Some More Easter Decorating, Egg Tutorial, Thank You Fifi, and The Final Four

I hope you all are having a wonderful weekend. The first Final Four game is about to start so I am going to try to type this as quickly as possible!

I still have a few more projects I want to do for Easter but in case I don't get to them figured I would show you what we have done so far. The best part of this year's decorating is that the only thing I bought was some spray paint and the supplies for the moss letters (you can see a tutorial for those by clicking here). Everything else was free! I had planned on either having a robin's egg blue or a pink for an accent color but seeing how I went pretty overboard with the pink for Valentine's Day decided to just stick with neutrals for now. I still may add in some blue though.

 

  You can see what all of these topiaries looked like before in this post.

 

 

I saw these eggs last year on The OC Cottage and thought they were really pretty. I made a bunch this year and a have them hanging from the branches in our living room and dining room. I plan on embellishing them when I get a chance but for now they are just covered in the book pages. I am not really sure how they are supposed to be made but this is how I did it. And the best part was I already had all of the supplies so they were free!

Here's what you need:

Brush

Bowl

Water

Mod Podge

Plastic Easter Eggs 

Book Pages (or I am sure newspaper would work as well)

(and if you want to hang them string and a glue gun)

1) Rip up the book pages 

(you can actually rip them up even smaller once you are applying them)

2) Soak the paper in the water. I just put it all in there and start working.

3) Now start wrapping the eggs.

4) Get the whole eggs wrapped. It's okay if you can see the egg color. 

Once the paper dries you won't be able to.

5). Now just dab some Mod Podge on and brush it over the egg. 

I dabbed some on each side to get enough to properly cover it.

After that I let them dry overnight and then put a dab of hot glue on the top of them and glued some string onto it and then hung them from my branches. I plan on embellishing them at some point here soon but for now they are just plain. 

I was so excited to receive an e-mail from the Fabulous Fifi saying that she had featured us on her blog earlier today! I am so so so excited and so incredibly honored. She is planning on coming here this fall and I am still pinching myself over that thought. If you haven't already, make sure to check out her new book, it is absolutely loaded with breathtaking pictures:

You can purchase it here.

Well, the game is about to start so I had better get this posted.  As many of your now our lives pretty much revolve around basketball here and of course the Final Four is the most exciting part of basketball season. Jon actually got to play in a Final Four back when he was at Carolina. It is pretty exciting to have a team from our conference, VCU, in it this year and the team they are playing, Butler, has a kid who played for Jon's dad last year so it's a bit hard knowing who to cheer for. This year, we will also be watching the women's Final Four tomorrow night and cheering for the sake of my brother. Yes, you read that right. Haha. It is rather ironic, really. My brother, Jason, is the baby of the family and the only boy (If you have been reading this blog for a while you probably know him from the sarcastic comments he often leaves on my posts). 

We all grew up playing sports and played basketball very seriously (regular season, summer leagues, AAU, etc.)  You would think therefore, that he would have a nice healthy respect for women's sports but instead he has always absolutely loved mocking them. Somehow while at Notre Dame he ended up becoming a practice player for their women's basketball team. If you don't know him that might not seem that funny but if you do you would see just how hilarious a thought that was. So, over the past two years he has had to change his tone from mocking women's sports to having a healthy dose of respect for them. And now, "his" team is headed to the Final Four.  He is a talented writer (he won an huge award his freshman year at Notre Dame for another piece he did) and wrote a pretty entertaining post on his blog that you might want to read. He wanted me to make sure I mentioned he was on a "creative hiatus" until the end of the semester when he graduates and that is why he has a serious lack of posts. He does have some pretty funny ones from last summer though that you might enjoy like this one on Lillie's departure from our month long stay in New Hampshire last summer (please note many of his parenting claims on my part are 100% sarcastic!), or his take on being a coach at basketball summer camp, or even the Crotty family Olympics (which I sadly missed).

If you haven't already entered our baby guessing contest please feel free to scroll down and enter! Especially if you have any name ideas!

Well, I will be back Monday morning with a post for Poppies at Play Parade of Homes! See you then!

P.S. I wrote this earlier and then forgot to his post - whoops!