Oh I Almost Forgot Easter

 SO before I tell about Easter dinner at our house, I'll show you the cool trick I got from Pinterest.

Since Hubs got his new stove, he can't put his knives down the side between the counter. SO I was looking at Pinterest and saw this idea...

I didn't think the cracker box would be big enough for all of his knives, so I saw this cute container at Hobby Lobby-on sale-of course. SO then I stopped at Target and bought all the skewers they had!
I had to break them all of to be the correct length

And after about an hour of snapping skewers, I stuck all the knives in and they are now safely stored and easy to get to! I think I could have used a few more skewers, but I bought all they had!

Anyways, we had a nice dinner, Ham, scalloped potatoes, cole slaw, Mom's Deviled eggs, a nice salad, and vegetables and nice warm rolls and Costco cake for dessert! Yummy indeed!

 That Ben-always messing with my pictures!!

 I got together enough chairs and the tables looked pretty I think!

 It was so nice to get everyone together- we haven't been very good about that with the crazy winter weather!

The night before, Hubs was assembling the potatoes and look at little Riley, Dannie's pup, she was just waiting for some food to drop on the floor under Hub's Chair!

The To Do List--Easter edition

So, DD is moving, and there is a couch and loveseat left in her condo that is just awful! I put getting rid of that mess at the top of my to do list. I warmed up my muscles and loaded them up in the pick up-reclining couches are NOT light- and made a trip to the local dump. Yes I hate to add to the landfill, but honestly, these pieces were just too awful to pass on to anyone! Buh bye awfulness!!

Then my next item was to get the riding lawn mower ready to go-the grass is growing like crazy! I knew I had a slow leak in the front tire last summer, I aired it up every weekend for my gardener. SO I got the wheel off and took it in to get it fixed. Unfortunately the leak was in the sidewall and couldn't be fixed so I had to get a new tire.

SO I got the tire back on and checked my fluids and thought I'd be ready to go....well darn it it won't start. I really should take better care of the battery, it was pretty corroded, so I got the baking soda after it and, I put the charger on it and hoped for the best!

 

Well the charger says it's good to go, but still no starting for the mower, so I went to town AGAIN! and bought a new battery.

Now only one more thing, get the old battery out and put in the new one. Wouldn't you know it the cable on the positive side wouldn't un-bolt for anything! I WD-40'd it and tried every tool I have to get it loose and ended up breaking the cable...now I wonder if my cable was bad to begin with, Oh well, I've got the battery so now I need to replace or repair the cable. Off on ANOTHER trip to town.

The cable has a little fuse wire on it and I couldn't locate a cable like that anywhere! So I just got a new end loopy thing and put that on and I got some new bolts too. Those things are a pain! You'd think there'd be a better way to connect a battery. I don't have a crimping tool, and it was HARD to get it on there but I got it!!!

Looks good-fingers crossed.....And Hallelujah! It started right up!! Too bad it's raining now! Mowing will have to wait until Sunday when I'm expecting about 14 people and 6 dogs to come for dinner. So the next to do list item is to get a table in from the garage.

This antique table belonged to my old friend who now is in assisted living. When she moved I helped her sell and move and donate almost her whole house. Nobody seemed to want this table, but I really thought it pretty cool. SO I just stashed it in my garage all this time. Don't judge...and no hoarder references please! It has two leaves and the ends drop down so it doesn't take up much space.

 

I think it was happy to have people sitting at it after all these years! It worked out perfectly!

I also needed some springy/Eastery table decor, so I whipped up a couple of the 15 minute table runners out of some fabric I had on hand. I mean, my to do list was almost done so why not stop and sew a little, right?! I love this ice cream print and paired it with the Iowa shop hop fabric from a few years ago that I had been holding on to for no good reason. Pretty! That pretty much covers the to do list for last weekend!

Other than the non blog worthy-ness of things like vacuuming, and cleaning the bathrooms. And I was totally negligent and didn't take food pictures! Hubs made one of the best hams I've ever eaten and a wonderful macaroni and cheese and cole slaw! Julie brought a delicious pasta dish, Bean brought ice cream and strawberry shortcakes for dessert and we all had a great meal. Mom brought her deviled eggs-an Easter favorite! Amen!

Getting Ready for Easter

My latest Bonnie Do list has been keeping me just a little bit busy, but I had to snap a couple of pictures of the latest flowers popping up in the yard. 

The violets...gotta love the tenacious little purple beauties..if they can come up in my yard they are truly tough!

And the tulips my Gardner planted are just opening up. They are so bright and pretty!

 

I had to pick up some candy for Easter and saw these. Do you know what kind of Hershey's kiss is wrapped in orange foil?

Yup, carrot cake! They are pretty tasty...they don't taste like chocolate so if you're expecting a chocolate flavor your out of luck. That suits me just fine...not a big chocolate fan.

Bunny Time Banner

 

Easter will be here before you know it, so I googled around looking for an idea for a door banner for the season.Over at Shiny Happy World she has a bunny that's cute as can be. Here's the Link to Shiny Happy World's Blog post.

And there's a free printable pattern there. SO I printed it out and traced it on to paper backed heat-n-bond fusible. See that snow outside the window there? I'm glad it's all gone now!

 Here are all the pieces fused to my fabric choices. The parts could be mix and matched, but that would require planning before they are fused to the fabric and well, planning isn't always my strong suit.

 Then cut out the parts-cute, right?! So the directions say to quilt the background first, so I did, but I kind of missed the part about leaving off the backing fabric until the end-oh well this will work out.

 Then after fusing the parts onto the background, I stitched along the edges. I just used a plain old straight stitch-really close to the edge.....

 really, really close to the edge. It does look great! Grey bunny......

 brown bunny.......

 and white bunny! I should have figured out how to make the background not show through the white fabric, but I think it will be ok.

 Look at those cute little pink noses-it's the bar tack function on my sewing machine-thanks MOM!!!

 And I made the eyes by using the round button hole option and outlining the circle shape then filling in with  free motion style stitching.  For the mouths I copied the pattern's idea and just stitched smiling lines for each face. I used a fancy wide stitch to joint the three panels together, I wasn't too happy with that look though-so after some thought I dipped into my stash of rick rack and put that over the stitching that holds the whole thing together.

 

Here's the back side-I used the corner triangle method to hold a dowel for the hanger. And used some solid green for the binding-I remember why I'm not a fan of solid color binding now...it shows every little boo boo!!!

 There! Doesn't that rick rack look great! Thanks Mom!!!!! (I stole the tin of old rick rack from my Mom awhile back-she said I could have it-but she likes her trims a lot so it was a little bit painful-LOL!!)

 And here it is all finished! Cute as can be and the free pattern is great! I still wish I had backed the white bunny so the background doesn't show through, but maybe on the next one!!

Clean Up

 So, I spent almost all day Saturday cleaning out the garage. Man! You wouldn't believe all the crud that accumulates out there!

 SO I got that going along pretty well. Moved the snowblower to the back of the garage and rolled the lawnmower out front...fingers crossed!

 I also worked on some flyers for the latest project to help out our little business person and her ilk AND make a little money for our church too!

And then on Sunday Easter eggs! My Girlfriend-in-law's Grampa Died suddenly on Easter Sunday, so the youngsters didn't get to go and hunt eggs. But they were already out in the yard soooo DD and her hubs helped me hunt them down! Such fun! Don't you like the way I take a selfie of my ARM!

Easter Dinner

 This last quilt is all quilted and trimmed, just waiting for binding. I had hoped to get it done by the end of the weekend, but oh well! I had some other stuff to do!

 I made a TON  of carrots for Easter Dinner at my folks' house. Leftovers anyone? I used this recipe Skinny Glazed Carrots. I just sauteed my carrots in a skillet with the butter instead of microwaving them.

 A TON! Look at this good looking spread. It was all delicious!

 After lunch Dad showed us the tree that was struck by lightening the other day. Pretty weird stuff there. It looks like someone just took a potato peeler and stripped off a thin strip of bark from top to bottom. We'll see if the tree lives on or not.

 It's just a few feet from the house, so it's a wonder that it didn't strike the house!

 Here we go all loaded up and ready to go home.

It was a beautiful day and we had a really great dinner!