365-58 stampin' hearts

Cascarones!

All year long i've been gathering egg shells in preparation for making Cascarones for Easter Sunday. Cascarones are a Mexican tradtion and much more fun than just searching for and then eating boiled eggs. To make Cascarones you use hollowed out egg shells, Easter egg decorations, confetti and tisue paper. This process can be as easy or as complicated as you would like to make it. Around this time you can also find some already made for purchase in some Mexican super markets or bazaars. But what is the fun in that? If you keep it simple it can be a great project to do with the kids. My family has some great memories of making as well as breaking these.

Some people hollow out their egg shells by poking holes on either end of the egg (such as with a straight pin) and then blowing through one end so the raw egg comes out on the other. I just carefully crack around one end to make just a big enough hole for the egg to come out, about a half inch or so, then thoroughly rinse the inside of the egg and let dry. I do this basically every time i'm cooking something that involves eggs which is why it takes me all year to gather. As you can imagine sometimes my egg doesn't crack like i want it to so i can't save it for this project. But i end up getting quite a good amount. I save them in empty egg shell cartons until time to do final preparations for Easter Sunday.

Today i pulled out my stash ( I had about 4 1/2 dz this year). After last Easter i went to all the sales and bought some egg dye. Since i have all nieces (i have 2 girls and 1 son - all over 18), i'm using the Disney Princess egg dye set today, following the directions on the package for dying regular boiled eggs. If you don't want the dye to get under your finger nails you may want to use dish gloves or other thin plastic glove to handle the dyeing process.

i dyed all my eggs and set them out to dry on newspaper. Depending on the time and how creative you want to get with your eggs, you can decorate any way you like. Some people really go all out and do beautiful designs with strips of colored tape (such as masking tape), etc. Have fun with it!

Once dry i filled about 3/4 full of confetti. Some people use flour or glitter but that just makes a huge mess in your hair and when you have girls it can be murder to get it out, confetti is hard enough.

Once all my eggs had the confetti i cut out small circles of tissue paper (any color will do) big enough to glue around the hole to keep my confetti in. Done!

My sisters and mom also do this so come Easter Sunday we have lots of eggs to hide and break on each others heads. Adults get in on the fun too. It's said that if someone breaks one on your head you will have good luck. Don't know about that but depending on who broke it on your head you may have a headache. We've taught the kids to gently break it on each other's heads and especially mommy's. The older kids can get carried away with it sometimes and we remind them to be gentle.
We break the cascarones outside of course and if you also hide boiled easter eggs you'll want to let everyonje know to check before cracking on someone's head if its a boiled egg or a true Cascarone. Otherwise - ewwww. Once the eggs are broken its all organic so no damage to the environment since its just egg shells and paper (again this is another reason i don't like to use flour or glitter for my 'fillings').

Good food and friends

Had lunch with a good friend today. It had been awhile since we'd gotten together and it was great to catch up on each other's lives and hash around ideas. Macaroni Grill was the restaurant of choice and the atmosphere and pasta got our creative juices going and we discussed entrepreneurial options. She wants to do kitty things and i'd love to do quilty crafty things - from kitty mugs, embroidered t-shirts, kitty mats and quillows. Next step i think is to get our web sites going and inventory to sell. Stay tuned....
On another note, my son went out to buy a laptop, finding nothing in his price range for the functions he wanted, he decided to buy rock band instead - i am now learning to jam out - a little We Got the Beat anybody?

Quilting Here I Come…

Well I’ve done it. I signed up for My First Quilt Workshop at The Old Craft Store. It’ll be one day a week for the next 4 weeks and at the end I’ll have completed a small quilt – big enough to wrap the first grandbaby in (whenever he/she may come) or to use as a sofa throw or wall hanging.
Another reason I need my “nest” empty now, I need the room for all my stuff and the kids are way overdue on leaving - I plan on making one room my guest/library room and the other will be my sewing/scrapbooking/all-around craft room. Again don't understand those ladies who get depressed over having time to finally do what they want. What did you want to do before you became a mom - do it now. Life is short, bring the experience around to a positive light.
I nixed the idea of inviting my mom, she’d want me to pick her up, etc. and I’ll barely have time to get there from the office before class starts. Plus I don't think her sewing machine is one of those you can tote around and we need to bring our own machine for this one. I’ll also need to stock up on Slim Fast or something to drink on the way there as dinner will be out of the question and by the time I get out of there it will be too late to eat (don’t like to eat past nine at night). I’ll have some me time (hard to come by in a full house) and perhaps make some new friends, yikes and I’ll have to take a change of clothes, not too comfortable to be sewing in my work clothes. Hopefully this doesn’t turn out to be more stressful than fun. It is only one day a week though for four weeks. I can handle that.
Once I’ve learned the proper quilting process, my next project will be to make a t-shirt quilt out of all those old t-shirts that I’ve kept for the kids - T-shirts from camp, girl scouts, boy scouts, sports, school spirit, and vacation souvenir t-shirts.