really cute, and here’s a fun review of the baby book:

“We ordered Little Pond Baby Memory Book because it matched the nursery decor my daughter chose for her baby boy. When we received the book we both cried. It is so perfect for recording the wonderful memories of his birth and his milestones. We were having a tough time finding just the ‘right’ book but when we found this on we knew it was exactly what we were looking for and we have not been disappointed.”

-Nanee (Franklin, NC)

Cross-Stitchers Alert

Several of Cathy’s designs have recently come out as cross-stitch kits from Dimensions – you can find them at Jo-Ann stores.

Fabric

Jo-Ann stores are also carrying the Little Forest collection for fabric, as well as soft book kits. Soft books are easy to make and fun to give.

Happy Shopping!