Easter Decorating

As I sit here watching snow lightly falling on this "Start of Spring" day I am deciding which of the 4 seasons is my favorite. I grew up in Southern California near the beach, so you would probably think I'm a summer beach girl. Well, I must admit I LOVE laying on a beach, man made OR real, anytime, anywhere, but it's not my favorite season.  I also LOVE seeing the tops of the tulip bulbs just starting to peek out of the snow covered dirt in the yards. I love the first signs of Spring too. And I can hardly wait for some warmer weather to happen. But although I love Spring and the holiday of Easter so much, and Spring Breaks from school I'm a real big fan of, it is only my 2nd  favorite season.

Tulip Gardens are so beautiful in the Spring!

I love the Fall season the very best. I love Halloween and Thanksgiving holidays, pumpkin patches and apple orchards, and back to school stuff. And it's also when my birthday happens, go figure. But Easter Egg hunts in the flower garden and Tulips Festivals at Thanksgiving Point come in a very close 2nd.  I will have a 4 year old, a 2 1/2 year old and a 9 month old grand daughter this year so the  Egg Hunt will be lots of good fun. They will love to color eggs with me too. I can't wait!




Aren't my little munchkins cute?
They are all decked out and ready to find a little leprechaun or a pot of gold! So the day after St. Patrick's day I dragged out all my Easter and Spring decor and decided we need a little Easter now! I always start at the kitchen table and work my way around the house.It always takes a few days to finish. And it always puts me in a good mood to see the mercury cracked-glass eggs, the wire baskets my kids have used for years, the pastel linens and candles and the florals and ceramic bunnies.



Easter Table Decor....I got some cute new placemats this year....Thanks Kohls...

Last year this same time of year I was feeling rather melancholy and "blue". It was the week of my Son Danny's birthday, and I was missing him a lot and feeling sorry for myself. So I took a "mental health" day off of work just to go do something for myself ...maybe to commune with nature or something. I've always felt joy in the presence of some beauty of nature. I stumbled upon the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, Utah. I had never seen so much natural beauty concentrated into one little square acre of garden. It does something physical to your senses. It almost makes you cry it is so breathtaking! And it did take my breath away. So yeah, this season I do love a lot.

Thanksgiving Point's Tulip Festival....coming April 15th

Our PTA at my school is ultra fabulous. They are freakishly fabulous. They go past the mark in almost every way. They don't just go the extra mile, they go the extra MARATHON MILE! They did one of their fabulous things this past fall. It was Red Ribbon Week. That's code for "Say NO to Drugs" week. We all do things with the color red to remind us to be committed to living our lives drug free. So the PTA went out and bought 1 red tulip bulb for each child in our school to plant in October. That's like 600 plus bulbs!  What a great idea right?

Red Ribbon Week ....we planted tulip bulbs!



 Well, as I was one of the last people leaving the school yesterday, I looked down as it started to lightly pitter patter with rain around me. I saw those flower boxes across the front of the school just teaming with the tips of green tulip bulbs just trying to break through the soil about an inch, getting ready to burst forth with bright red beauty. A little wave of delight washed over me. I remembered the tulip fields at Thanksgiving Point last year brightening my countenance and my grieving soul.. How excited those kids are gonna be to see the little part they played in what is going to be a remarkable display of nature at its best. I can hardly wait myself!

I love tulips with pretty pottery....and garden decor...

So I'm getting into Spring as you can tell. My husband hates toting all my Easter "junk" (he calls it junk but I don't think he really appreciates little wooden bunnies :D)back and forth up and down from the basement storage room. But he's a pretty good sport. He's been busy making the basement into his "man cave" with a big screen, a blasting stereo (complete with 70s disco music) and 4 workout machines; the elliptical (my definition of modern day torture vehicle), the treadmill, the life cycle, and some kind of weird rowing machine. 



Kitchen counter...Marisa helped me stack all the mirror ball eggs....she loves Easter!


So anyway, he got all this 70s music like Saturday Night Fever and Donna Summer stuff, and compiled it onto this CD and we've been dancing and biking and rowing ourselves into a "disco fever!" It's been funny how all the girls in our family now want a copy of John's cool CD and he's made a copy for Tiff, Wendy and Caitlin. Wendy has done the whole thing and says it is brutal. I have gotten to like, 15 minutes of it before I poop out completely. The object is to keep exercising to the beat, no matter how fast it gets! Wazoo it gets hard! Boogie Oogie Oogie! And I've lost 6 pounds already! There may be something to this sweating to the oldies!'

Easter Decorations.    Easter Baskets for everybody!

So while I've been decorating the house this week, my daughter and her husband are leaving to go out of town and asked us to babysit....guess who.....NOT the cute grandbabies, oh NO!....THE DOG!  I have grand dogs... They have this beautiful, huge, golden retriever named Gunner. He is really such a good dog, but he is so dang HUGE!

Table Decorations...little Megan grabs gobs of these jelly beans and stuffs them all in her mouth....:D

But my fat little dog still think HE is the alpha dog at our house. But he is not the Alpha dog anymore. When Gunner is around it's kind of comical to watch him cautiously sniff around the bigger dog. He is so curious but kind of a scaredy cat at the same time. He's even scared to eat his food, or a little doggie treat around Gunner. He waits till Gunner is out of eye shot or something. What's up with that Scaredy Cat?


Well he wasn't too shy to bite the face off bunny boy! Notice he's missing an eye? Dogs can be so cruel...



Marisa and I hung all the eggs on the little tree...she loved it!

So when I got home from work there big old Gunner was. And I gave him a big old hug and was fluffing up his fur with a little bit of scratching and my husband says, "Oh, No.... you better watch out, Bruce is gonna get so jealous!" And just then Bruce comes jumping up wildly on me like "hey man, don't pet that big guy, pay no attention to HIM,  I'm the kingpin around here!" OMGosh I'm thinking, I have a JEALOUS DOG! How did that happen? hmmm

Easter ceramics and Spring Decor...

Then John says, "watch this" and he calls Gunner over. Instantly Bruce jumps up and runs over and jumps on Gunner like, get outta the way, he's MY DAD! It was really funny. Poor Brucie! He's so small next to Gunner, he better get used to eatin the scraps this weekend. Gunner's the Alpha dog at our house this weekend and he knows it!

Guess which one is the big bad Alpha dog? Brucie's the little piggie in the background....

I love the little  egg plates I found at DI for 50 cents each!

So anyway, I'm grand-dog babysitting this weekend. Last weekend was much more fun babysitting Megan and Marisa at our cabin and listening to the hilarious things they argue about at 21/2 and 3 1/2. They actually had an argument on who likes mom better and who likes dad better. They both fought over dad. It's always like that, isn't it? Mom does all the work, dad gets all the glory. hehe. Megan is always excited to see my new decorations. She plays with my little, tiny, ceramic figurines like they are action figures. So I made them up their own little kiddie table with unbreakable decorations.


Kid's Easter Table Decorations...they love eating at their little table....


Anyway, I'm planning a really beautified front and back garden this year. I've decided that will be my summer focus. I always have 3 months off in the summer from work, so I pick a "job" to do around the house. I'd like to plant new stuff, and add some stonework or stamped concrete, and put in a jacuzzi. They are $700 bucks off at Costco this week. I've almost worn John down. hehehe. We had one in California and it was one of the best purchases we've ever made. When the kids were little and we couldn't go "out for a date" after putting them all in bed, we'd just head out back and sit in the jacuzzi and talk and drink strawberry-banana smoothies and raspberry lemonades. It was better than a date. And the kids loved it too.

So here's to the 2nd best season of the year.....Spring! And to creating an amazing flower and plant garden. And I hope we get to see a little bit of spring peeking through this snow sometime very soon!