Shiny Glaze & Old Pictures

He is risen, indeed!  Happy Easter, a day late.  We had a great time visiting family.  It was my baby girl's first time visiting our in-laws at their home.  We did lots of cooking, eating, shopping, and relaxing...just the way a holiday should be!  

One thing we are so thankful for is having not just one, but two sets of wonderful grandparents.  We've got some lucky girls, who get so much attention, teaching, gifts, and great examples in their Grandma + Grandpa and Cici + Papa.  

Now on to the food.  We made these fun egg-shaped sugar cookies.  Leave it to my MIL for another great recipe idea.  Shiny glaze sugar cookies.  Haven't you always wondered how they get that shiny glaze?  There are two secrets...

The first secret is a secret ingredient. Corn syrup.  Here's our recipe (can you even read that?).  

And the other secret? Dipping the cookies in the frosting. We literally flipped them upside down in a dish of frosting. I wish I would have taken a picture of this, because it really was quite amazing.  Maybe I'm the last person to find out about this method, but I will be doing all of our holiday cookies this way now.  Much faster, and prettier, than frosting the cookies the traditional way. :)

Do you give your kids an Easter basket?  Callie got a few DVDS (Passion and Veggie Tales Easter Carol), some Elmo stamps (her favorite character...don't get me started), some Color Wonder coloring book (my couch's lifesaver) and of course a chocolate bunny!  I had all the best intentions of snagging some of PBK's monogrammed easter baskets at their after-Easter sale, because lately I have a thing for monogramming and matching.  But I guess I'm a day too late because they are sold out.  Maybe next year, I'll have to time it out.  :)

We also made a stop at my grandma's house.  She hadn't met Clara yet, so it was fun to introduce her and take a few pictures of the girls with their great grandma Mary Lou.  

I made myself at home by snooping around my grandma's bedroom a little and found this picture.  It's my dad and all of his five siblings (with my grandma- you can probably recognize her).  Don't you just love old photographs? 

And I'll end with a new photograph.  My girls...matching in their Easter dresses.  I'll spare you the details of the chaos we experienced to get this picture. 

Happy Easter 2011!