A Happy Late Easter!

Today I wanted to share a fun crafty post. 

I wanted to post a knitting project... But it isn't finished, with Easter and all of its activities I got slightly delayed with the craft projects. 

So I thought I would share our Easter with you because it was as is every holiday in our family VERY busy and very fun filled! (Be fair warned that this is a post filled with Pictures of Delaney, and its blocked full of every move we made for two days Easter fun)

We started off with an Easter Party at my Dad's work. She had such a good time! They did an egg hunt, Dyed eggs and even had a Mickey Mouse Movie (needless to say she did a whole lot of watching Mickey Mouse and not a whole lot else... ) She had a great time during the egg hunt part but not so much with the Easter Bunny himself. 

At one point the "man in charge" said "Ok lets all get our photos with the Easter Bunny before he leaves!" and Delaney screamed out "NOOOOOOO I don't want my picture with the Bunny!"

But other wise she had fun!

She enjoyed some lovely snacks!

And She looked adorable!

Saturday afternoon we spent with Auntie and we had a great time... 

(more on that later in the week!)

Then on Saturday night she decided that she needed to leave the Easter Bunny a snack however she thought that he would like "Just cold water" to drink and a rice crispy square for his snack! 

Then on Sunday she received this note with her Easter Basket!

It reads 

"Dear Delaney, Thank you for my snack! I hope you enjoy your Egg Hunt and have a wonderful Easter! Love the Easter Bunny!"

She was so excited!

Then commenced the Egg Hunt!

She found all 37 eggs and had a great time! Daddy may have told her where to look helped her find some of them... and then it was breakfast with Papa (Robyn's dad) and the off to Nanny and Poppy's house (my Mom and Step-dad) with Auntie for Easter lunch! 

She loves to wear a pretty dress...

We had a lovely day and when we got home we put on our bunny ears had some chocolate eggs and watched movies! 

All in all a day to remember!

How was your Easter? Did you get to spend it eating Easter eggs and wearing bunny ears? What ever you did I hope you had an amazing day with your family!

My Idea Binder...

For a long time I have been collecting cute ideas and little notes on things I'd like to make but usually they are on little slips of paper or on random pages in some notebook or another... and they inevitably get lost... (have I mentioned that although I am a type A person I'm very unorganized)

Well a while ago I started working on my "Idea Binder" to try to keep it all together, however I hated how it turned out...

I tried to do a modge podge type of covering but I really hated it!

So instead I figured I would cover it with fabric...

I grabbed a pillow case that I had picked up at Dollerama to try to make a pillow case dress for Delaney and well just never got around to. 

I cut it down the seams and then cut it down to fit my binder. 

I sewed a button on the front of the fabric so I could keep it closed. 

Then I glued the fabric with hot glue to the corners first... 

(I trimmed the corners so it would help them lay flat once the rest of the fabric was glued down)

Then I glued down the rest of the edges, pulling tight at each edge to be sure that it wasn't bunched or buckled on the other side. 

(while I did this I hot glued a piece of ribbon to the opposite side of the button so I could wind it around the button to keep it closed but you could also put in a piece of stretchy cord in a loop so it just goes around the button once and keeps it tighter)

I then took some of the left over fabric and sewed two layers of it together on the edges to create a pocket.

I then hot glued the edges of each of those pieces to a piece of cardboard and hot glued them in place on either side of the three center rings.

Then it came to dividing the sections...

I made these dividers the first time I tried to pretty up the binder.

They were made by cutting down a few pieces of cardboard and modge podging some scrapbook paper, tissue paper and tissue to the cardboard. (the Zebra is my favorite! Not only because its ZEBRA but also because it was made from the tissues I had on our wedding day!)

Then I wanted a few sub-dividers as I wanted to be able to use one section only for blog ideas...

I cut down a Pizza box into the shapes I wanted... 

Then I covered them with scrap booking paper of my choice, I just used a regular glue stick to glue the paper to the dividers then cut the paper down and punched the holes and popped them into the binder.

And after all that it was done!

I love the pattern on the fabric and it does exactly what I need... 

Keeps all my notes in one place!

I've been outed...

Ive been pulled out of the blogging closet... Yup Ive been outed...

I should have known better and I should have watched my step but maybe just a little I was like a cheater leaving little digital links to my crime...

Last Friday I returned home from a play-date with friends of ours, only to call my mom just to say Hi and were home now... to get the reply of...

"I learned something today" to which I said "Whats that?" Mom in her most Motherly voice "Um that you have a BLOG" 

Long story short months ago my sister turned me onto The Shabby Nest a great blog who in my sisters words has one of the best linky parties out there... and it is one of the places that I have been linking up to... not thinking that my sister would be looking there at her linky party every week... so when she saw my "M" from my "Mrs. M" post she went for a look thinking that maybe this was the blog I had gotten my idea from when low and behold here was my little corner of the blogging world. 

Why didn't I tell them that I started to blog? Well I was a little embarrassed I think, and I wanted to get a bit of practice under my belt. Maybe I felt like I wasn't good enough of a blogger (granted I have only been blogging since February 4th) to tell the world yet. Maybe I just didn't know how to tell them... Either way I was keeping it a bit of a secret, and there are still plenty of people who don't know. 

But in all truth and fairness I think this may have been the best way for them to find out... I didn't even know that they were looking at the blog until after they had been through the whole thing (so there was no awkward pause of are they reading it, what do they think, when will they look and what will they say) and they had only the loveliest things to say about it! It was like having the band-aid ripped off when you didn't even know that there was a band-aid in the first place...

So now I welcome both my Mom and my Sister as I am sure they are reading and still laughing at the fact that I was too chicken to tell them that I had started a blog to begin with...

Make it Monday! Easy Chicken Casserole!

Last week while looking around at the blog hops and linky parties I came across this recipe.... over at On Sutton Place as soon as I saw it I thought..... 

hmmmmm that looks good and hey I have all that stuff... 

and so off I went to the cupboard and started to make it for supper... 

That's when I realized that no I didn't have everything for it....

But the Chicken was in the oven almost cooked and so I thought substitute today make it right soon...

Here is the actual recipe... (with my two cents added in)

Fill a pot with water and bring to a boil.
Cook about 8 oz. of egg noodles according to package directions.

when cooked drain noodles.

While noodles are cooking mix the following:
1 can cream of celery soup
3/4 can milk
(it works best to use a whisk)
3 heaping Tablespoons Light Mayo 

(I recommend mixing in your round casserole dish to save on the clean up)
1 pkg. Steam fresh Singles Peas (or any frozen peas) 

Shred two chicken breasts 

(original recipe uses rotisserie chicken from the supermarket... major time saver!)
add everything into the soup, milk, and mayo mix.
Bake at 350 for 30 - 40 minutes 

until it's toasty brown and bubbly around the edges

 

Here is how Ann's looks...

Now for my substitutions.... 

I only had no cream of celery soup, no peas, and no egg noodles... so I used cream of mushroom soup, corn, and regular pasta...

Here's mine...

 

(looks a little light but that's just the camera lightening)

 

I was a little worried that I had changed it to much but let me tell ya... It was good! 

That's an understatement it was great!

Delaney wasn't really a huge fan but she isn't one for foods that are all cooked together, or that all taste the same. 

All in all I will be making this again and I can't wait to see if the taste changes much with the celery soup rather than the mushroom... 

I will keep you posted... 

Give it a try, your family might just love it! Do you have any simple suppers you'd like to share? Let me know in the comments and you might just see it here on a future make it Monday!

Ps. if you have a min stop over and see Ann at On Sutton Place she has some great posts over there on decor and some great recipes too! And you can even visit Ann's Attic where she has some great gently used home decor items for sale...

Desk Organizing Part 2!

As I mentioned before I have been trying to get our desk at least a little bit more organized.... and I took the first step by making my Desk Organizer seen here! So as another step forward I added two more pieces that I am hoping will aid in the de-cluttering of the desk!

I'm not sure if I've already started "nesting" or if it's more of a Spring cleaning venture but as someone who is very unorganized I'm running with it either way! 

So here they are my two new desk organizing pieces! 

First up is my Notes Write And Wipe Frame...

This project was made in all of 5 mins! 

It's super easy and very useful!

I took these two thrifty finds...

The frame ran me all of 99 cents and the scrapbooking book (which I had all but forgotten about) cost me 3! 

The best thing about this book is as you can see on the cover it came with 16 sheets of scrapbooking paper!

Aren't they pretty and such variety too.... the only draw back of these papers are that they aren't standard scrapbook size so I had no idea what to do with them for a long while... (hence them sitting on the shelf being forgotten about)

So once I had a look through the papers and chose one that I liked I took the glass out of the frame and traced around it on the paper so that it would fit perfectly, then I glued the letters N-O-T-E-S on to the paper with a trust old glue stick and popped it in the frame... 

I swear the longest and hardest part of this project was picking out the paper to put in the frame! 

Next is my Little Notes Bulletin Board...

This one took a bit more time and a lot more glue... 

For this one I needed a few things but they were all things I had lying around the house (I either picked them up because they were super cheap or they were left overs of other projects) 

Still a small stack of supplies if you ask me...  Just a hot glue gun, scissors, ribbon and some cork coasters (I used Hexagon and square shape ones but really you can use any shape as long as they fit tightly together)

This one was quick once I got going but to start I cut down my cardboard backing to the size I wanted, then I laid out my smaller hexagon shaped cork coasters in a pattern so that they covered the whole board, cutting and piecing together where need be to make sure the whole board was covered.

Then I hot glued them all in place, after that I placed my square coasters on top and hot glued them in to place as well. Once that was done I just hot glued some ribbon over the seams and the edge to clean it up and make it pretty. I glued a small piece of left over ribbon on the back for hanging and then it went up on the wall!

And here they both are in place at the desk...

And  they are getting well used already if I can say so my self! 

They have reduced a lot of the clutter on our desk making it much easier to find a place to set my tea mug down and I also have enough space to put my newly covered and revamped idea binder too! 

I just hope I can stay on this organizing kick... If I can I will have a whole house  a lot of work to do around here...

(Look for my binder post on Tuesday of next week! I am pretty proud of how it turned out!)

Have you done some Spring cleaning and re-organizing this week? Made anything fun and useful out of thrifty or (better yet) free materials? Leave a comment and some inspiration!