Easter Pintrest

Thank you Pintrest again for great Easter ideas.  We made these treats for Grace and Isabelle's Easter Parties at Daycare.  The girls helped me and they were a huge hit!

I also wanted a spring-y mantel and wah-la.  A little yarn and felt and a quick trip to the thrift store later.  I love it!

Easter Sunday

Does two years in a row a tradition make? Well, if so, we officially have ourselves a tradition! The Michael's have hosted Easter Sunday dinner two years in a row. It's quite a feat considering our family lives two hours plus away from us. We had a great Easter Weekend. Besides all of the new dresses, we had a good visit from the Easter Bunny. She He led the girls through a scavanger hunt to find thier Easter Baskets. I think a good time was had by all!

The girls woke up to jelly beans leading to thier first clue (and new umbrellas!)

Thier second clue led them to the fruit basket in the kitchen and some Grow your own strawberry kits.

The third clue was in the dryer and had new purses!

Finally! hidden in the utility closet!

Palm Sunday

In my typical fashion I am a couple of weeks behind on what's happening in our lives. But I have been lovelingly reminded that there are family members in India who are waiting to see new pictures! That is a great reminder for me to keep up my little blogging experiment! So I wanted to share with you some pictures of Palm Sunday. Our church has a kid-centric service on palm sunday complete with 100,000 easter egg hunt and a great service that is mostly for children. Our kids love it and it's a huge community outreach. Have I mentioned we love our church? Well, we do!!


You can see the football field dotted with eggs for the hunt. I guess "hunt" is a strong word for what occured. Egg "Pick Up" is probably more appropriate!


They had several bunnies on stage before the service you could go and get your pictures taken with!



Isabelle loved the bunnies...Grace, on the other hand, still has a fear of people dressed up as characters!


Face painted bunny whiskers and nose!


One of our little neighbors, Riley, came with us! The girls had a great time with her!

Pizza Basics

We love pizza at our house. Imagine that. An American family that loves pizza? Well, it's true. But we also like to try to eat at home as much as possible. Maybe it goes without saying, but it's cheaper and healthier than eating out. So over the past few years I've perfected our pizza recipe and I would like to share it with you. First off, I use THIS pizza recipe from the Pioneer Woman. She's awesome and using one of her recipes is pretty much a fail safe!

Other things I've picked up over the years that make an outstanding pizza are the following:
Make your dough the night before, and put it the fridge. Take it out and let it warm up before you roll it out or it will be too cold and elastic to roll properly.
Use a baking stone. Put it in the oven and heat your oven on as high as it will go. For us that's 550 degrees.
After rolling out the pizza crust, I place the crust on parchment paper, so I can slide it and the parchment paper onto the hot stone for a super crusty crust.
I put the toppings on, pepperoni last so it curls up nice and crisp.
If you want something really decadent, use whole mozerella and slice it and place it on your pizza. A little more conservative in the calorie area, shred it on.
We also use turkey pepperoni to cut calories.
I also sprinkle on a few dried spices (fresh if I have them) basil, garlic powder, and oregono
Lower the heat to about 475 degrees when you put the pizza in the oven and bake pizza 8-10 minutes until bubbly and brown.
Enjoy!