I’d seen the ideas and gotten excited. I love pretty. I actually love perfect pretty.
They were on Pinterest. They came in Better Homes and Garden. Heck, my creative girlfriend even sent me a picture.
So it was settled. Despite the most frentic work pace of my life, I had all five of us home the Saturday before Easter which meant I could go nuts. Set a beautiful table. Bake til my heart exploded. Decorate! (Yes, we pulled our Easter decor out the WEEKEND of Easter!)
My plan was to host a couple of families along with our own for an elaborate Easter brunch. We couldn’t spend it with Bray’s family as we normally did because of my hectic travel schedule but that wasn’t going to stop me from entertaining in high style.
Until, first, little bit got sick. Really sick. High fever sick. She had 104 this afternoon, her fever ever climbing even though she’s been sick since Thursday night. Which meant all the invitations got rescinded on Friday because there’s nothing worse than visiting a friend only to catch their kid’s contagion.
Unfazed, Saturday we gathered around the family kitchen table to decorate fun and festive Easter eggs. Mercy. There were dye and glitter and stickers everywhere, and the durn eggs wouldn’t take the color and they got dropped and cracked and, well, you get the idea. This is the platter of the eggs that made it, and I’m not posting it on Pinterest. (You won’t get many followers if you do… Not that I actually post anything of mine on Pinterest. Ever.)
Next up, the kids wanted to HELP in the kitchen Saturday. Y’all, I appreciate the joy that should bring me, but three five year olds baking is just not a joyful experience for me. And I consider myself a relatively joyful person. The baby particularly wanted to help, so I agreed to put him to work.
(He is clearly joyful. This may have been captured when he ordered me to let him lick the knife since he’d been relegated to sorting candy melts.)
Three things had to be baked Saturday. The zucchini bread (which is a classic for me) with a twist – dark chocolate. (Feel free to ooh and aah, this actually turned out, just slightly undercooked.)
Next were these little chicks made out of Oreos that I saw in BH&G. The problem was I couldn’t find the yellow candy melts, so we improvised with mixed color Hershey melts (see above sorting project), and I couldn’t find the white beads for the bottom so I made the executive decision green sprinkles would look as good.
It was not the melts or the green that tanked this project. I have found that if you use candy eyes for any project it tanks itself. Y’all, sorry to use Texas-twang twice in one post but this is a grab-you-by-the-shoulders-and-shake-you kind of a y’all, why do they make candy eyes? I guess if they looked realistic you’d feel weird eating eyes, but candy eyes are FREAKY! Plus the Oreos wouldn’t stay together. Plus the melts were so sticky that half the jelly beans beaks got covered by the melts so the noses are in weird spots. And the green, well the green clearly didn’t have the same effect.
Here’s project number two (you can see the magazine image at the bottom; ahem, I have a bone to pick with the editor):
Finally, project three were whimsical butterfly cupcakes. They looked adorable and super easy. I have made a zillion cupcakes. The kids desperately wanted to help, but I desperately wanted to have one of my Pinterest-y ideas turn out so I only allowed them minimal involvement: they inserted the pretzel wings and put some of the heads on. Aside from the candy grass I had to use as antlers (do butterflies have antlers? what are those things? those little antennae?), because who sells black licorice (and really, who should? it’s gross. why I am using a zillion parentheticals today?), I followed the instructions to the tee. I did make every row have one different butterfly (see the third butterfly? i’m just embracing the parenthetical. go with me.) because I meant to illustrate a big life lesson about how we’re all different but still beautiful and delicious, but I was worried that might just make me sound like Hannibal Lecter plus I was really wiped from all the failure.
Where was I? What was the point of this post? All the slang and parentheticals have me off my game. Oh yes, how my life is REALLY far from perfect pretty. But you know, it’s pretty all the same.
We have weird crumbly Oreo chicks and sick kids and butterflies with antlers, mercy, but it was good. (I won’t even go into how BREADY our beautiful Easter brunch full of Pinterest-y recipes was. Seriously with the bread in everything. What happened? Where was the MEAT?!?)
And little bit is still sick. She rallied from Easter egg hunting in the dark, since our kids wake at 6 am and spy the eggs and cannot be contained inside. You can see the poor thing has a cool pack on her head.
After mommy melted down because the team didn’t LOVE the coordinating Easter outfits I had so lovingly selected for all five of us, we all headed out to church to celebrate what Easter is really all about (the Passion, not the Pinterest). She went downhill fast during the service though. You can see from picture one, taken at 10:30, to picture two, taken at 12:30, how she tanked completely and her fever spiked again poor thing.
They’re off school tomorrow so she can get the first appointment with our pediatrician and maybe the insane amounts of sugar in our house will hold her over until then. I have a hard week, a really hard week, with work and my first of six speaking engagements this month, but I know God is good all the time and this season will teach me something just like my Pinterest kablooey reminded me what this weekend was really all about.