E is for Easter

When I was a child, Easter was a new dress with a scratchy petticoat. It was ruffled socks and pretty shoes that were foreign to me, as I wore corrective shoes all the other days of the year. It was a pinchy hat and gloves and a little pocketbook in which I would try to smuggle candy from my Easter basket to church. It was searching for Easter eggs inside the house, because it was always too cold to hunt for them outdoors. It was hollow chocolate bunnies and jellybeans in the basket and ham on the table for Sunday dinner. 

Happy Easter to those who celebrate. He is risen. He is risen indeed.

Easter 1963 with my brother Phil and my mom in the background.

S is for Shaving Cream Painting

Preschoolers love anything involving paint. 

I found a paint project for my Pre-K class to do that used paint but wasn't messy (for them). 

Shaving cream painting. And it's really cool!

Here's the Pinterest pin:

Found on ashley-ulicni.blogspot.com

Cool, huh? And it was (mostly) easy!

We gave each child a paper plate, a small mound of shaving cream, and a plastic knife. The child's job was to spread the shaving cream evenly on the plate (we helped them after they goobered it around the plate a bit first). 

Next, we squeezed some acrylic paint in horizontal stripes across the shaving cream and gave the child a toothpick, showing them how to drag the toothpick through the shaving cream and make patterns with the paint.

When the child was satisfied with the way the paint was mixed, we laid an egg cut from white cardstock onto the shaving cream and pressed very gently, then peeled the egg off.

Pressing egg onto shaving cream.

Gently lifting the egg from the shaving cream.

Before the shaving cream is scraped off.

Using a spatula (a squeegee would probably work really great, but all we had was a spatula, so, yeah), scrape the shaving cream off the egg and discard.

And after!

You are left with an AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL, MARBLED-EFFECT EASTER EGG!

Make sure you tilt your iphone as you balance on the top step of a flight of stairs to take this picture,
making it look as though the bulletin board is hung crookedly on the wall, which it certainly is not.

PINTEREST WIN!

Playing Fast And Loose With The Numbering: TToT

Participating in the A to Z Challenge makes the week go by FAST! Time to put on my Ten Things of Thankful hat and keep working.

1. I had my monthly oncologist appointment this week in the new hospital. Almost four years ago, one of our two hospitals in town (and the one our family uses, both by choice and by order of our insurance company) was totally destroyed in an EF-5 tornado (that's the worst kind). Almost immediately, the hospital began operating out of trailers (I had a surgery in one of those trailers), a modular building (I had a surgery in there, too) and now in a beautiful, brand new facility (I hope I DON'T have a surgery there, as nice as it may be). The cancer center was moved from its trailer (yes, TRAILER) to the new offices on Sunday, and they were up and at 'em on Monday. Thankful the move went smoothly, thankful they finally are able to have a real home at the new Mercy Hospital. 

Modeling the scrubs they made me wear for an x-ray.
The tech grabbed a pair instead of digging through for
the right size, and there's enough room for two of me in there.

2. That one counts as two.

3. My daughter was invited to join Tri-M Music Honor Society this week. Tri-M is a national organization that recognizes students for academic and musical achievements, service activities and leadership responsibilities. Yay!

4. Emma was also invited to join her school's chapter of the National Honor Society this week. Students are invited based on grades, service, character inside and outside of school, and leadership. Double yay!

5. Okay, while I'm on the subject of Emma, she also nominated a school board member for the American Red Cross Everyday Hero award, and her nominee was chosen, one of seven that was picked from 50 nominees. The ceremony was a week ago, but I didn't have access to the video that they made until this week, but now I do. I can't seem to embed it, but if you'll click on this link, it will take you there. Humor me and watch it. I'll wait....

http://www.fourstateshomepage.com/story/d/story/american-red-cross-everyday-hero-anne-sharp/71261/o9bESb3Uqk6XH7eQiD0XoA

6. If you watched the video, then I'll count that one as two and end this sooner....

7. The College Boy has been home since Wednesday evening for Easter break. He leaves size 15 shoes in inconvenient places (like the middle of the kitchen), bugs the crap out of Ruby by carrying her around, making her do her ventriloquist act (must video that some time), leaves empty Diet Coke cans everywhere, constantly asks when the next meal is going to be, and I wouldn't have him any other way.

Why is there a pencil in my freezer, you ask? Because the outside of
this particular pencil changes color with the heat of your fingers.
The College Boy wanted to test it....

8. We had severe storms Thursday night and spent much of the evening in the basement, listening to the weather reports on the radio. The third warning was at 2:30 a.m. Fortunately, the tornadoes sighted did little damage in the area, and none of them were actually in Joplin. 

See the pinky red part? That's not good.

9. We had our Easter celebration with my husband's family on Saturday evening. We don't get to spend enough time with Kristin, my sister in law, and her family (they live two hours away, in Tulsa), which is NOT a thankful, so I'm EXTRA thankful when we get a chance to get together with them. Plus, I beat Kristin at Bananagrams, Just throwing that in there....

10. It's Easter! He is risen!

This year's Easter pics didn't go so well....

I'll be even MORE thankful if you'll check out some of my A to Z Challenge posts, if you haven't already. I MADE DOUGHNUTS! REAL DOUGHNUTS! DELICIOUS DOUGHNUTS!

Hey, link up your thankful posts below.

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E is for Easter

I am from the end of an era.

Watch a movie from pre-World War II through the 1950s, and you will see women wearing hats and gloves when they went out. On I Love Lucy, the women all wore hats and gloves for such simple activities as to play bridge at one another's homes. And they looked so glamorous!

But in the 1960s, not long after Jackie Kennedy left the White House and her little pill box hats behind her, the rest of American women began abandoning hats as well. 

Just a little too late for me.

One of the last vestiges of the hat era was Easter Sunday. No little girl was dressed for church that day without a frilly dress, white gloves, and a hat.

It was Easter Sunday 1963, and I was dressed in my Easter best. I was two years old and still vividly remember the scratchy petticoat I was wearing under my dress that day while posing next to my brother on our back patio. I remember the ruffled socks. The shiny shoes with the slippery soles.

But the worst thing was the hat. 

The hat that squeezed my head, pinching me above my ears, the elastic band under my chin biting into my skin.

I hate, hate, HAAAATED that hat.

It isn't obvious, is it?