Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Ke$ha would have felt at home.

So. The Better Homes and Gardens website is one of my favorite places to check out for holiday decor ideas. I had sooooooooo many things I wanted to try for Easter. I thought this idea would be easy and pretty cheap:


I decided to forego buying a glass egg and just use a glass vase instead. You use double-sided tape and glitter. Easy peasy. I wanted to use pastel colors for mine. I just don't feel like bright red and blue are Easterey colors.

I didn't have the right colors of glitter, so when Ben went to Wal-Mart one night, I told him to see if there was any pastel glitter there. He called me and said they had this whole canister thing of several pastel-ey colors. I was so excited! I told him to get it and bring it on home.

No. They were not pastel. They were neon. Neon colors. I was like, "Bennnnn, I don't know how I feel about this... Neon? For Easter decor??"

He was like, "It will look great. Just trust me."

I had to fold ten billion loads of laundry, so he got started on my little project. And not only did he use neon glitter, but he did checkers and polka dots instead of stripes. Checkers and polka dots are cute - don't get me wrong - but I just wanted stripes. A bit of continuity.

I was sad.

And then the next day, the kids saw what Ben had done, and they, too, reallyreallyreally wanted to decorate the eggs with glitter, so I thought, oh, what the H. Let 'em at it. I knew it would turn out ugly, but oh well. The damage was already done.

I read this book last month for my book club, called Tending Roses. This old lady is writing in her journal, and she talks about how, when she was first married, she took really good care of her roses - she was out there with those roses for hours and hours every week. They were gorgeous - her pride and joy. But when she started having kids and got really busy with them, she couldn't tend her roses as much as she wanted to, and they started looking kind of crappy. It made her sad at the time, but what can you do? Kids are the priority. Kids or roses? Kids. After her kids got older and moved away, she was able to tend her roses again. Then she says something really poignant - something like, "I miss the days when my roses grew wild." Meaning the days when she was raising and spending time with her kids. It goes by in the blink of an eye.

So that's my philosophy. For now, I'll have ugly decorations that my kids help me make. When my kids grow up, I can replace my ugly kid decorations if I want. But I'll bet I won't want to. I'll probably see those ugly decorations and wish my kids were little again.

Enough philosophy. On to the action.

First, you put the double-sided tape on. In stripes, or squares, or in polka dots. They make all types. For the stripes, don't try to use the kind that applies like white-out strips. It doesn't adhere to the egg. You have to use the kinds that you tear off and apply by hand. Even Mikey was able to do the sticky tape stuff:



He chose squares. Dylan chose polka-dots:



Sadie did stripes:






She's wearing a sticker on her forehead. Every Monday at dance class, she gets a sticker. And every Monday, she wears it on her forehead all day long, to school and everything.

We tried pouring the glitter over the egg, but we found it easier to make a little pile of glitter, then roll the egg around in it.





That's a weird face Dylan is making.







Sadie ended up decorating the majority of the eggs. Dylan and Micah got bored after just a couple. She was there at the table forever. I don't blame her. It's fun.

I only got to do a few:




See? That's what I'm talkin' about. Stripes. Pastel colors. My face is weird there because I was wearing my tooth-whitening trays and didn't want to expose the weirdness. It's like closed-mouthed smiling with braces on - hard to do. I know from experience, dude.

Oh, and the reason I said Ke$ha would have felt at home with us that day is because there was "dirt and glitter on the floor." Big time. She's always talking about glitter. She is a big fan of glitter.


Alright, so here is our crappy final product:





Um, yeah. Sad. I threw in a few neon-colored striped eggs to try to kind of pull the whole look together, but it still looks like junk. Oh well.

4 comments:

spoonTRex said...

So are these the eggs that you had to blow out? That is such a cute idea!! I'm with you about the neon though. I think it would've looked better with all pastels, but it is true that you probably won't want to replace it with something else after the kids leave:)

Mindy H. said...

Forget how they turned out (although I do think they are pretty cute), I am just so flippin' impressed that you would try a project like that... and try it with kids! Talk about ambitious! And it will be an activity that your kids will remember for a long time. Nicely done, supermom.

The Dillons said...

That is so fun. I do not think it is crappy! I think it is adorable.

Patty said...

They do not look like crap. Yuo are so hard on yourself. They look awesome. And all that time you spent on them and the quality time with the kiddos- you shoul be so proud. The patience that must have took. Bravo, kar, BRAVO!

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