Getting Ready for Easter...

We have had fun around here preparing for Easter and welcoming spring! I made and froze these yummy pink coconut cookies for our Easter celebration...they are rich and delicate at the same time with a melt in your mouth yumminess and the perfect balance between sweet and salty!

Here's the recipe:

Coconut Easter Cookies

2 sticks butter room temperature

1/2 cup powdered sugar, plus more for coating the cookies once baked

1 tsp coconut extract

1/4 tsp salt

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1 cup ground sweetened coconut flakes ( I used a food processor to do this)

2 drops red food coloring

Preheat oven to 350 F

Beat butter on high until fluffy. Add the powdered sugar and beat until combined. Reduce speed to low and beat in the coconut extract, ground coconut, food coloring and salt. Stir in the flour by hand just until blended.

Cover and refrigerate for 15 min.

Shape dough into 1 inch balls or egg shapes and bake 10-12 minutes or until cookies are pale golden on the bottom. Remove cookies to a cooling rack for 5 minutes and then roll in the powdered sugar. Let cookies cool completely on wire racks before storing. You can dust cookies again with powdered sugar before serving if desired.

Then I found a fun project in my Martha Stewart Living magazine to make coffee filter flowers to decorate for spring! They are easy and were free for me since I had a ton of filters and food coloring on hand.

Mix a few batches of colors in water in pie plates or shallow dishes.

Place a stack of filters in each color and allow them to absorb as much as you want. I used white and brown filters and mixed a few colors for some of them.

Keep the filters together as they dry on a rack. It took almost a full day for them to dry completely.

Once they are dry, trim the filters to make different kinds of flowers then using a glue gun to secure the layers.

Here are the finished flowers:

We have also had fun teaching Weston about Easter and the gospel, and I found this fun craft in Noel Piper's book " Treasuring God in our Traditions" to make an "Easter mountain".

Basically you make a big batch of play dough, paint and bake it in the oven to harden it. We made a cross from sticks in the backyard and the back of the mountain has a tomb with a stone to roll away :) He LOVED helping make this!

Most days he plays with the cross like an airplane, but he is beginning to understand!