I Can Paint a Rainbow!!

Wow! What a fun, fabulous weekend we had and what a busy week we have had since. I just realized that I haven't gotten these pictures posted and my house is ready for its Easter debut...so, we better get going.

I have had a song in my head all month long. I don't really remember where I learned it. I think it may have been one of the color songs we used when I was teaching kindergarten...or maybe I remember it from my own childhood-Romper Room, Capt. Kangaroo??? Anyhow, it involved all of the colors of the rainbow and that was our theme last weekend. Can you believe that we went through two entire boxes of food coloring??!

The very first thing we did was our rainbow "rose" experiment. I couldn't find a large white rose for less than $5 and I decided this wasn't THAT good an experiment as we have done similar things before. So, I bought a pretty bouquet of St. Pat's colors and pulled out this large mum. We divided the stem into fourths and put each piece in a jar of different colors. I knew this stem wasn't as "woody" as a rose, but we kept our fingers crossed and, after 5 days, we did have a rainbow mum!

Then we headed outdoors and set up stations. Papa helped two of the kids start on the moss shamrock for their parents...

...while I supervised the bleaching of the shirts. They turned out fine and each one was different but I did learn that it was better to rinse the bleach off pretty quickly. I had hoped we could all rinse at the same time, but the bleach started "slipping" under the shamrock shapes pretty quickly. They love their shirts and had fun making them, so that will go down as a "success".

Next we headed inside where the kids all took turns mixing the batter and filling the cupcake liners. We used the same recipe as we used last year for the leprechaun cake. It starts with a vanilla box mix but then gets "doctored" and is one of the best cakes I have ever eaten!

Just that fast, it was time for lunch prep. We painted our tortillas with lovely rainbow colors and then threaded our fruit kabobs.

I filled the tortillas with several kinds of cheese and browned them in a frying pan and they were yummy. After lunch we had the old stand-by green mint chip ice cream for dessert.

Next, these two whipped up the mint butter cream icing from scratch-and, of course, had to do the traditional taste test.

Nana, Papa and kids all decked out in the color of the day.

Then Uncle Joel and Aunt Cyndi joined us for more fun!

We also made leprechaun frames for those cute little faces.

We had so much fun with our exploding pumpkins and ghosts that I thought this exploding rainbow might be fun but it didn't live up to the excitement of plastic bags flying all over the driveway.

Once the kids got the baking soda and the colors mixed well enough, we got some exploding action but probably not something we will do again.

Next, we made some cereal and marshmallow rainbow treats for movie snacks later tonight.

We had invited my son-in-law to join us for dinner as well, so when he arrived, we all got busy. As they say, it takes a village to raise a child. In this case, it is to make the rainbow pasta. I cooked up two pounds of linguine and we broke up into pairs to mix the color and get it out onto the plates. While this was happening, others of us were setting the table, making the pot o'gold garlic bread and the broccoli. It was hectic but we got it done and it was delicious. I made some pesto for basil lovers and we melted butter for the others.

Dessert was the cupcakes the kids made and they were soooo good!

And, of course, we ended the night with their favorite rainbow treasure hunt to ultimately find their pots of gold. What fun we had and hopefully many more memories for the kids-as well as the adults!

On Sunday, I picked up grand daughters #2 and #4 from daughter #2-are you confused yet?-and they came home to spend the night with us as their mom (daughter#1) and daughter #3 were still in Atlanta on a buying trip for their business. Since we had all had some busy days, we had a nice, low key kind of visit. It is always nice to have them around when there are no celebrations going on and we can just talk and catch up.

So now this week is almost over and I have been on the go every day. I did manage to get the house decorated for Easter as it is quickly approaching. I will share that soon. Stay tuned.