Easter Fail!

I love the Easter season and I've always tried to make it a special time at our house. I want our family to find ways to focus on the life and resurrection of our Savior, but I also love celebrating with eggs, Easter baskets and candy. The way I see it, all those "fun" things are just symbols of something even more joyful and exciting.

The Easter bunny always hides the kids' baskets and they have to search all over the house. This year the bunny had especially good taste and included books along with the ridiculous amounts of candy. Here are links for some great Easter books. Choose your category: Nephite, Restoration, First Easter, Isaiah, Easter ideas

Sorry, for going off on a book tangent. I just couldn't resist!

We also had a great time trying some of Martha Stewart's egg dying techniques. Here is a "cracked" egg I made. It gave me a good chance to develop my patience as I cut a jagged edge out of sticky electrical tape using little tiny scissors.

Another new project this year was making a garden tomb. Marianne has more wonderful pictures on her blog and a link to the creative friends who inspired us. It was exciting to get up on Easter morning and find the stone rolled away. The next day, the little buds you see just above the stone, surprised us by bursting into bloom. Special thanks to my sister who forgave us for visiting their yard while they were gone and digging up some moss for our garden.

Now for our Easter disaster. . .

I really wanted to have a seder dinner with my family this year. My younger kids can hardly remember the last time, so I decided to celebrate Passover during Family Home Evening the day after Easter. Unfortunately, I had trouble with my grocery list.

Grape juice - check!
Green herbs - check!
Roasted eggs - hey we can use the ones we dyed!
Lamb bone - umm, why don't we just use a breadstick
Matzah - totally forgot

I am embarrassed to admit that instead of kosher unleavened bread, we used ritz crackers. Without the lamb bone and the Matzah I probably should have abandoned the whole idea, but I persevered. I got out my almonds, apples and cinnamon and set to work making the haroset. My blender gave me a bit of trouble, but it was finally finished. A quick taste confirmed it was delicious!


As our Passover dinner proceeded, things were going well. We lit the candles, recited scriptures and sang songs. We sampled the haroset and herbs. Then I noticed that the haroset looked a bit gray. Upon closer inspection I found that there seemed to be little gray things rising to the top the of bowl. What was going on?!

When Aaron spit out pieces of rubber, I suddenly realized why my blender hadn't worked very well.. The rubber sealing ring at the base had gotten caught on one of the blades and was chopped up along with the haroset.

Uggghh! I guess it's a good thing we're not Jewish.

April Fool's

As a child, I LOVED April 1st. Mainly because it gave me permission to play jokes on my brother Scott. I was a very rules-oriented kid. I wasn't a practical joker because that usually involved lying or breaking some kind of rule. But on April Fool's Day, it was okay. In fact, you were SUPPOSED to fool people.

So, I spent every March 31st planning a prank. One year I "sent" him a package from Hawaii with nothing but bricks inside. Another year I fooled with his favorite condiment, cinnamon sugar. I planned to add pepper to the mix, but the pepper spilled all over me and I ended up sneezing for about 20 minutes! One year we had friends visiting and we planned an elaborate hoax on our moms. Our story was that one of the kids had been climbing on the swing set and fell from the top. We had the "injured" child scream and then lay down "unconscious" on the ground. The rest of us acted really upset and someone ran to get the moms. We considered using fake blood as ketchup, but decided against it. Our trick was a huge success, except for the fact that our mothers didn't quite see the humor in it.

A few years ago, I made meatloaf cupcakes and pound cake "cheese" sandwiches. It was fun, but it didn't really fool anyone. One year Marianne put a raisin in the toothpaste tube and it was quite a "gross out" to Evan. My brother Jason once sent us an ultrasound picture announcing that they were pregnant. We were all impressed with his mad photoshop skills, but none of really believed him.

I guess I need to plan ahead and come up with something to make next April Fool's Day really memorable. Any ideas?

What is your favorite April Fool's trick?