Allison joined Girl Scouts last fall as a Brownie and has loved every minute of it. Earlier today, Curtis and I were talking and decided that joining the Scouts has been the best experience for her.
Okay. Here's the vintage part of the post. It's me! All decked out in my official Brownie uniform in 1970! Scary, aren't I? I am glad they changed the uniform and loosened up a bit! Can you imagine that lovely orange tie now? Oh, and that beanie! I'm not going to say much about the beanie because it is still an option for some Brownies. Gasp!
This Spring & Summer I plan on making some changes to our home. I have plans to paint the walls, refinish some furniture, sew some new curtains and update our look. I have so many ideas as to what I want to do but I am stuck on the bathroom. I can't get inspired! It's driving me nuts!
However. This is weighing heavy on my heart and I need to "get it off my chest" so to speak.
Yes. My baby boy, Simba, is 3 years old today. It's his 1st birthday with us so I'll allow him a little freedom today. 
Yes. However, I HATE shopping there.
...and some of these"BRANÄS" baskets for my...
"EXPEDIT" shelving unit that I bought on my last visit to IKEA ... 3 years ago! By the way, don't you just love all the cool names they have for their stuff?
Anyway. If you have ever been to IKEA you know what I mean when I say that you can not get into that store easily! The entrance is clearly marked so I don't mean that but once you step inside the door, you don't know where to go. I end up going into this little entrance which dumps you directly into one of their shopping areas. I then had to find my way back to a corner of that area so I could pick up one of their carts that have wheels that go in all directions. Yes. This cart can not only move forward but sideways and is a little hard to handle at times because you are not used to driving a cart with a mind of it's own.
This is sad. They've moved from a shoebox sized storage bin to one that is two sizes up!
You do know what this means, don't you?
because I really don't use more than just a few a month.
Yes! I am on vacation! It actually started yesterday but I was lazy, lazy, lazy and didn't bother to blog about it then. I pretty much had a little me time while Curtis took Allison over to his Mom & Dad's. I watched two movies back to back...like I used to do when I was single and childless. I never get to see any movies anymore so this was a treat for me. I watched "Made of Honor" with Patrick Dempsey (YUMMY!) and "The Banger Sisters" with Susan Sarandon and Goldie Hawn. Yes. I know that movie is like 7 years old but I never saw it! I liked them both very much.
Allison: "Mother. What's that big garbage can for in the back of the van?"
Me: "It's for your toys."
Allison: "Are you SERIOUS?"
This was a conversation Allison and I had this week on her way to school one day. Her perception was that I was cleaning house and her toys were going!
In reality, I bought it to store all of her outside toys. You know the ones...skates, helmet, elbow & knee pads, sidewalk chalk, Frisbee, jump ropes, basketball, soccer ball, kickball (Geez! How many balls does one kid need?) and more. I thought it would be easy to wheel it out and everything would be in one place. I also thought that end of the day clean-up would be easier too...and any dirt that ended up on the toys would be contained in the trash can and not on the floor of our basement or on our deck.
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This is Rosie. She is Allison's favorite sleeping buddy. Allison has had Rosie since she was just a little girl. One day I'll give you the history of her dolls but for now I have to share what happened to Rosie last night.
I held my breath the whole time! I had to softly rub her fabric with a soft surgical scrub brush they use in the hospitals. They gave me one when Allison was born to brush her hair. I've kept it ever since and use it to clean Rosie. I am embarrassed to say that she was a lot more dirty than I thought! She's a trooper though and made it through the cleaning but took a while to dry. I put her in the dryer for a little bit and then put her in front of the register to finish the drying process. However, since it's warmer here today, the furnace wasn't kicking on so I had to put her back into the dryer. :(
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The Moms like wreaths so when it came time to come up with a craft for Easter, I knew I wanted to do something with eggs for the wreaths. I searched the web for inspiration and found several Easter wreaths. Some I really liked and some I liked not a whole lot but they had good points. This wreath is the result of my inspiration. This project was easy, fun and I love the end result.
I added some hot glue to one of my circles in a pretty decorative fashion. Ha! Who am I kidding? I just squirted it around the frame!
Okay. Now it's time to start hot gluing the eggs down. Look at the top right of the photo. This is where I started. I put a little glob of hot glue on the bottom of the green one and set it down on the cardboard with the fat end on the inside. Make sure you place the eggs horizontal on the board. Do not have them standing at attention or tilting upward. Next I placed the pink egg next to the green one and put one small dab of glue in between the two to connect them. You could probably see it if you click on the picture to enlarge it. Next I added the purple one and connected it to the pink and green one with more glue. To sum this up, you will have glue on the bottom of all the eggs to adhere it to the cardboard and anywhere it touches another egg, you'll need to put a little dab on it too. This will build a nice and sturdy wreath. As you can see with the first three eggs, the purple one nestles right in with the other two. As you work around the wreath, this is not the case with every egg. Look at the next two (yellow & blue). The blue can't quite nestle in between the yellow and pink. Not a problem. Just make sure that when you continue with your wreath, your outside eggs are facing out like a sunburst and your inside eggs are facing inward to a center point. Do not worry about the gaps where you can see the cardboard. We'll fix that later.
When you get to the end, you will probably not have enough to finish out the wreath. This is PERFECT! You will need that space to put a bow there. By the way, I picked up these pearlized eggs at Big Lots. We loved them!
Here's Kelly modeling the latest in Easter fashions!
Okay, the next step is to put the top layer on the wreath. I used 10 eggs...2 of each color. All I did was place them in a random fashion. You can look at the first picture for the example. You can place them over the places where you have the biggest gaps and then fill in or whatever you like. You will need to hot glue these down everywhere they touch another egg.
Next is where we did some grass! LOL! It's my odd sense of humor but I think that's funny!
Anyway....start with a little grass and using your pencil as a tool push some grass with the eraser into the gaps of your wreath. Start with the the gaps under the top layer of your eggs. Then you will need to put them between the outside rim of the bottom layer of eggs. In the space where the gap is, put a little bed of hot glue and let it cool a few second and then put some grass there to cover the cardboard.
Here Dawn shows you how it's done. Do not try to shove too much grass in the gaps. If you press too much in there it will act press against the eggs and pop them apart. You really just need a little to cover up the gap and add sparkle.
Nettie and Kelly used the bright colored eggs and they came out adorable too!
Here's Susan D. on the left with her pink grassed wreath and Cindy on the right with your her yellow grassed wreath. Don't they look proud?
After you are done "grassing" your wreath, trim the fly-a-ways from the outside of your wreath to shape your wreath.
Don't forget to trim the inside too!
Next you'll need to make a bow or if you want, find someone to make it for you. This was our most challenging task for our Mom's that night.
Here I am trying to instruct Dawn on the bow making process.
Such concentration!
Nettie's doing well and hers came out great!
Oh my! Can you tell that Dawn is really stressed about the bow?
We'll have to have a bow class!
Add the bow to your wreath in the space not covered by the eggs and add a pipe cleaner to the back to make a hanger for the wreath and you're done!
This month's Moms showing their wreaths proudly. From left to right are: Cindy B., Susan C., Dawn, Me, Susan D., Kelly and Nettie.
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