Naturally Easter

Nothing artificial here!

I tried a new method of dying Easter eggs this week. I had seen some other sites mentioning ways to dye eggs using only natural ingredients, so I hopped on board and tried a few! After googling for a while, this is the site that I got the instructions from. 

I used red onion, red cabbage, paprika, and green tea. My picture shows tumeric and blueberries, but I decided to use green tea for my yellow eggs instead of tumeric and I bought fresh instead of frozen blueberries. You're supposed to use frozen, so I'll try that one next year!

Green tea and red onions at work

Overall it was a success. If I had more time/bigger bowls/more fridge space/more dye I would have left lots of eggs in the dye overnight in the fridge for more vibrant color. I left most of the eggs in the dyes for 15 minutes or so and they were a very nice pastel hue. I put some in the fridge until evening and they darkened quite nicely.

pretty pastels

Here's my verdict:

Green Tea: Yellow Very easy to do! Just brew green tea, cool to room temp and soak the eggs! I used 5 old tea bags that I knew I was never going to use and 1 cup water. Paprika: Orange A very pale orange and is all speckled from the spice bits. Again, very easy because it's just a cup of boiling water and a couple tablespoons of paprika. 
Red Onion: Jade Green Jade Green? Ha! How about camo-brown green? Not so successful! Now, I could have done something wrong, but I followed directions (boiling red onion skins) and it was definitely barely greenish tinged brown. 

Big ol' bowl of red cabbage dye

Red Cabbage: Blue For sure the best of the batch!! 1/2 of a head of red cabbage makes enough dye to soak 8-9 eggs at a time. These are very pretty as a pastel blue and becomes a vibrant blue if left to soak for hours. I modified slightly and did 1/2 head of cabbage chopped into chunks in 5 cups of boiling water. Stir in 2 Tbs of white vinegar and let cool to room temp before straining out the cabbage. Aaaaand, you can take the slightly boiled cabbage and put oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper and on it and you have a tasty salad!

In this picture you can see some eggs that have polkadots. These appeared by themselves!! Maybe wash the eggs before dying? I don't know.  

Quick soaked!!! Left: red onion (blah!!) Top middle: paprika  Bottom middle: Red cabbage  Right top: green tea

After a long soak in the red cabbage 

Red cabbage and green tea

Next year I'd like to try the blueberries, and maybe some saffron. I'll do green tea and cabbage again, but I think I'll skip the paprika and red onion. 

Ahh DAaahhh!

For the most part "Ahh DAaahh!" means "a dog"
We hear "Ahh DAaaahhh!" a lot!! He watches out the window for dogs that go by, on walks we hear it for every dog that passes (and every stroller that goes by) and today it took on a new meaning: duck!
This morning I took ButterBean to a pond close to our house to feed the ducks and geese. Big hit!

He wasn't scared of the ducks or the hissing geese at all! Ducks are adorable creatures, but geese...not so much! We didn't get to feed the teensy newly hatched ducklings because the geese shooed them away. I probably looked crazy, but I threw bread as hard as I could, way out to the wee duckies. ButterBean wanted to get to the baby ducks too. He tried numerous times to run into the weeds and over the embankment to get into the pond with them. 
The mama and papa geese kept hissing at ButterBean, but he would just look at them, point, and say "Ah DAaahhh!"

I gave ButterBean some bread to throw. He sort of understood the concept. He threw the bread on the ground. He then proceeded to pick it back up and eat it. So, I became official bread thrower! 

One of my fondest memories as a little girl is walking around the pond across the street from my grandparents' house with my Grandpa Andy. We would bring bread in a bag to feed the ducks and geese and then use the bread bag to pick up trash as we walked. I loved the time I got to spend with my grandpa and I always felt so proud of myself for helping to keep the pond clean! I'm glad I can now share this experience with my son. I'm looking forward to many more duck-feeding adventures!

Mother's Day

I had a marvelous Mother's Day! My own little bundle can't do much for his mama yet, but I know one day he is going to bring me home a droopy marigold that he planted himself in a little pot at school and I'm going to gush over it like is was the finest rose! This Mother's Day was more about my own mom! It happened to be her birthday this Mother's Day. She has done a superb job raising me and my sisters and I will always look up to her!

Soooo, I made her a birthday cake of course: Martha Stewart's Lemon Cake! It's so rich, it's almost like a pound cake. It calls for lemon zest, so I definitely used organic lemons for this cake. I've made it a couple of other times and it always turns our delicious. (This is actually a picture from another time that I made it.)

And I made all of us a nice little brunchy breakfast. My favorite were the rhubarb scones that I made with rhubarb from my mom's backyard. Yummm. 

I have more rhubarb in my fridge and I plan to make these again! I recommend them good with a cup of tea, like all good baked goods should be enjoyed!

We also went over to celebrate Gatsby's mother and got to relax some more in the sun! Perfect weather for the cousins to romp in the backyard! ButterBean had a "hair-raising" experience: learning to drive! We all got a good laugh at his static style!

The pictures don't do justice to the amount of hair that was sticking up!

he was very frustrated that he couldn't stand in the car

ButterBean had a very in depth conversation with his godfather. It sounded pretty serious!

Mother's day was a perfect example of balancing school and family. I had a big test on Monday, but there was no way I was missing this amazing family time. I was able to completely forget about the test for a few hours and enjoy good food, good weather, and good company! I got in a couple hours of studying between celebrations while ButterBean and Gatsby napped. For anyone considering anesthesia school, believe me, you're world will be utterly consumed with studying! Take a break sometimes and forget about it! You don't (and you won't) ace every test! And that's ok! Happy Mother's Day to all the overly busy mom's out there!

Easter cuteness

I cannot get enough of this picture of ButterBean from Easter!!! Does this make me vain in an indirect way? Oh well!! Little boys that look like miniature men are a weakness of mine. Melts my little heart! I'm lucky to have gotten a picture with his hat on. Last year I was able to get his Easter hat picture because he wasn't big enough to pull it off yet.

2011- his first Easter

We had a very nice Easter with family. We attended mass on Easter morning where ButterBean behaved the whole time - an Easter miracle!! Then we had a delicious brunch of eggs, cinnamon rolls (made by yours truly!), and fruit with my family.  ButterBean doesn't quite get the concept of looking for eggs yet, but neither did his aunties. They think egg hunting is a contact sport. 

Tackle

Run

Payback

He got a shovel from GrampyJ and GrammyEm, which was a favorite. He also got some fun books, carrots, green beans and crackers (thanks for the healthy Easter basket!)

After an afternoon nap we went over to Gatsby's parents and had a great time chatting and letting the cousins play outside. I think this was the first Easter I didn't stuff my face with so much candy I got a gut ache. Maybe that means I'm an adult now ;)

Happy Easter 2012

Spring Time!!!

Glorious Glorious Day!! Springtime has arrived early!!! As one who counts down the days until winter is over, I am very grateful for this gift of an early spring. 80 degrees, sunny, windows open! It's almost like summer...minus green grass and leaves on trees.

We've put away most of our winter stuff

  

And we headed outside. Mr. Independence/ButterBean won't hold my hand and has already acquired scrapes on his hand and arm. He has a great time on walks when he can see dogs, other kids, and cars. Rocks have been confused with food. I foresee many happy hours at the park this spring and summer.