{"id":1527,"date":"2012-03-29T23:58:36","date_gmt":"2012-03-30T04:58:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/?p=1527"},"modified":"2012-03-30T05:41:41","modified_gmt":"2012-03-30T10:41:41","slug":"easters-on-its-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/2012\/03\/29\/easters-on-its-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Easter\u2019s On Its Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is it too early to be thinking about Easter baskets? Maybe! But this year I won\u2019t be at home for Easter, so I wanted to prepare one for my little sister before I head out of town tomorrow, since she\u2019ll be here visiting Dad on Easter while I\u2019m gone.<\/p>\n

\"CharlotteEaster baskets are a fond tradition in our family that hasn\u2019t diminished all that much over time. They were important when we were kids, and are still fun to put together, even if there are no kids around\u2014for instance when someone visits, or has an April birthday, or needs a little get-well goody.<\/p>\n

\"Priscilla's<\/p>\n

Here\u2019a a pretty pink Easter basket I put together (with Charlotte\u2019s help) for Mom when she was in a rehab facility for several months, prior to her death in 2010. (This basket had a lot of ho-hum stuff in it like travel size toiletries, but Mom still seemed to get a kick out of how festive it looked.)<\/p>\n

I also had a bit of help putting together this year\u2019s Easter basket for Julie, pictured at the top. Dad rounded up all the candy, and Charlotte put on her bunny suit a little earlier than usual, so she could model for the card.<\/p>\n

\"Charlotte<\/p>\n

Kitty also supplied me with something to draw for Dad\u2019s breakfast table doodle this morning, when her bunny suit zipper malfunctioned. (Thanks, Charlotte!)<\/p>\n

\"Martha<\/p>\n

By the way, you probably can\u2019t see it too clearly in the above snapshot, but the drawing of Charlotte for Julie\u2019s basket got enhanced with a bit of tinted sparkle glue here and there. \u2014Worth mentioning, just in case there are any other magpies out there who, like me, are into glittery, shiny things. This was one of the treats my sister Carol gave me for my birthday, and something I\u2019d highly recommend getting ahold of: a set of 24 little tubes of glitter glue from Martha Stewart Crafts<\/a>, in delicious subtle colors like, \u201caquamarine crystal\u201d and \u201cpurple sapphire.\u201d Sounds\u2014and looks\u2014pretty yummy, no?<\/p>\n

\"McCall'sWhile we\u2019re on the subject of craft supplies and make & do, a few days later Carol had another treat sent my way: Do any of you remember the 1953 classic, McCall\u2019s Giant Golden Make-It Book<\/a>? My sister and I had been reminiscing about our long lost copy a week or two before, and she\u00a0ended up tracking down one for me, which was pretty darn thrilling (and very thoughtful of her, too).<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll bet a lot of you reading this have books in your own distant past, which, for whatever reason, held you spellbound. When I was a kid, I spent hours pouring over the colorful retro illustrations in the Make-It Book\u2014showing how to decorate a table for a Valentine\u2019s Day party, or make jewelry out of bottle caps and seashells, or a weird and wonderful \u201cchemical garden\u201d (like the kind you used to be able to buy in kits)\u2014fantasizing all the while, not about doing<\/em> the project, but about the end result. (A lot of the instructions required much, much more focus than my youthful attention span could muster, alas.)<\/p>\n

\"Easter<\/p>\n

Fortunately, Mom not only had the necessary focus, but, being an artist and graphic designer, she also had the requisite fine motor skills to tackle anything at all in the book, and to make it look even better than the illustrated examples\u2014which was extremely impressive to me, both then and now. I don\u2019t recall her creating any of the \u201cMake-It\u201d Easter baskets that I used to love to study, but I do remember her making her own version of the Jolly Easter Eggs pictured below, creating a fantastic menagerie of egg shell animals\u2014bunnies, chicks, birds, goldfish, chipmunks, etc.\u2014 which we would display at Easter for years to come.<\/p>\n

\"Jolly<\/p>\n

Whatever happened to those wonderful \u201cjolly eggs?\u201d Or, to our original copy of the beloved Make-It Book, for that matter? \u2014Just one of the many mysteries of what got kept and what got tossed, that every family or household has.<\/p>\n

Something, however, that did<\/em> get kept (albeit reluctantly), were Carol and my first Easter baskets, pictured below. I love the way Mom labeled them when she stored them away: \u201cCarol and Jean said save. Why?\u201d Well Mom, because just seeing them brings back memories of all the wonderful things they once held\u2014those jolly eggs, the fuzzy toy chicks with the wonky metal feet, the sugar eggs with scenes inside. \u2014Not to mention, the thrill of finding them all, tucked into a basket bulging with candy, on Easter morning.<\/p>\n

\"Jean<\/p>\n

Is it any wonder I still like Easter baskets?<\/p>\n

Have a great Thursday night everyone and a happy Friday tomorrow!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is it too early to be thinking about Easter baskets? Maybe! But this year I won\u2019t be at home for Easter, so I wanted to prepare one for my little sister before I head out of town tomorrow, since she\u2019ll … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[209],"tags":[227,7,228,225,226,230,231,183,562],"class_list":["post-1527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holidays","tag-candy","tag-charlotte-2","tag-crafts","tag-easter","tag-easter-baskets","tag-glitter-glue","tag-mccalls-giant-golden-make-it-book","tag-priscilla","tag-spring"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1527"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1577,"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527\/revisions\/1577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}