Getting Ready for Easter V2.0 - Charming Free Printables

I am getting excited for Easter for 2 reasons...

1.) The meaning of Easter is very special to me.

2.) It's wonderful to see holiday's through the eyes of children.

Every year we hold a small neighborhood Easter egg hunt.  This year is no different.

To get ready for the Easter egg hunt party, I was browsing around and came across free Easter printable downloads at Shindig Parties TO GO.  A small sampling of the free printables are below.  Could they be any cuter? 

The great thing about the downloads is that they are free, with the hopes that you will make a donation to Operation Shower.   

Operation Shower is about celebrating and honoring military families. Operation Shower is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides joyful baby showers for military families to ease the burden of deployment.

Some of you may not know this, but my Dad was in the Navy for 20+ years.  All of his service was done before I was born.  He retired with full benefits so I was born on a military base and all my Dr's growing up were military Dr.s'.  Who knew?

You don't have to be crafty to use the printables (print them on card stock and cut out the shapes) and a simple donation to Operation Shower sounds like a fantastic idea!

Shindig Parties TO GO also has other birthday party themed printables for sale on Etsy here.  I've got my eyes on a couple options for both Abby and Emily's birthdays later this year.  

Getting Ready for Easter

I scrapped a few of the things I had planned for the weekend, so we could start getting in the Easter spirit.

Instead of making healthy strawberry - kiwi muffins, we made Easter themed rice crispy treats:

Instead of shopping for outfits for birthday parties Abby will attend over the next 3 weeks, we made an Easter egg garland (sorry for the poor lighting):

Instead of going to the Farmer's Market, we just purchased all of our produce from Whole Foods (we were going anyway) after the kids were asleep, so we could decorate this Easter tree.

We splurged on some silly bunny ears at Walgreens (complete with a forced smile):

We also hit the park, rode bikes, played in the back yard and spent some good quality family time together.  Both Steve and I even worked a bit to (boo, hiss, but we have to pay the bills)... 

My favorite part of the weekend was Abby saying over and over again while decorating the Easter tree, "wow, this is beautiful".  So pure and from her heart, it was awesomely perfect!