Wax On. . . Wax Off

As I've been emailing back and forth with my brothers and mom about reunion T-shirts, and to "tie-dye or not to tie-dye", my mom called and told me about a new method of batik using Elmer's school glue! I looked it up on the Internet and sure enough it works. I did batik in my High School painting class and really loved it. I haven't ever done it again because I didn't have the equipment, and didn't want to mess with the mess. Well this is getting me excited again. I can do this. Easy. Glue on, paint or dye, and wash. That's it!

All this talk of batik made me realize that I never shared the fun I had in April learning to do Pysanky Eggs. A sister in our ward, Suzanne, decorates these type of eggs every year. So I requested she teach us for an enrichment activity and she did. It was so fun! Doing batik on eggs! I had thought I wrote about this, but realized I had just been chatting about it and posting pictures of my eggs on Facebook (that's the trouble with Facebook- no record of all the chats- but you can go there and look in my albums where I put all the pictures as I talked with friends of the process). Anyway I spent 3 hours on April 2nd doing 3 eggs. Then I went back during priesthood session of conference and took my daughters with me and we spent several more hours doing more. We all enjoyed doing it so much, that next year I will get our own supplies. So here are some pictures.

The long process of waxing, dying, drying, waxing, dying, drying. . .Me and Yuko show off a finished egg after heating the egg in the oven and wiping off the wax.

My three eggs:

Here Jessica, Rachel, and I show our finished eggs (Melissa walked home earlier). Poor Rachel broke two of hers after all that work!

Here they are after a coat of varnish and now on display.

A Nice Easter

What a joy to have all my kids home at the same time! It wasn't until Jennifer was home and I started hearing the laughter, giggles, and familiar phrases and quirks going on with the kids that I realized again that the chemistry of the family had changed when she wasn't here. It was good to have her home! It was a nice relaxing weekend. We enjoyed a very nice Church Service- Brian, Kevin, Jessica and I sang with the choir for 3 numbers. We had a lamb dinner. And by the request of Jennifer we played an arousing game of Settlers of Catan. I will mention that I won- building a settlement in a pristine location that Jennifer wanted. I was even cooking dinner at the same time, so I really lucked out! The Easter bunny found our house and so we had plenty of jelly beans and robins eggs to keep us going.

Jessica and Kevin are pretty excited because they leave for Dayton Ohio for the WGI World Winter Percussion World early tomorrow morning. They will be there April 16-18. Westview's performance time in the Prelims is 8:48 am PDT on Thursday April 16. We hope they make finals!!!! They had a great friends and family show on Friday the 10th. It was their final performance before leaving. They had added some new elements that really made the show better. It has been great to watch them improve the show through out the season. To go to the website that you can sign up to watch a live broadcast click here.

Besides this, I have been sewing like crazy in my spare time (and ignoring all the other chores around the house that need to be done) on my melodrama costume. Also trying to memorize my lines (this is hard for me). We only have 3 more rehearsals then it is show time! Come see Hartburn Hotel April 25th (my birthday). Children's show 4:30pm and dinner theatre for ages 12 and up at 6:30pm at the West Union Building. I will be playing the part of Mrs. Augusta Emmaline Spoffingford-Sykes, the Head of the Calamity Gulch School Board. Come watch and laugh at me (that will be OK). Jenni Springer of Doll Cosmetics will be doing our makeup for the Melodrama. She will be playing the part of Miss Sahara Hartburn- the villain!

Here are some more pictures of Rachel, Melissa, and Jessica: