Cherry Blossoms Baby Keepsake Box & Easter Sunday

Good Monday morning all. I hope you had a nice Easter, for those who celebrate it. Ours was lovely, visiting with family, eating great food, and playing games. (I'll share some of that at the end of this post.)

Today I'm featured over on the Elizabeth Craft Designs blog with this baby's keepsake box adorned with pretty Graphic 45 papers and I'm showcasing the Cherry Blossom die from the Susan's Garden Notes line. I've got an easy tutorial to make the box and flowers there, so be sure to check it out. This week I'll be working on a baby mini album to go inside, so I'll be sure to share that with you when it's completed. I'm going to a baby shower soon, so I better get busy!

The Cherry Blossom is so very easy to make, you'll want to make a hundred of them! I like them so much, I created this 5" x 7" Easter card for my parents, as some of you may have seen on my social media sites over the weekend.

It features more pretty Graphic 45 papers, namely Once Upon A Springtime, plus one of Tim Holtz's newest dies "Mixed Media #2" with that pretty flourish cut-away layer. My parents really seemed to love the card, and I'm sure it will be added to the box of others my mom has collected over the years.

If you've followed me long enough, you know that I love to cook and to bake. The baking has become less and less these days, only because of the whole stupid "don't eat too much sugar at your age" thing. (You mid-age ladies know what I mean.) But on special occasions, I still like to bake something extra sweet and fun so I whipped up a batch of sugar cookies using some of my favorite Springtime cookie cutters (you wouldn't believe the collection of cutters I've got!) and made up some royal icing tinted with some soft pastels colors.

Then the fun part. Decorating them. People often ask me if I have some special recipes for the cookies and the icing, and honestly I have always used Martha Stewart's for both. (I skip the alcohol and vanilla in her updated version and use lemon zest and lemon juice instead, like her original recipes.) I used to be such a big fan of hers when she first started on television, long before the talk show style currently on air. Not a lot of people really knew her back then, before her name was on everything you see in stores now, and I much preferred her shows then. The cookies turned out very nice and they are super delicious, according to my family. My college-aged nephew couldn't stop eating them, so I sent him home with the left over ones. He was so happy!

My brother Steve and his wife Brenda have spent the past 6 months having major renovations done in their home, and finally they were complete. So they invited the family over for Easter dinner. Here's the ta-da photo of their new kitchen. It is absolutely gorgeous!

Oftentimes during our get-togethers there's some idle time where we're just sitting around chatting and goofing off on our phones...

I'm sure gonna miss this kid when she goes off to college in the Fall.

She's the best.

The rest of the day was filled with games, fantastic food (what a spread they had!) and lots of laughter. 

And cookies.

I hope YOUR day was filled with love and joy as well. Thanks for stopping in today. Have a great day!