Some Favorite Easter Treats

Easter is a wonderful reason to have fun with food! Here are some of our favorite Easter treats!

For Easter morning, everyone loves to wake up to this gooey nutty pull-apart bread, Paula Deen's Ultimate Coffee Cake. The recipe is here.

It is so easy. You put it together the night before. Toss some frozen yeast dinner roll dough into a bundt pan and top it with nuts, brown sugar, butterscotch pudding mix, and melted butter. Cover it with a cloth and let in sit on the counter overnight. The dough thaws and rises, and you bake in the the morning. What a wonderful aroma to arise with on Easter morning!

Another absolute must-have at our Easter feast is Jello Eggs. Jello makes an egg mold and you use the Jigglers recipe. I make them in every color so I have several molds since each mold makes only 6 eggs from 1 large box of Jello. It would take me days to make all the colors of the rainbow with only one mold, but it can be done.

I usually line an Easter basket with green leaf lettuce and put the eggs inside.

I made these with the pina-colada flavored jello. The are opaque and look just like peeled hard boiled eggs.

And, of course, what would Easter be without deviled eggs - lots and lots of them! They go so fast!

See my post about our traditional Easter deserts: the lamb cake, bird's nest cupcakes, and Italian Easter pie HERE.

Whatever your family's favorite Easter treats are, I hope they find their way to your Easter table this year, and maybe one or two new ones as well! Happy Easter!

To Dye For!

AtticGal Rachelle says:

Looking for some easy fun new ways to dye your eggs? Here are a few my kiddos had fun with:

May favorite: wrap boiled eggs in pieces of wide lace and tie it tightly with a rubber band. That's it!

Dye as usual. The extra lace makes a nice handle for easy dying, and the lace can be reused over and over.

So pretty!!!

Even easier - wrap eggs with rubber bands of different widths.

The effects are really cool!

My kids love the stickers! Use hole reinforce stickers for fun circle shapes.

Or Letter stickers for personalized or monogramed eggs,

and Easter words, of course.

I absolutely LOVED these, but the we had a tough time getting some of the stickers off.

Have fun dying your Easter eggs! Have a wonderful Easter!

Babies, Babies, Everywhere Babies!

AtticGal Rachelle says:

It seems that everyone (but me) is having babies these days! I have been invited to so many baby showers lately, so I have had to come up with some fun baby girl and baby boy gifts. I started by buying some fun fleece and making several girl blankets and several boy blankets, then assceesorizing the other gifts, cards, and wrapping to match. (I have a matching problem - everything has to match!)

The girl blankets are bright pink. I found this super darling owl pillow at Target and couldn't resist! So I used my Owl punch and SU! stamps to make these darling scalloped circle cards and also to stamp the gift bag.

The blanket was made by simple cutting a scalloped edge onto the fleece using a soup can as a guide. Then I sewed on a textural, baby-friendly applique. What a pretty package!

For the boys I got a bit messier! I made their blankets with orange dump truck themed fleece. I used the dump truck, and it's accompanying dirt as a theme for everything. The card and bag are stamped with construction vehicles moving pounds of dirt, and the word "DIRT" colorfully spelled out.

I tied the edges of the blanket and added another applique - a dump truck this time. I also added a toy dump truck to the gift.

Inside the cards I wrote "Welcome to the wonderful world of Dirt!" I should know. I happen to be an expert on boy dirt!

This worked out great! I might have to make this a habit of making baby gifts in batches like this, several at a time, so i can be ready next time there is a bumper crop of babies around here.

Be My Valentine!

I was SO in the mood - to make valentines, that is! Valentines Day is the perfect opportunity to play with all my stamps and stuff, and at the same time show my dear ones how much I love them.

And when I make valentines, there is always chocolate and candy involved, of course - another motivating factor.

I was anxious to try my new Petal Cone die for my Big Shot which makes this perfectly adorable cone shaped box!

I just love the red and white wide striped ribbon and the crinkly gold paper!

Crowns, the Eiffel Tower, and the key to my heart - so very French! This Valentine is so ME! Amour!!!!

I also made these candy bar holders. So fun and easy. XOXO!

When you pull up on the ribbon, the candy bar pops out! What's not to LOVE?

For the kids in my seminary class, I made these cute little baggies. I found the small paper bags on clearance years ago, thinking I could do just such a project. The toppers are just cut with my Top Note die. The heart is shiny and puffy using Crystal Effects. LOVE - from the bottom of my heart!

For my own kiddos, I simply dressed up some boxes of conversation hearts with my new Be My Valentine stamp, the jumbo scallop circle punch, and a bubbly texture folder on my Big Shot!

I (heart) my boys: Alex, Nate, Derek, Dylan, Caleb, and Luke!

My younger guys also made their valentines for all the kids in their classes. It is a tradition. We make these every year, and have since my highschooler was in preschool - lollipop holders. They are quick and cute, and the kids do most of the work themselves. Caleb and Luke worked so hard on them. It was so fun to watch. Both crafters after my own heart!

Happy Valentine's Day, my fellow Attic Diggers! Hope you just feel the love!

Love-ly Decor

AtticGal Rachelle says:

I LOVE decorating for Valentines Day! Red is one of my favorite colors and I have a lot of it in my home, so it is a perfect fit for my glittery Valentines decor.

I especially love this corner built in that is painted red inside. It is a perfect backdrop for my milk glass and it is easy to spell out the love we all feel this time of year!

The bay wreaths I have up all year on the front doors, are given a bit of love with sparkly hearts and ribbon!

Look up! Some large glitter hearts I got at after Valentine's day clearance add some great color overhead.

In the entryway I have featured some pictures of my hubby and on our wedding day, as well as pictures of some of the great loves in our family history. Also my favorite LOVE banner (see more on this and my other V-day decor last year here.)

In the dining room, next to the corner cabinet are a huge mirrored platter full of apothocary jars filled with rose petals, flowers, cherries, glittered hearts, keys (to my heart, of course) and giant acrylic diamonds, along with some pretty valentine mints that I stamped for friends.

On the other built-in hutch is a spread of delicious desserts, cakes, and chocolates. They are all fake, unfortunately, but look just like the real deal!

A red toile tablecloth and sparkly mirrored hearts tied to the backs of the chairs make the dining room perfect for a romantic dinner - for 8, in our case. (Lucky me - I have 7 men to lavish me with their affections!)

The message on the chalkboard is a simple one. Love U! Underneath it the church pew, one of my very favorite things, is dressed with a red and white Hawaiian quilt and some fun pillows.

On the front porch, in the big urn, I put a pre-potted bunch of red and white tulips, that, although they are usually thought of as more for Easter decor, seem to work perfectly here for Valentines Day.

If you haven't done so yet, check out the rest of my Valentines Day decor from last year's post here. There is much more love where that came from!)

Have a love-filled Valentines Day! May it sparkle!

Build-Your-Own-Valentine Party

AtticGal Rachelle says:

I love Valentines Day, and I adore making handmade valentines! It is so much fun to see what I can create for all the people I love. This year I thought it would be so fun to invite my friends over to create valentines of their own with me. Crafting is always so much more fun with friends!

The refreshments were easy, but oh, so lovely. Everything was pink and red, heart-shaped or kissed!

As were all the crafting supplies, and the fun projects the ladies made with them!

I brought out all my stamps, inks, scissors, dies, jewels, ribbons, wheels, and papers that could possibly be used for making Valentines. They ladies could make whatever they wanted - One and only fancy card for their one and only, or a bunch of little ones for all their little ones.

Above are some candy bar cases and a viewmaster card.

Some did their own thing using their own imaginations inspired by all the fun stuff at their disposal, and others copies some samples I had almost exactly. It didn't matter where their ideas came from - they all made some wonderful creations!

Everyone had a great time, and there are gonna be some very lucky recipients of these beautiful tokens of love come Monday!

I might have to make a Build-your-own-Valentine party a tradition!

Experiments with Light

AtticGal Rachelle says:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I have been having a lot of fun with photography lately, and just wanted to show you Attic Diggers something pretty darn cool I just posted on The Attic Window, my photo blog. Custom bokeh (bokeh is the term for those circles of light you see in photos, when the light is out of focus. Well, it turns out the light can come in other shapes besides circles - and you can make this camera accessory yourself! Completely DIY!)

Check it out HERE.

Who would have thought I could use my stamping supplies, i.e. decorative punches and cardstock, in my photography? Will wonders never cease?

If you have a DSLR camera, you really should give this a try!

LOVE IT!