Stay-at-Home Kind of Easter

It was a stay-at-home kind of Easter this year. For many years now, we’ve spent it at Nana’s house with the hubby’s side of the family. The kids hunted for eggs, Minecrafted and we all played games together and enjoyed a delicious meal afterwards. Of course this year, that didn’t happen thanks to Coronavirus. But we are doing our part by staying at home as much as possible during this pandemic. I am so grateful each and every day for all of those essential workers out there who keep us safe and keep us going.

In doing my part, I’ve reduced the number of times I go to the grocery store. In a typical week, I’d probably go to 4 different stores maybe 5 times! Yikes! Beginning of this week, I decided to do two mega trips to Target and Costco, hoping it would tide us over for close to two weeks. A day after these trips, my hubby asked what we were doing for Easter dinner. Easter?! Ooops, with all that shopping, I forgot about Easter dinner. That’s ok. I stuck to my guns and made do with what I had already bought.

We were still able to enjoy some quality time with family, both sides, thanks to Zoom, Netflix and the good ol’ cell phone. While Easter 2020 wasn’t like ones in years past, it was still memorable in its own way and ended with a nice meal with family.

We started the day with a nice breakfast and online church service. The music was amazing as usual as was the message: don’t be a conduit of negativity, be a transformer of them. Mostly, I was impressed with the sheer amount of time it must have taken to put together an hour service filled with so many heart-warming and even teary-eye making messages and music all from so many individual homes.

We followed that with a Zoom get together with my family in MD & VA. It’s the next best thing when you can’t be together and certainly is more fun than just talking on the phone.

Next, I was able to devote two hours to my obsessive mask making. Check out my DIY Reusable Face Mask Tutorial! Yes, I decided to allot myself a set amount to of time to this task and is can consume my day if I’m not careful. I’m eager to get another batch ready for donations, family and even to sell online. I was so excited to have found this new technique of sewing things in large batches. Basically, it’s like consecutive or continuous sewing when you’re just hemming. It really reduces time by reducing the amount of lifting/lower that presser foot. It also cleans up your work in reducing the number of loose ends. Plus, it makes for a pretty pennant banner of masks at the end. See? Isn’t it so cool?

Since we weren’t able to spend time with the hubby’s family like we usually do on Easter, we decided to watch a movie “together” ie, start the movie at the same time while on a conference call. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was our Easter movie of choice and we watched it while we ate dinner. The girls had never seen this classic before so it was time to introduce it to them and their cousins.

Dinner was Laura’s Sweet Spot’s Brown Sugar Balsamic Glazed Pork made in a crock pot! I love easy dinners like that, especially when they turn out so tasty! Next time I’m not going to try to caramelize the glaze as it took a lot of extra time and effort and I almost burned it!

It looks Laura’s Sweet Spot’s website might have been compromised, so here’s the recipe for the time- being.

Served alongside the pork was MOMables’ Quinoa Mac and Cheese. It’s actually a post I worked on for Laura years ago and has turned out to be one of Little Sis’ fave sides. She always gets so excited when I make it. I love that, especially since it has zero pasta in it! Roasted Brussels sprouts and mashed potatoes also made an appearance on our plates.

For dessert, I decided to make Will Cook for Smles’ Blueberry Cobbler. It was easy and absolutely delicious. My family really loved and I’ll definitely be making it again, though next time, I will reduce the amount of sugar.

After dinner, dessert and movie, the girls still hadn’t been able to do their Easter egg hunt! So at 9pm, we started hiding eggs. Once the eggs had all been found, they scampered off to “meet up” with their cousins in California for some online gaming action.

Despite not physically spending time with family, we still got a lot of face time in. We are thankful to have spent such a lovely day with them all. And we are grateful to have a pretty darn good stay-at-home life.

Thanks so much for stopping by! Feel free to make my day by leaving me a comment, following my blog via email, on Facebook or on Instagram. The more the merrier!

Christine, aka happyvballgirl 🙂

To check out items used in this post or some of my favorites, simply click here: “Products I Love“. Purchases made using these links earns me a little extra cash to support my bento habit, which Hubby really appreciates. Haha! So, THANK YOU, should you choose to purchase any of ’em!

    

Disclosure: This blog contains affiliate links. 🙂