My Beautiful Empress Tree

Last year my Empress Tree was huge and in full bloom. The tree looked amazing and many people stopped to take photos of it (and I can't seem to find a single photo right now). Unfortunately, the branches were brittle and breaking off in huge chunks. In addition it was in the power lines. So, we let the electric company cut it down.

The result was we used the trunk to create our Halloween Pumpkin Creature last October.

Now that summer has come around again, a full year since the tree was turned into a trunk, it has transformed itself.

I can only wonder what it will look like next Spring.

The Giant Easter Egg!

With Easter almost here, the creativity was sparked in our household, especially given that we are living in isolation per the current pandemic situation. Wanting to make Easter special, and knowing we couldn't do what we normally do this time of year, we decided we should make a giant Easter egg to place on the Empress Tree stump in our front yard.

This idea started a debate on what we could make it from. A balloon was the first thought. Yet, we didn't have any in the house, and given the need to stay out of society and with most stores closed, reasoned we needed to come up with another idea. That lead us to the concept of a wire frame. We had some fencing wire in the garage, but that didn't seem like a good idea. Rummaging around, I found a damaged umbrella I had placed in a bucket of random sticks, poles, and broken curtain rods set aside to prop plants up as needed. We had our wire.

First we broke the spokes off the umbrella and stuck them in some card board circles. We added a paper bowl to the top to round it off.

Since we had found a roll of Easter wrapping paper to decorate our egg, we figured we needed something to go over the spokes. While we considered more cardboard, we came up with a better idea: egg cartoons! Since Boomer and Fern eat eggs every day, and egg cartoons are no longer considered recyclable in our area, we had a huge pile of them. We tore the tops of the egg cartoons, flattened them out, and then used hot glue to attach them to the spokes.

Next we cut the wrapping paper into strips, which we glued and taped to the egg body.

We finished our giant egg off with a gold ribbon and bow.

Now our Easter egg is ready for Easter morning!