FIVE ON FRIDAY

 I will be posting Easter pictures this weekend.  I thought for Five on Friday, I'd show you some other stuff going on around here. 

ONE

Mushrooms!

Some of our family went mushroom hunting.

I was kindly given some fresh mushrooms which I fried in butter the next morning,

and made a mushroom and cheese omelette out of it.

TWO

I've been working on beehive equipment.  It's been several years of being too busy and not being organized in the beekeeping equipment department.  This year, I'm ready! 

I think.

I want to paint all of these nice pastel colors when I get the chance!

THREE

Everyone should know by now that the dandelion is the honeybees first flower in the spring that they get nectar from, at least in this part of the country.

We do our part.

Make a wish!

FOUR

I sat out one lovely evening this week and watched the sun set, with coffee and crochet!

FIVE

We have a LOT of lilacs blooming right now and I picked a huge bouquet for the house.

I wish you could smell them!

We have several different varieties

FIVE

Crochet group....

First of all, I went to cousin Vickie's house Wednesday evening and started a new blanket.

I'm still working on my old one, but I need something mindless to work on while at crochet.  The old one is very close to having to lay it out and put it together.

So I started the coastal blanket that is from Lucy's blog at Attic 24.  I love it!  Of course, I'm only on row three! 

Cheryl started making a house pillow.  Look at those perfectly neat rows!

K is working on her cupcake blanket (which is also an Attic 24 kit)

Debbie is working on an Attic 24 bag kit.  In case you are wondering, we got together with a group of knitters and we all placed a rather large order.

And....yes....we do allow a knitter to sit with us  now and then!

and

Bonus picture....

we've had some absolutely horrible weather this week,

lots of rain and cold,

but I did get a pretty picture after the rains yesterday.

Have a great weekend

Easter pictures to come

I'm hooking up with FAST blog for Five on Friday.

Head on over by clicking here to see what other bloggers have been doing.

Cindy

A Springy Easter Cake!

Besides cleaning and decorating for Easter this week,

I have been making food.  I always make no bake cookies in the shape of nests,

which I will show you later.

And I baked two hams today.

Easy Peasy Green Bean Casserole tomorrow.

For my Five on Friday I thought I'd share with you the cake I made.

I'm joining FAST blog with Five on Friday so here we go...

Let's talk cake.

One!

This year I decided I was going to make a cake. 

And I was going to make it in three different colors. 

I saw this on Pinterest.

And one evening  earlier this week I decided I would bake the cakes.

And I forgot I was going to color the layers, until I sat down  my computer and looked at the cakes on the counter top.....DOH!

I put the three cakes in the freezer because I made them earlier in the week. 

The fourth one,

we ate.

TWO

I hatched a Plan B.

 A couple of nights ago I started melting colored white chocolate

and using cookie cutters to make Eastery/springy shapes.

THREE

Today I got the cake out of the freezer and used a recipe from Martha Stewart's cake book for the icing.  I also used a recipe from her cake book for the vanilla cake.  I tinted the icing green.

FOUR!

 Then I started with the biggest flowers and pressed them into the icing.

 I did it with the smaller flowers and bunnies and such.

Then I decided to add some grass.  So I melted some green white chocolate, and before it completely hardened, I took a steak knife and made blades.

FIVE

TA DAH!

I think it turned out pretty cute! 

 These will go on in the morning. 

I put the cake in the fridge for the night.

I don't know if you can see the recipes or not in these pictures.

They came from this book.

Happy Easter

Cindy

Check out other Five on Friday bloggers here, alone with Tricky Wolf at FAST Blog.

Crochet Group

Since I'm getting ready to head out to crochet....

taking a break from all of the work this week...

.I thought I'd quickly show you pictures from last week.   

K made this cardi!!!  It's gorgeous!!!

I love it.  I'm hoping when she gets ready to donate it to goodwill,

she lets me know.

 Debbie finished this blanket!  Beautiful!  I think I have this kit, from Attic 24, and I can't wait to start it.

 I don't have a pic of the grannies I made for my blanket, and I am getting ready to leave so I'll show you later!   But check this out.  Kay made us all a bracelet out of her leftover cardi yarn!!!  COOL!  See the bee!!!

And if you look closely you can see who arrived just in time!

More later...gotta run!

Cindy

Spring Cleaning and Easter Preparing

Since I've been home from vacation the weather has been rainy and grey, but one day the sun came out, and so did the deer!

 I spent a lot of time inside last week, doing  Spring cleaning.

  

I had to recruit some help for the ceiling fans and lights!

I've also been preparing for Easter

My parents took a huge bag of eggs home and stuffed them.  I've still got a huge bag to go!

The weather was pretty nice over the weekend so I decided I best take advantage and do some Easter decoration planting for the tables.

 These little 'baskets' are from an egg coloring kit I bought at the dollar store!  Clever huh?  The spider plants are starts (babies), from a plant that my cousin, Gloria, gave me starts from a couple of years ago.   And her plant was in our Grandpa's room when he was alive...20something years ago.

 I also did a bit of evening crochet on this blanket, but I'll talk about that in another post.

 I decided since it was warm and sunny yesterday I would get into some beehives.  Good thing I did.  This one was building comb in extra space from an empty candy board.

This is the empty candy board, which is what gave them some extra space.  I've removed it and added a hive body and super, which is much better for the hive.  So far, I have six live hives out of eight.  WAY BETTER than last year.  I'll have to split some hives to give them room to grow this year.  Which means I'll have more hives/more bees! 

More back aches!!!

Speaking of aches. I'm going to go take a nap and an ibuprofen.  I have a toothache.  Unfortunately, its' that back tooth area.  I tried to wear a night guard last night.  I think I take back everything I said about wearing night guards.  It's not working for me.  I seem to clench more with it in my mouth.  I don't know what to do.  How does one stop the clenching?  I really don't live a stressful life.

Cindy