peeps and jelly beans

Easter is coming! I've tried this year to make Easter an exciting and fun thing for us, but honestly, I'm feeling a little worn out. The Hubby is in finals of his second to last semester (read: he's hardly ever home). So the responsibility for everything else falls on my shoulders. aka--I've been busy just trying to hold us all together. At the end of the day, when I usually blog, I can barely sit up straight, and all I can think about is hitting my nice, warm bed. (Although I am all caught up on my Survivor and Amazing Race episodes...hmmm.) It's not that I haven't thought of you....really, I have. I have a dozen or so posts in my mind that I want to write about. It's the motivation. Until this baby comes, hubby graduates, and we move to wherever he gets a job, I am going to have to come to terms with the fact that ME time will be hit and miss.
But I did want to get this post up BEFORE Easter. Me and the kids did a craft with peeps and jelly beans. I got the inspiration to do this here (seriously, this lady is awesome at what she does. Every time I read her blog I wish I could see my garbage the way she sees hers).
So, this is what we did:
You take a package of peeps and a package of jelly beans. (I tried to find different colored peeps, but all I could find was pink--I procrastinated [epic fail]).
Take some [clean]scissors you don't care about and cut the peep lengthwise down the middle. Now you have two peeps that are each sticky on one side. That's the hardest part. If you can do that you can do the rest. Read on:
Take your sticky peeps and press them onto heavy card stock paper in any design you want. As for the jelly beans, grab a jar of white frosting (heck, use any color frosting you want. I don't care, but white looks the best). I gave each of my kids a spoon with frosting on it. Then they just dipped the jelly bean in the frosting and stuck it to the paper.
I love craft ideas that give way for lots of creativity. This activity appealed to Dev (at age 8) and Bogey (at age 3), not to mention, the monkey in the middle, Calvin (at age 6).
Of course, Bogey was not as into his as Dev was (and he spent a lot of distracted time eating his art medium.) It was fun to just give them the basic instructions and then turn them loose. All of them told me that was one of the funnest crafts they'd ever done. So, success!
Here's how Bogey's turned out: he went for a freestyle, impressionistic approach on the Easter scene. His work makes viewers think, not only, what is going on here? but also, why is it happening? very picasso.
Calvin went for the patternistic approach to his art. Notice the fusing of the two mediums: peep, jelly bean, peep, jelly bean... his art leads viewers to sigh with relief and know that all is right with a world organized such as this.
And here is Dev's. She calls it "Easter bunny hiding the eggs." I have to point out the immense detail in this piece. Notice the observant and silent witness in the sky: the easter bird.Note the easter bunny, eggs in hand, in preparation to hide. (not sure yet if the one on his head is meant to be hidden there, or if he just didn't have enough hands to carry it all.)And not forgetting, of course, the easter flower, with easter eggs hidden round about it. beautiful...brilliant.
Genius, I tell you, genius.
and honorable mention goes to the mamma:

It turned out ok, too. (I am proud of my easter peep flower.)
AND the best part of this art work is that it makes a most delicious dessert!
Happy Easter!

kabob

Every year when I was a kid, and the snow was melting and the grass was starting to show, and the flowers were starting to bloom, my sister, Jeigh, and I felt the need to appease the summer gods by showing them how ready we were for summer to come. We did this by dressing in shorts and short sleeved shirts, putting our hair in pony tails, and going outside in the melting snow barefoot to do "the dance" (this dance, by the way, is beyond description. But it was similar to this) It didn't feel like spring to me until we had done that.
Now, as an adult, I still feel the urge to do the summer dance in spring, especially when the forecast is calling for snow this weekend. ugh. The summer gods are unhappy and they must be appeased.
I was happy, then, when Calvin, who was in charge of making the menu for this week, chose kabobs. Everyone knows that kabobs must be cooked on a barbeque. There's just no other way to have them. So instead of performing the ceremonial dance, we had our first barbeque of the season (with many more to come I'm sure.)
Don't they look delicious? I can assure you, they were. I used bbq sauce and a few tablespoons of orange juice concentrate for the marinade. It was one of the simplest dinners to make: chicken chunks, mushrooms, green and red pepper, mushrooms, and zucchini, marinaded in a bowl for an hour or so and then handed off to The Hubby for grilling. We also threw together a salad to round out the meal a little, but honestly, we mostly chowed down on these.

Sorry some of the pictures are a little blurry, it was getting dark.

But Bogey approves!

And also didn't know the meaning of pacing himself.

Calvin decided to appease the summer gods by turning his skewers into spears and doing the "hunting wild animals" dance. I bet they liked that.And Dev may or may not be the cause of the snow forecast for this weekend. Does she not know that any sign of weakness angers the summer gods?
Of course, we finished up the meal with a round of s'mores, but I didn't take pictures of that. If I did, I'd get chocolate all over the camera. And that would be a waste of chocolate.

I'm hoping our stunt is enough to keep the weather warm for the rest of the season. No more snow! Boo! down with snow! Up with blooming flowers!

Now we are so happy, we do the dance of joy!

I've done my part to please the summer gods. What have you done?