Twas a lovely Saturday

 Today started out running errands.  Off to the post office to mail out FIVE packages =D, only to discovered that this office closes at noon on Saturdays unlike the 2pm I'm used to at our old post office.  Missed it by 'that much'! LOL  Oh well, I'll head out first thing Monday morning.  Oooh was super excited as 3 of those packages were international too.  With 2 of them being my 1st (and 2nd) packages being sent to Australia!

After that I headed to the store here on Post to pick up some empty plastic eggs since my 7 and 10 yr old sons requested an egg hunt tomorrow.  Thankfully I already had some I had planned to put their jelly beans in, because the store had NO empty eggs and only a couple bags of the pre-filled ones!  I think I have a total of 3 dozen eggs to hide tomorrow.

 Spent the rest of the afternoon sewing and sculpting.  I finished the loaded baked potatoes! These have a light drizzle of melted butter, a sprinkling of shredded cheddar cheese, some crispy crumbled bacon, a scoop of sour cream and some sliced green onions!

I am thoroughly pleased with how these came out and will definitely be making more of these.  I am contemplating doing a "Buffet" line in my shop.  It would have various individual food items to pick and choose from that would allow the customer to make up their own plated dishes.  Not sure about that, but the idea really appeals to me.

I LOVE cheesecake...it's one of my favorite desserts not only to eat but to make as well.  I have a recipe that is nearly fool-proof and I make it every couple of months.  So I was cruising Pinterest the other day and came across some mini cheesecakes made in cupcake papers...I got to thinking about using my cupcake mold to make mini cheesecakes.

YAY!  It works and I think they are adorable!  This one is topped with some peach slices I made last year.  I love how they have the reddish blush in the center that fresh peaches have!  Man, I'm really gonna miss fresh peaches like we got in GA!

Next up I decided to do some diced strawberries for toppings.  (I really need to master the making of the strawberry cane, but each time I make them, they look really weird and not strawberry-ish enough)  But I think this turned out pretty good.  I wish now that I had cut the clay before I baked it so I could have rounded and softened the edges a bit.  Although looking at the actual piece sitting here on my laptop (from about a foot away) it actually looks pretty good. So I won't stress...too much! LOL

This is Sophie, my LIV doll, holding the cool tank I found at the dollar store...there is a spot under the lid that has those water absorbing beads that grow...you're supposed to fill the tank with water and the beads drop down and fill the tank with color.

I'm hoping to be able to remove the lid and turn it into a fashion doll sized fish tank! 

A couple hours ago, our youngest 2 sons and I dyed Easter eggs.  This year we did things a little different.  I decided to make my own dye using food coloring.  It worked but honestly I think I stick with the Paas kits! lol  Although being boys, my two guys actually liked the dingy greyed out colors I ended up with.  The youngest came through a few days ago while I was browsing Pinterest, (yeah I do that a lot! LOL) and saw the crackled deviled eggs and couldn't figure out how they were made.
I promised him I'd show him.  SO after I mixed up the colors I showed them how to gently tap the eggs to get the cracks...um can we say that gentle was NOT used when they did it! LOL  But you know what, so far those crackled eggs are the coolest ones in the bunch!

I also showed them the psuedo-Pysanky eggs method using a white crayon.  They weren't as impressed with that. lol  My middle son (in the blue) liked the idea of double and triple dipping the eggs to get shades of color. His favorite color is green, so he did the 2nd one from the left in the above picture.  It's 3 shades of green!

Here they are acting like they were going to drop the boxes of eggs!  Silly silly boys!

Well now that they are in bed I need to play Easter Bunny and get their baskets filled.  Sending every one warm wishes for a fun and blessed Easter!