Wordless Wednesday

For fun the girls and I had a "photo shoot" with them wearing their Easter dresses. We started in our backyard then walked to an orchard down the street from our house.

Easter...in pictures...

The day before Easter was the perfect Spring day! There was rain in the forecast for Easter Sunday (this is Oregon!) so we had our egg hunt on Saturday.





Baskets filled with surprises Easter morning.



A brief break in the rain, coming home after church.

We are participating in Screen Free Week 2011

Starting Monday morning our family will be going screen free for one week. We don't need a national campaign to do this BUT it is a great reminder and motivator to take the plunge. We don't have cable but we do watch DVDs and all of us enjoy our computer time. I for one am guilty of checking my emails WAY TOO MANY TIMES throughout the day! I am looking forward to the challenge and am very curious to see how many other things I can get accomplished when I am not tuned into the computer.

I encourage you to participate as well and use it as a learning experience. Just think of the fun time you can have with your families, how early you might go to bed, what books you can read or games you can play. Just a thought... :-) You can learn more about Screen Free Week by clicking HERE.

This of course means I will not be posting until after Easter.

Vintage Postcard Easter Banner

I wanted to keep the Easter decor simple this year but still wanted to do a little something. Our mantel is in the area of the house we use the most so I created a banner, using reproductions of vintage postcards, to hang from it.







If you are interested in using vintage postcards for a craft project, there are lots of great, free resources online. Two of my favorites are The Graphics Fairy and Vintage Holiday Crafts.

Super Cute Fabric Giveaway!

A new (or at least new to me!) blog I just discovered Forth Worth Fabric Studio is having a Spring fabric giveaway. It is SO cute! Click HERE if you would like to enter. :-)

Crafting for a Cause

Last week with the help of my good friend Heidi from Stuck on Stampin' I hosted a Crafting for a Cause card making night. I asked Heidi to design the cards for us to duplicate (making cards is not my gift!). Seven ladies, including myself, created three cards, in assembly line fashion. The cards will be sent to Thanks For Our Freedom to be put in the care pacakges sent to soldiers overseas. It was a fun night and we were so blessed to give in this way!

Keeping Christ in Easter

Jilian's picture of the eggs :)
Last year we came clean and told Grace there was no Easter bunny (and decided that we wouldn't tell Jilian there was one). She asked one afternoon, "is there really a bunny that leaves eggs and baskets?" "What do you think?" was my reply. "NO!" she said. She could see the silliness in the whole thing. It was a very freeing moment for me! I no longer had to keep up with the story. Grace has known from a young age the real reason we celebrate Easter but we had participated in the bunny tale as well. We still dye eggs, hunt for them and a special basket filled with treats but the girls know it is for fun and that it is mom and dad, not the Easter bunny.

It has helped to shift our focus back to Christ, His sacrifice for us and our responsibility in teaching our girls about Him. Easter can be difficult to relay to children. Some of the aspects of the Easter story (even for me sometimes!) can be hard to understand. An excellent resource in sharing the Truth about Easter are the Resurrection Eggs. A dozen colorful plastic eggs, each one filled with a different piece of the Easter story. A crown of thorns, a donkey, some coins. The eggs also come with a booklet to help guide you through sharing this story with your children.

Today as I went through the eggs with Jilian, I shared about what was in each egg from my own knowledge of the story, using words I knew she would understand. It was neat, she got it! You could see her contemplating what I was sharing with her, she was even sad for Jesus, yet happy when He returned Home. I found my Resurrection Eggs at a local Christian bookstore several years ago but I know they are online. Amazon carries them HERE and you can also do a Google search for Resurrection Eggs and a long list pops-up.

My New Blog is being featured!

Little Birdie & Me is being featured at The Type A Housewife.

Be sure to check it out!