with her proud parents, Angela and Alan:
Welcome Baby Reese! We love you!
Happy Earth Day! It was a lovely one here, with lots of outdoors time. Still cleaning out the dead, dry weed remnants from last year, but nestled in there are the sweet new blooms and shoots for this year. 
The daffodils literally burst into bloom just yesterday. I only have a few clumps of them, a gift from a former co-worker, and they're so cheerful!
This little guy is a tulip, planted amidst the bachelor buttons and bee balm. I have no idea what color he'll be. Grace planted bulbs last Fall, and this looks to be the only one that came up. When I saw him today, it took a moment to figure out how he got there. :o)
I hope you enjoyed seeing a few of the Early Spring things going on at my house on Earth Day 2009. I'm so excited about this gardening season, and it's hard to stay out of the garden centers. This year I've pledged to just play with the flowers I have already and concentrate on the veggies. I will grab some annuals to fill pots and baskets, though. It'll be tough, and I keep telling myself that perhaps I can grab a few new things on clearance in July. Yeah, I can wait for July. Sure.
Anyway, this tablescape is super simple, but I just love these floral embossed salad plates. I don't know where I got them or why I only bought two.
The centerpiece is my large apothecary jar filled with Easter eggs. We made these eggs with my mom twelve years ago, just a little over a month before she passed away. I knew I'd want to keep them, but instead of blowing out the shells, I borrowed from the Ukraine pysankas and left the eggs raw. They are carefully handled and packed away each year, and have dried up inside, so they do not smell. We used a marbling technique that was published in Family Fun magazine that year (1997) - it made for soft colors and the eggs are really pretty up close. They sit on a shredded paper nest in the jar.
They're joined by the sweet little blue bunnies from last week. These bunnies got a good workout that day, posing for each tablescape I photographed. I think they'll be a favorite Spring decoration. 
This hymnal was, I think, scrounged from the leftovers of a huge auction many years ago. It is falling apart (beyond repair) and the pages are brown and aged - perfect for this project. Plus, I liked the idea of using a hymnal for something I will use for Easter decorations.
If you visit http://inspireco.blogspot.com/search?q=glittered+eggs for the tutorial, you'll see she used glitter, ribbons, and neat little trinkets to decorate her eggs. I didn't get so far as glitter - I had to clean up before bed so the cats didn't play in my project - and then I ended up liking these eggs plain. I like the glitter version, too, so you may see some of those in the future.
Can this PLEASE be Winter's last hurrah? Please?
The magnolia tree was just about to burst into bloom. Guess that will be delayed a day or two...
All of the sixteen teams were represented.
They had their own little chairs, towels, and Gatorade coolers on the sidelines, as well as "Peepleaders" to cheer them on.
My favorite part of the whole thing, though, are the "peeptators". (If you click on the photos, I think you can read their signs.) "Hey ref! What's wrong with your peepers!"
There is even a "jumbo-tron". Scrolling across the bottom it reads, "For your sports injuries bring your "peeps" to YPT. 
Here is someone with the local newspaper, and another saying, "You've been 'spotted'." (That's a feature of the real paper where they publish candid photos of people in the community and if you see yourself in the paper, you get a prize.)
Each Thursday (well, I start looking on Wednesday evenings) the inspiration for setting a beautiful table just overflows from Susan's Tablescape Thursday link-ups. 
Besides the black chargers and my white Mikasa French Countryside stoneware dinner plates, I used four little dessert plates that I picked up last summer at Goodwill. Each plate is a different pastel color, so they're perfect for Springtime and Easter.
There are a few dozen of these ceramic eggs in my Easter decorations stash, so I used four of them as place card holders. I tied the tags on with a small piece of twine.
Full jars of candy arranged down the center of the table make for a sweet centerpiece. (yes, pun intended...)
These sweet bunnies are salt and pepper shakers and came from Cracker Barrel. They have little green chicks as friends, but I didn't get a good photo of them. They're hiding behind one of the candy jars.
The stemware came from the discount store and Goodwill, the flatware from the discount store, and I made the napkins. The lace tablecloth is about 25 years old and is showing how loved and used it's been, so I put a white one under it.
I don't know that it will be an Open Window Wednesday, but there will be no problem keeping the heat turned down today. The sun is shining, birds are singing, and the wind is not blowing. Seems like a perfect Springtime morning.
