Easter Countdown: Egg #9

I found these adorable squishy eggs at the Target Dollar Spot and thought they would be perfect for painting fluffy Easter bunnies!

Before Maddie set to work I traced and cut out some Peeps shaped bunnies on recycled cereal boxes then Maddie went to work painting her bunnies with the squishy eggs. 

We finished up the project with magnets and pom pom bunny tails. I also strung some pom poms on thread and made a mini garland with magnets to hang on the fridge. Now Maddie spends time every morning rearranging the bunny party on the fridge! Adorable!

Easter Countdown: Egg #6, #7 & #8

Egg #6: Maddie selected an egg that matched a package of glittery Easter stickers from The Dollar Store and used them to finish making the Easter cards we started on the rolled egg day. I ended up making a cute little cover for the cards from Wordle too!

Egg #7: The next egg matched with a package of fun bunny shaped straws from The Dollar Store (see a trend here?). Maddie is in love with them and MUST have one in her cup at all times!

Egg #8: Our next egg said it was to time to make a special Easter treat. My plans were to make Cheerio and m&m treats similar to Rice Krispy treats but then I saw this recipe for Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies and our plans changed. I have a weakness for coconut. We swapped Easter colored m&m's out for chocolate chips and they were delicious! Maddie was so proud to do almost all of the mixing and pouring herself and my surprise she is very good at turning the mixer on and off without making a huge mess. As a surprise for daddy she packaged a few cookies up with a special tag too!

Easter Countdown: Egg #3, #4 & #5

Ack! We are behind. Maddie has been picking eggs out of the basket every day but we had a bit of a busy weekend and we got behind. Surprise, surprise. We are catching up though!

 

Egg #3 was making bunny ears and hopping around. We went simple with this activity and used cardstock, glue stick and glitter. Simple. Adorable. 

 

 Maddie was thrilled to finally pick a number egg and select the matching craft kit. She did a great job lacing up the basket all by herself. Gah. She is growing up too fast! Maddie said the basket is a gift for her bunny Daisy that she made at Build A Bear last week!

Her next egg came with a make your own Easter candy necklace kit. I found the big box at Walmart for $5 or so. I am sure the kits will come in handy in the next week! We also ended up sticking another egg filled with a kit in an egg and shipped it off to Maddie's aunt. Yes we stuck an Easter egg in the mail. You can do that you know!

Easter Countdown: Egg #2

This whole basket full of eggs thing apparently was GENIUS on my part. Yesterday morning she ran down the stairs and opened her egg at 6:30. Before breakfast and Handy Manny! Impressive, I know!

A few weeks ago Maddie mentioned a desire to make a bird in a nest and I discovered this adorable clay egg scene at Ordinary Life Magic. The initial plan was to make something similar but then we sort of went off on our own little tangent.

Last weekend I used the last of our Pluffy clay to make the egg. I ended up rolling out about half of a package and then molding it around a large plastic egg. Despite the cooking instructions I tossed the egg (plastic egg and all) in the oven at 175F for about 10 minutes. I didn't want to completely dry the clay at that point but I did want it firm enough to keep it's shape. With an X-Acto blade I sliced around the outside of the egg and was able to split the egg in half and remove the plastic egg. I returned the clay to the oven at 275F this time for another 10 minutes to finish the drying process. 

Maddie set off into the backyard in her pajamas yesterday morning to scavenge for nest building materials. 

I ended up grabbing a few natural colored odds and ends out of the craft closet to supplement the twigs.

Then it was construction time, of course with a little break for oatmeal in between! Instead of building the nest in the egg we opted to build it with lots of glue on a paper plate.

ahh, can you spy the tell tale signs of a stuffy nose?

By the afternoon the glue was finally dry and Maddie layed her precious egg in the nest.

She was so proud of her nest and loved that the baby birds could hatch from their shell. She decided against painting her egg yesterday but I believe she intends on painting it today!

Easter Countdown: Egg #1

 Monday while Maddie layed on the couch snoozing and snotting I took the opportunity to set up an Easter basket with crafts and activities to keep her busy for the month. I ended up stuffing about 18 eggs. Some of the eggs are filled with craft supplies and a craft, others have an activity to do for the day, some have numbers that match a numbered craft kit and 2 eggs have flower stickers that match stickers on the calendar for day specific activities. I certainly didn't want her picking the 'Let's dye Easter eggs!' egg this week! I don't think hard boiled eggs last that long. Eww.
 

Maddie was so excited when I explained the basket to her and she couldn't wait to open the first egg.

Last year we started a new tradition with Maddie painting wooden eggs from Oriental Trading and Maddie of course chose the big heavy egg to open first. Typical!

This year we used a great marbleizing technique that I found at Mom's Crafty Space. Maddie chose three different acrylic paints to use and we used a disposable tin foil pan to work in. We taped blank white note cards in the bottom of the pan so that our egg decorating would also leave us with some cute Easter cards too.

Maddie had a blast swirling her egg around in the paint but of course one egg wasn't enough so we grabbed some marbles and tossed them in the pan too.

We ended up making about 6 note cards using the marbles to swirl the paint once her egg was done. To help sop up some of the excess paint we squished a blank white card to the card she painted and made two matching cards before moving onto the next.

I was surprised to find that one of Maddie's favorite parts of the project was washing the marbles when we were all done. {Tip: If you allow your kiddo to wash marbles AND you have a garbage disposal put a tray in the bottom of the sink to keep from loosing any!}

Once her egg was dry I finished up by dating the bottom with a Sharpie and adding a coat of glossy ModPodge. I also ended up adding an M to this years and last years egg.... I will have Z eggs soon enough!

TP Flowers

Yup we made toilet paper flowers and they are just adorable! Okay some of them were made with paper towel tubes but some were made with toilet paper tubes too. I stumbled upon this adorable idea in the latest edition of Kiwi magazine and thought it would be a perfect project for Maddie and I to work on during our very rainy week. 

I assembled all of the flowers before Maddie and I started the project so all she had to worry about was painting her flowers. Armed with the giant bucket of acrylic paints we set to work. Maddie was in charge of the flowers while I painted bamboo skewers green for the stems.

Ack! Can you tell why I am not a fan of breaking out the paints! There is ALWAYS a mess.

Later in the day after all the globbed on paint dried I hot glued the flowers on to the skewers and Maddie matched buttons with each flower for me to glue on too.

 Maddie decided our flowers NEEDED bees so I quickly whipped up some small clay bees that she also painted. We used Pluffy clay and before I baked the bee bodies I left indentations for the button wings so that I would have no problems gluing them on after the fact. 

We assembled our flower pots in some Target Dollar Spot pails I had leftover from Maddie's 2nd birthday party. I used some of our sensory rice to help keep the flowers standing in the bucket too. Adorable!

Flower Assembly Per Kiwi Magazine:
Flatten the paper tube and cut into 3/4 inch strips. To make the flower petals, open six (we did five) of the flattened cardboard strips into ovals. Glue the bottom half of the petals together into a flower shape (I used hot glue), leaving a space between two of them for the stem.

Stained Glass Butterflies

The Crafty Crow featured some gorgeous butterflies from Twig and Toadstool that I thought would be a perfect craft for Maddie. 

We did end up changing a few things so they worked well for us. We swapped out the watercolors for finger paints. Less color options for Maddie means less likely to see big pieces of nasty brown colored paper!

We used a thicker white construction paper and Maddie had fun swirling colors together on the paper. I tried to emphasize that we needed to make sure there were no clumps of paint on the paper but of course in one ear out the other. So as she finished each picture I took over smoothing out the paint so we had one thin even layer of paint on the paper.

After the paint dried I cut out a few butterfly shapes and then we used a hole punch, scissors and large circle punch to cut windows out in the butterflies.

At first we attempted to just glue pieces of tissue paper into the windows but I guess our white paper was a bit thin because we could see the tissue paper outline through the butterfly. Not cool. Instead Maddie slathered the butterflies with a glue stick and we stuck the whole butterfly to a sheet of tissue paper. I have to admit this was much easier than using small pieces of tissue paper in each window!

I LOVE how the butterflies came out! Just beautiful!

They make a wonderful spring addition to our backdoor!

Eggs and Cake

Friday was a busy day at our house!

I spent the morning constructing this....

for a 1st birthday party this weekend.

Then it was time for Easter egg fun!

This year I found the coolest dyeing kit that is sorta like a salad spinner but for eggs!

Madison thought it was awesome and I thought it was CLEAN!

I love how our eggs came out and Mad had a great time creating them!

Mad just set out her basket for the Easter bunny and is headed to bed - she can't wait for an egg hunt in the morning!

Chocolate & Marshmallows

Nom nom nommmm

Chocolate + Marshmallows = YUM

Little tip: when I melt chocolate for dipping I add about a teaspoon of shortening to the chocolate to help thin it out

Spring Science

Madison has been fighting off a cold this week AND we had some crazy weather so we spent most of the week at home doing a whole lot of nothing. I was able to entice Madison away from her blanket and Disney movies long enough to do a little Spring Science in the kitchen though!

We used the directions on suite101.com to make Geode Easter Eggs!

Or eggs are still in the process of forming so I don't have any finished product pictures yet although I will say it may have been more about the process than the results ~ we'll see.

May I suggest that you prep the eggshells BEFORE the project ~ like the night before when the kiddo(s) are fast asleep or you may have to break out the hair dryer to speed along the process. Not that I had to do that or anything.....

We ended up using Epsom Salt, Table Salt, Cream of Tartar and Baking Soda for our experiment.

Madison loved mixing the materials and adding the dye!

Stay tuned to see how the project turns out!

Painted Tin Foil Eggs

Last week I received the last e-mail issue of Kids Craft Weekly

if you don't already get it you should, sign up HERE

and saw this adorable tin foil egg craft. I don't think I was the only one that thought it was perfect for the kiddos either - I have seen quite a few posts popping up lately!

You can find the complete directions at Kids Craft Weekly.

An Eggcellent Tradition

About a month ago I ordered a few odds and ends from Oriental Trading and one of my favorite purchases as a box of 12 wooden eggs (now available for $3.99). I had plan when I ordered them ~ not usually the case ~ and couldn't wait to get Madison set up with some paint.

I know I am starting late and should have started this for Mad's first Easter but later is better than never! I have Madison one of the eggs last week and let her pick out 3 colors to paint it. We used acrylic paints for this project. After Madison painted the egg as she saw fit I used a Sharpie on the bottom to add the date and finished it off with a coat of Mod Podge.

Our little basket is a bit empty at the moment but the plan is to have Maddie paint a new egg every year to add to the collection!

Then when Madison grows up and moves out she will have an egg collection similar to the blown egg collection I made as a child!