Happy Friday friends, are you excited about the long weekend ?  This week I was in the mood to decorate my porch with some red, white, and blue in honor of Memorial Day, and also in anticipation of our Fourth of July barbeque. 

I found some inexpensive fabrics and stitched up some festive pillow covers, then I filled my pots with annuals in patriotic colors.  This summer, I’m having some fun with punches of red on the front porch ! 

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I love Easter !  I love little girls running around in their frilly pastel Easter dresses on the church lawn hunting for treats, and little boys in seersucker shorts and argyle vests.  I love Easter candy, and chocolate bunnies, and grilled lamp chops for dinner, and everything spring !  I love Easter brunch too – a chance to sit down after church services and spend a lovely meal with family and friends. 

I set a table this year in a blue and white theme, complete with branches, butterflies, some feathery friends, and various shades of blue. 

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My friend Lindsay is having a crafty little contest on Thursday and I thought I’d throw my name in the hat.  I consider myself pretty thrifty, but when you are forced to stick to a $5 dollar budget in this contest, you must get very resourceful.   

So I got my craft on the other day and made some paper maché Easter eggs using what I already had in my house – which is tricky when you only have brown eggs and very thin tissue paper.  But my kindergartener and I managed to hatch a fresh batch of blue eggs on the cheap. 

Disclosure:  I was completely unsure when I started this project if it would be a disastrous waste of time, so I decided to invest nothing beyond what I had on hand, which meant using brown not white eggs.  Or you can just use store bought plastic eggs, but I’m cheap.  Unsure of the outcome, I refused to brush my hair, my teeth, or get dressed out of my flannel plaid pajamas to make a special trip to the craft store or grocery store.  In hindsight, white eggshells would work better to save time and several layers of tissue.  Just saying. 

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I’m just going to come right out and say it.  We.Women.Need.Chocolate. 

The mood lifting qualities of chocolate cannot be denied.  There is simply no such thing as too much chocolate.  At least, that’s how I see the world – through chocolate tinted glasses.

Last week, in anticipation of Valentine’s Day, I began my adventure in chocolate candy making.  What began as an experiment ended happily ever after with a blissful box of three varieties of dark chocolate candy. 

First, I started with Sea Salt Caramels dipped in Dark Chocolate.  You can read that harrowing journey right here.

My next adventure in chocolate candy making led to these two decadent delights: 

Raspberry Chocolate Squares and Toffee Bites.

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