Fun at the Farm

Monday evening we decided the weather was too beautiful not to visit Wheeler Farm. This is one of our favorite hang-outs. We brought bread for the ducks but they must have had too many visitors that day because they weren't interested. The lighting was just perfect for some picture taking. There were photographers doing family portraits and engagements. The kids were all smily and happy. I kinda wish I'd planned for a photo shoot and dressed the kids in more coordinating outfits, but oh well. I had fun playing with the pictures in photoshop.

Springy craftiness

I'm not much of a sewer/seamstress. But recently I decided to try making a new bag for myself. Maybe I've been inspired by all the cute stuff my friend Lindsey sews. So over our recent St. George weekend my mom and my sister Rachel decided to make Amy Butler bags. We got some super cute stuff from Quilted Works, my cousin Sharla's shop. This project was challenging for me mostly because sewing instructions don't seem to be written in English. My mom had to explain pretty much every step for me. But they turned out cute! Here's mine.

I'm normally a conservative black purse kind of girl. So it's been pretty fun to have something different! When we got home I decided to try a girly girl bag pattern my mom had. Compared to the Amy Butley bag this was a piece of cake! The directions were simple and it took far less time.

The bags are small. Sydney already had one my mom made for her to be a Sunday bag. She brings her coloring stuff and small books to keep her occupied during church.

This bag was so much fun to make that I decided to make another girly girl bag to give away in Dionne's Springtime swap. Hope you like it Sarah!

This is the first craft swap I've ever done. I sent Sarah the above bag and received a couple sets of her cute note cards that she sells on Etsy. So fun. She's quite the talented artist!

Happy Easter!

It was such a beautiful Easter day! The kids were so excited to wake up and find that the Easter bunny had brought them toys and hid candy-filled eggs around the house. They also all got matching sunglasses. Great! Because they were all fighting over the same pair of broken, pink sunglasses all the time.

Tanner is hunting for eggs in style.

We went to church with my parents and had an egg hunt that afternoon. The weather was absolutely gorgeous! Perfect blue skies after all the rain we've had lately. It was quite a treat. Here are a few pictures of our fun day.

My mom and the girls walking home from church.

Sydney takes easter egg hunting pretty seriously. She didn't have much competition though. It was just her and Natalie looking for the eggs.

Natalie got really excited about the search for eggs since her big sister was so into it.

Tanner didn't have an ounce of interest in looking for eggs. He wasn't even willing to carry around a basket. He did spend a lot of time jumping on the trampoline and playing on the boulders in the backyard. This made my dad happy. He knew the grandkids would like playing on these rocks someday.

This is pretty much how it goes these days when we try to get a family picture.

Long after all the eggs were found Tanner picked up this basket and looks at us like he's ready to start the Easter egg hunt. A little too late buddy.

My beautiful girls.

Here are all the Ruben grandkids (minus Maci) dressed in their cute Easter apparel. It was so fun that Noah ended up matching my kids!

Flowers and bows

I'm gearing up for Easter. I'm not sure if my kids know the Easter bunny is even coming. We try to focus more on Christ rather than the commercial whatever. They will get Easter goodies, but it's just an added bonus. My favorite part is getting their cute little Easter outfits which I will be sure to take pictures of later. We've got a bit of an orange theme going this year. I didn't look very hard, but I wasn't able to find orange hair bows. However, I've always thought I could make them for cheaper anyways. It was quite a fun project over the weekend! My kitchen has been a mess but oh well. I ran into my neighbor, Wendy, while shopping for silk flowers and invited her over to make them on Friday afternoon. We've been watching and listening to general conference all weekend so it gave me mindless something to do if I got a bit sleepy. Sydney really enjoyed making different color combinations. She loves doing crafts with me. The hardest part for me is refraining from telling her when things don't match or trying to make her conform to my style.

She was not in the mood to smile at the camera today.

These are a few of the end products. Some of them went missing already. Hence the reason I'm making my own bows from now on. We are always losing them.