A Plethora of Pictures

**Quick Note** - the title is especially for my father-in-law, Mark (he'll know what it means - kind of an inside joke).

Okay, back to business! We have a variety of pictures to share. We have taken many over the last week or so, but we'll just share a few highlights.

We had a really nice Easter weekend! We stayed busy with a few things over the weekend and had some fun too. On Easter, we enjoyed a church wide Easter brunch in lieu of Sunday School and then a wonderful worship service. I made my grandpa's coffee cake for the brunch and I must say that it was quite delicious!! There wasn't a spec of it left. We had some things to do after church (count the offering and serve communion to a homebound couple) so we opted to go out for Easter lunch and then home for a relaxing afternoon/evening. We coordinated our Easter outfits again this year and went with the lime green and black combination - we had lots of nice compliments. It was fun!

We had a visit from the Easter bunny as well. John got a card, a new St. Louis Cardinals t-shirt, two packs of baseball cards and candy and I got a card, a new Texas Rangers t-shirt and candy. We are definitely set in the candy department for a little while!

Here are a few Easter photos...

On Saturday afternoon, we went to our niece Alyssa's 9th birthday party. She had it at "All Fired Up" which is a pottery/ceramic painting studio. Each child got to paint a piece of pottery (they could pick from various animals) and then they would fire and glaze it for them. I got to paint as well - hooray! I painted a red and black tile for our kitchen with a "U" on it. I'm excited to see the finished product. We had pizza and YUMMY cupcakes that my sister-in-law, Amy, made. The frosting was so good and she arranged the cupcakes to look like flowers. Here are a couple of the party pictures...
As you know, one of my hobbies is ORGANIZATION. That's right, I thoroughly enjoy keeping things organzied and have a list of organization projects to do. I work on them when I have time, but an organizer's work is never done - HAHA! Call it weird, quirky, silly, overkill, obessive (insert your own adjective) - it's just who I am!

Nevertheless, my most recent organizing project was to transfer ALL of my baking ingredients from their original packaging into plastic containers. I wanted more orderliness on the pantry shelf (to be able to stack everything) AND I wanted it to be easier to measure out the ingredients while baking. No longer did I want to mess with boxes, sacks, cartons, cans, etc!! I sound so dramatic. So, I bought some Food Network containers at Kohls and ordered some awesome vinyl labels online. I washed up the containers, adhered the labels and poured each ingredient into their new home. I was so happy and excited while I was working on this and of course when I was finished. John sweetly shared in my joy and let me do a "before" and "after" presentation with him. I'm so easily pleased and have been wanting to get this done for a LONG time - here are a few of those photos (it's on the bottom shelf only)... BEFORE...AFTER...

AHHHHH - it looks and feels so much better! I was able to use these on Sunday when I made my coffee cake for the Easter brunch and it was so helpful in measuring - pop the lid off, scoop out and add to the bowl. I told John to celebrate the completion of this project, I would make him a batch of chocolate chip cookies, so those will be coming soon!

I guess that is all for now - thanks for letting me share and have a GREAT rest of the week!
Until we meet again...
Riley