My Moms Easter Egg Tree

I wanted to share my moms egg tree.  This is the first year it has grown to an actual tree.  These are all real eggs that have been colored by many different people down through the years.  We were trying to guess when she first started doing this and we figure the oldest egg must be over 20 years old.  I myself think there are older ones on there than that.  She always managed to fit them on pussy willow branches, but each Easter, she has a coloring contest and that add that many more eggs to the tree each year.  And there is a lot of us there on Easter Day.  They have a big day planned and over the years from young to old everyone can wait.  First they have an egg hunt with many many eggs.  She usually puts small change in the eggs, and the main egg has a five dollar bill in it.  Everyone wants that one, haha.  Last year no one found it, so when they were doing the eggs this year they found the $5 still up inside of an egg.  Check your eggs better next time guys.  Then after the hunt we go on to enjoy and Easter meal, which is always delicious.  Then it is on to the easter egg coloring, to see who can win the top prize.  And she has an Easter Bonnet decorating contest.  Where we have to decorate a hat and parade around haha.  My mom is 83 remember and my stepfather is 88.  So they do very well to do all of this for us.  Everyone ends up with a goodie bag in the end, so it doesn't matter who wins, (or does it) :)  Hope you all have your own traditions, I know my children and grandchildren will remember their gramma.

Quinoa Hot Cereal

Well the next new thing i have decided to try is quinoa.  Have never really paid any attention to it.  But my cousin mentioned it and told me it was full of protein, so that captured my interest.  So first I looked around for a bag, and it was really expensive so i waited and found some more my price at Winners.  I didn't want to buy a big bag until i tried it.  I have found different recipes on Pinterest and the one I went with was the hot cereal.  So here goes:

2 cups whole or low fat milk
1 cup quinoa, rinsed
3 tbsp light brown sugar (I used splenda)
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1 cup blueberries

1. Bring milk to a boil in small saucepan, add quinoa and return to a boil.  Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered until 3/4 of the milk has been absorbed, about 15 minutes.
2.  Stir in sugar and cinnamon, cook covered until almost all the milk has been absorbed, about 8 minutes.  Stir in blueberries, and cook cook for 30 seconds.  Serve with additional milk, sugar, cinnamon & blueberries.

This is the kind I found.

Mix it in a pan

This is the finished product, I actually liked it and ate the whole thing!

Homemade Body Wash

I know, it was a busy weekend for Pinterest experiments and the next one was for body wash.  Very inexpensive.  So here goes:

You need: 16 cups of water, 8 ozs of bar soap, (I used 3 bars of soap I found at a local bargain shop 3/$1). I had to use 3  90g bars.  2 Tbsp glycerin.

First, grate the soap

Done, 3 bars.  At this point add water and glycerin.

Heat on medium heat until all melted.  Doesn't take long.

Take off heat and let cool for 10 to 12 hrs.  Of course my son was home for the weekend and did the finger test,  I let mine set for 12 hrs.

It was quite solid at this point, so I put a little at a time in my mixer, add water until it reaches desired consistency, it doesn't take much.  The only thing, I really didn't care to have smelly things in my mixer, just me.

Hint, have a funnel.  I got this much body wash.  It doesn't suds up like you would expect, but it worked fine and I have enough to last awhile, haha, so I will use it all.

Homemade Bath Salts

My next experiment was to make some homemade bath salts.  No big deal, just wanted something different then regular epsom salts.  So here goes:

Ingredients:  3/4 cup epsom salts, 1/2 cup sea salt, it called for coarse but all I had was fine.  1/4 cup of baking soda, 8 drops of essential oil and food coloring.

Mix all dry ingredients together in bowl.

Add desired amount of food coloring and essential oil.   I wanted pink so it took very little.

Pretty.

And you have it.

Solar Light Jar

This has been my weekend of experiments.  And of course I can give pinterest and their members credit for giving me ideas that I can do myself!  I love it.  So my next thing to do was the solar light jar.  They did theirs out of a mason jar.  I wanted to be a little different, so I went to the area I call "of no return", my basement.  And I found an old peanut butter bear jar that I didn't have the heart to throw out yet.  I took that, put in a bottle of sand I had (we like to get sand from our road trips) from Ormand Beach in Florida.  Put some sea shells I have found on local beaches, hot glued my light on top.  The idea is great especially for the solar lights that the stems have been broken and you have no use for the tops, now I do!  Except I should have made sure it was going to light up at night before I put it out but it comes off easy and I get to use my glue gun again, haha.  So here goes:

I say you should take your memories and use them, don't keep them stored away to forget.

Very few things needed for this.

I put glue around the top.

Make sure your light will fit your jar before you start.

Right now I have it in with my rocks I collect from different places, but that's not it's permanent home, I just want to keep it safe for now.

Easter Wreath

I wanted to make something to put on the house for Easter and I didn't want to go spend a bunch of money, so I went looking for things I had in the house.  So I found a heart wreath that was serving no purpose, got out the trusty glue gun (love those things), found some plastic eggs and a couple of extras.  It's not amazing but I like it for the Easter season, and had fun putting it together.  So here goes:

First I was just going to put some eggs on it.  Then the creative brain took over.

So I went searching in old toy boxes and Easter supplies.

A little placement. 

I am not fussy and I like to have easy things to do, haha.

But I really like it on the house!  Cute...

Homemade Fabric Softener

Well one day I ran out of fabric softener, so instead of running to town yet again, I decided to try a recipe I seen on Pinterest and I am happy to announce it is awesome!  My clothes are so soft!  Who would have thought.  So here goes:

I halved the recipe just because I wasn't sure of the outcome.  But go ahead a double up.  I used  1 1/2 cups of vinegar, 1 cup of conditioner, pick a nice smelly one, and 3 cups of hot water.

Add all together, and stir until smooth.

Only took like 5 minutes, and I had enough to fill a small fleecy bottle plus some.  They say use 1/4 cup for HE machines.  I just have a regular machine, so I pour some in the fabric softener cup and let it go.  Very very happy with this one.  Who doesn't have an old bottle of conditioner that they haven't used for one reason or another, today I am glad I did.

First Road Trip of 2012

Our weather has been amazing.  The first day of Spring and we had temps of over 30 c.  Unreal.  It was like a day in July.  Should we worry or is it just one of those years?  Who knows.  And this is only March.  Temps are suspose to be 25 tomorrow, then we are back to single digits for a few days.  Hey it's Nova Scotia we get a mixed bag of weather, so we take the good with the bad around here.  We enjoyed the weekend sun and took a drive to the Western Shore of N.S.  A beautiful scenic drive with countless beaches and views of the ocean.  So here goes:

When visiting N.S. a must would be Mahone Bay.

The water was so pretty.

In Chester, it was picture perfect.

Bayswater Beach.  Close to the memorial site for the Swiss Air flight.

Someone had made these, I think they are very nice.

You see lots of fishing boats around N.S. also.

We thought this was quite cool.

Pretty neat.  Everyone was enjoying the beautiful day.

Cool Whip Pudding Icing

I decided to make a cake yesterday and wanted to try this topping I had found on pinterest.  It turned out to be the best one yet, not to sweet, easy to do.  And there was some leftover to have on pancakes this morning.  A must try!  So here goes:

To a bowl add the box of vanilla jello, I used the 6 serving box.  Only add half of the milk, stir with a whisk just until it starts to thicken.

Add whole container of whip cream and fold in.

Just that simple.

I was very pleased that where I put it, it stayed and didn't move.  So I piled it on.

I just used an angel food cake, less calories and fat.  Topped with some strawberries and sang Happy Birthday to my guest.  It was a big hit.

Our son is home for the weekend, so I had a large breakfast and the pudding on the pancake was a hit! 

Another Farmhouse Table

I have to show you our daughters finished table also.  Since it was her idea that got this whole process going, it is only right.  And I really like hers also.  She was talking about a table and I remembered we have been storing one is our basement for years.  It was a  wedding gift from my parents, and us being careless put it in the basement and the top of it went bad.  It is a teak table, beautiful wood.  So I said I have just the table.  She had found the project on pinterest.  So here goes:

First, more organized then us, she had her plan drew out.  Measurements, everything she needed.  Now she is making the smaller one until she gets a bigger house and will  put the table leaf in at that point to make it look even more farmhouse.  The leaf isn't done yet.

This is what the poor table looked like before.  I guess it pays to be a keeper of everything, see someone could use it.  Excuse the mess, it's my basement.

I won't claim it was easy, well it was for me, I was baking instead, haha.  But I stress that your  measurements have to be right.  They had all of the boards on but where they were doing two ends separately, it had to be done right to match up, but they got it after awhile.  And it was only a one day project.  Before she went home the first coat of stain was on.  Because spruce warps fast and needs to be worked with asap.

They did it.  Poor hubby had to lay underneath and try to figure where to put the screws.  Power tools help at this point.  And he did a wonderful job.  Without his help, we probably couldn't have done it.

The spruce from Home Depot is so smooth, it hardly needed any sanding.  It didn't take very many supplies actually.  This table took 8,  1 x 6 x 8, some 1 1/4 inch wood screws, Minwax Wood Finish 2716 Dark Walnut and Varathane Premium Diamond Wood Finish interior satin.  Purchased all at Home Depot.

We moved her to the wood room, haha to stain.  The staining process was quick and easy.  You just put it on with a cloth, wait 5 to 15, we did around 5 and took a clean cloth and just wiped back over it and let it dry over night. Always go with the grain when sanding for staining.

This is what it is starting to look like.  We were amazed  because none of us have ever attempted anything like this.  So anyone with any patience and persistants can do anything they set their minds to.

My father would be so proud of this, since he was the carpenter in the family.  And I can now pass a table down to one of my children, one of the last things my father gave me, makes me happy.  Now what will we do next?  Hummm.