Banbury Easter Weekend O'Fun

The parents stayed.  We had fun.  We did some stuff.  It rained a lot.

Lucy loved having Gma Ma & Gpa Dean over.  They brought lots of candy and other yummy treats (I'm still trying to recover from all the crap I ate).  They also brought balloons!

 

 She's got the David Bowie look going on.

Gpa Dean & Luce are best buds.  I never can tell who is enjoying themselves more when they play.

We had a little friend sneak into our house, he could probably smell all the sweet stuff in our house and wanted a taste.  Isn't that bee huge??!!  I was flipping out, I am NOT a fan of bees.

We dyed eggs!  An Easter tradition in the Banbury household.  I'm pretty sure we'll still do it when all our kids are grown and moved out.  We're cool like that. :) 

  Luce found the stickers!!

 Once again I was attacked by stickers! 

Gpa wanted to get in on the fun

 Lucy showed Gpa & Gma her sweet dance moves (in her tutu of course)

My mom just had to make her bunny cake.  That's a tradition that she's grown up with.  Lu loved to put the jelly beans in the faux grass. 

Her mindset was, "One for the bunny, five for me.  A few more for the bunny, a handfull for me!" 

On Easter morning she found her basket full of goodies from the Easter bunny.  Then she emptied out her bucket and put all the eggs we colored in it and carried it around the house.  She loved looking at all the colorful eggs and telling us the colors. 

 After church and a HUUUGE meltdown in the car, we made it to our friends, the Benruds, house for an Easter feast and an egg hunt for the kiddies.  We had a delicious feast and had an egg hunt in the house since it was raining, surprise surprise! :)  Can you tell I'm sick of all the rain we've been getting?

Here are the kids scrambling to pick up all the eggs.  Every shot I got seemed to have Trey's arm in front as he was pointing out eggs to Lucy.

Enjoying their spoils...  

My hot husband sporting Lucy's bunny glasses

Trey trying to get Luce to blow her whistle & Ian - Don't you love that curly red hair?!

On Monday morning my mom made some deviled eggs -- mmm delicious!  Lucy helped her peel the eggs.  Apparently it's very serious business.

Time always flies when the parentals come for a visit so we didn't get to go on any outings.  But we had fun just relaxing and spending time with family and good friends.  I love holidays.

P.S. If any of you are wondering about Crayola colored bubbles, stay away from them!!!  They are gross looking and stain your skin, clothes, and basically anything they touch!

Cutie Petutie

My parents stayed with us over the Easter weekend and we had a jolly good time.  I helped them take some pictures off of their phone and I found this little treasure...

It's hard to remember her being this small!

This was during her drooling stage and she wore a bib to soak up the extra drool. :)

sleepy owl

 i made this little friend just for fun...

 

...and now I think I want to make more!

Bodyslam!

I think Trey might have a few bruised ribs. :)

Look what we can do!

Well this first one was mostly Trey's project but I helped. :) When we were at IKEA (my 2nd favorite place to shop...Target is my numero uno) I was admiring their awesome fabric and I had the idea that we could get some fabric and hang it up on a wall just to add some color to the house. We bought 2 yards thinking we would do either 2 wall hangings or one wall hanging and some matching pillows. When we got home and did some brainstorming as to what we could do, Trey came up with the genius idea of building a frame and stretching the fabric on it like canvas. My handy dandy huzbee got to work this past weekend and check out the end result!! We love it!

Here is the cool bird fabric and the frame that Trey built. We just bought pretty much the cheapest wood we could find at Home Depot. It's really light but it worked great for this project.

He used screws to bind the wood together, no glue needed.

Trey used clamps to hold the fabric while he went crazy with the staple gun.

Here is the final product! We made 2, one for the living room and one for the dining area.

A few weeks ago I mod podged our magnet board so it went from boring black to a fun yellow pattern.

I love warm colors! It makes things feel so much more cozy.

And here is our one shelf we also purchased on our IKEA trip. We love the randomness of it because it represents the Banburys quite well. :)

They had some fun basic photo wire at IKEA and we decided that we could copy it for a lot less, just by attaching some simple hooks and photo hanging wire to the bottom of our shelf. And yes, those are bow clips we are temporarily using until we can find something better. We bought some unfinished mirrors from IKEA and painted them some fun colors.

I finally finished my owl painting! Woohoo! Now I just need to figure out where I want to put it.

I got a fun idea from this blog today. Wire words are so fun to make, and addicting! I just found some wire in the craft room and went to town. Good times.

I don't really know what to do with them. Right now they're hanging from the photo wire and I'm kind of liking the way they look. We'll see where they end up. :) Now time to plan out what the next projects will be. I have so many ideas, but here are a few that are first in line: I'm contemplating buying a thin sheet of wood and making a huuuge "B" to hang on the wall. And get ready for more owls soon! I hope my vision turns out the way I see it in my head. :)

My tummy is so happy right now...

Oh good golly miss molly!  Dinner tonight was sooo good, if I do say so myself. :) It was just me and Luce since Trey went out on a man date before the Priesthood Session.  I decided to make my most favorite soup in the world, Creamy Chicken & Gnocchi Soup.  This is my mother-in-law's recipe and it is DELICIOUS.  I hope she doesn't mind that I'm sharing it with my blog peeps.  I just have to because it is THE BOMB!  I want everyone to try it, and love it.  So here it is:

Creamy Chicken Gnocchi Soup

2 T olive oil

1 diced onion

1/2 package matchstick carrots

1 package gnocchi

rotisserie chicken, meat removed from bone

shredded or diced, whatever you prefer

baby spinach (stems removed)

40 oz chicken stock

1 1/2 c half and half

herbs de provence or italian seasoning

crushed red pepper flakes

Saute onions and carrots in oil with a teaspoon of herbs de provence until soft (about 4 min). Add chicken stock and crushed red pepper flakes (to taste). Bring to boil. Add gnocchi and cook until they float to the top. Add chicken, spinach (as much as you want), and more herbs.  Simmer until spinach is just wilted, and remove from heat.  Add half and half and slowly bring to simmer.

The last time I had this was right after I had Luce.  Robin made a big pot of this when she was staying with us and I ate it for lunch every day for that next week.  It was heaven sent.
    
For dessert we devoured some yummy heapsbrick oven cookies that our awesome neighbor Tamara brought us.  Visit her food blog and you can find her recipe for them, they are divine!  It was the perfect ending to a perfect dinner.

I am so happy right now.  It's funny how food can affect my mood so much.  And maybe just a little sad. :)