Preparing for Easter

It never fails around here. The weather can be glorious & beautiful for many days & weeks on end, but the week before Easter...rain...and cold.....and just plain gloom. Maybe God gets sad during this time of remembering the sacrifice His son made for us. But at least we can rejoice in His glory and that sacrifice & know that God loves us that much! I don't know that I could give my only child, or any of my children as a sacrifice for anything. I feel truly BLESSED by Him.

Now I have never gone on in a religious sort of way on my blog, but I would never deny knowing and loving God either, however, I did feel moved to say something as a reminder during these troubling times that everyone is witnessing these days. I just hope it causes you to stop & think about what is really important & not let the non-essential things get in the way of letting you do what is right by not just yourself, but everyone else around you. And, if you don't believe in the same God as I do, it still can't hurt to be nice to someone who may really need it, but just doesn't know how to show it.

And now on to another part of Easter....




I have made my 84 year old grandmother an Easter card. I'm not all that sure that I like how it turned out, but it looks better after adding lots of colored Stickles than before I did that. I made the mistake of trying to "re-glue" my Cricut cutting mat. I don't have one of those big chunky blue glue markers, but I found something else to try instead. I was looking at my local Walmart the other day & thought I'd try one of those Elmer's glue pens that has a fine tip nozzle on one end & a rubbery wide applicator on the other. The bottle said for a permanent adhesion, apply wet & allow to dry. For repositionable, apply & let dry completely first. So, I bought it & tried it. I wasn't too thrilled with how the applicator thing worked, but I managed to get the mat covered & I let it dry overnight. Well, I gotta say, if you thought your Cricut mats were too sticky when you first buy them, you ain't seen nothing!! I guess my first recommendation would be to perhaps water down the glue a little after you apply a super thin coat on your mat and then do the de-sticking with your mat, where you pat the sticky side of your mat to your shirt and hands many times. So, after all this trial & error on my super duper sticky cutting mat, I had all kinds of issues trying to get my intricate design to come off without tearing it to pieces, including the uncut portion of my paper. Ugh! Then, I had issues with my Word program on my computer to create the greeting, but that's a whole other story that took almost all day & I ended up using the first one I did. what-ever. On this cut, I decided that I'd use one of my markers in the cricut to try to add a little extra punch to the design. yuck. Not to mention that my blade must have moved just a tad in between removing the marker & adding the blade back in the housing, because parts at the top had no outline, but did at the bottom. So, I just went around the blank areas with the marker by hand & added green stickles to that afterwards. I then added the pink Cotton Candy & blue Waterfall stickles for the flowers & then sprayed it with Iridescent Gold Glimmer Mist. Not something I'd try to submit to a magazine, but I hope my grandma likes it enough. In general, I think it's pretty, but the details aren't very nice - that's where the layers of other colors comes in ...to throw your eye off the bad glitter job. LOL! I did finish off the inside as well, but I've already written the sentiment, so I'll just leave that part to your imagination.

Also today, I needed to get started on putting my daughter's Easter basket together, so I wouldn't be rushing to do it at the last minute where I'd be discovered, ya know? I didn't take a photo of the what I did to the basket & it really isn't a big deal either. I just wanted to mention it in case someone wanted to try doing it too. You see, I seen a really simple, yet pretty basket at Walmart (are ya noticing a pattern here with WM?) . It has a little layered ruffle around the basket that looks kinda like a ruffly skirt. I thought Brooke would just adore that, but they wanted too much money for that. I'm thinking Hey! I can do that for a lot less & in no time! I had found a 6 inch wide spool of Organza ribbon that I got for a $1 at Jo-Ann's in a raspberry color & I reuse the kid's basket every year & it sort of matched that. I just took the ribbon & took the measurement for the length by wrapping the ribbon around the basket 3 times & cut it off. Then, I had some left over 1.0 mm thick stretchy clear elastic that they use for making stretchy beaded bracelets, cut it to length that would fit around the basket snug, but not tight, & I just hand basted that about 1 1/2" down from the top along the whole piece of ribbon. Tied the ends together & put it on the basket. It has a little ruffle at the top & a ruffly bottom too. Definitely girly. I might take a pic, if anyone really wants to see it. The worst part is the Easter Bunny will get total credit for it. ;-)

Boy, have I been getting long winded on these posts these days, or what? I guess that comes from lack of outside adult interaction - especially now that my hubby is working again, it's probably even worse.

God Bless & have a great day!