Easter Fun

We are getting ready for Easter around here.  

 Every holiday deserves a pretty tissue paper/contact paper sun catcher.  Kate always enjoys making these.

I pinned SO many different Easter treats on Pinterest, and I finally chose this chocolate covered peanut butter cracker bunny treat because the kids could make them mostly on their own.

 I helped by melting the chocolate and making the bunny heads.

I think they came out super cute.  Yummy too.

The Last Week of March

 So sweet.  I love moments like this.  Kate is such a sweet girl, always ready with a kiss and a hug.

Kate pushes her baby in the stroller all around the house, barreling through anyone and anything that gets in her way.

 Reagan is always listening to music and dancing; it's just what she does!

New sneakers.

Pretty girl.

Colored by Kate.  She is always coloring lately.  I have never seen a one year old color as often or for as long as she does every day.

I love this picture of Kate; it reminds me of ET.  The trundle under Reagan's bed was out, and Kate climbed up onto the bed and got right in the middle of the stuffed animals.  Every time she sees that hat, she puts it on, and it just made the picture.

 Kate and Collin used contact paper and tissue paper to make Easter egg decorations today.

 Kate's egg.

Collin's egg.
Reagan went to work with Dad this morning, so she didn't make a tissue paper suncatcher egg, but it sounds like she had a lot of fun at the office!

In the evening, Collin and Reagan worked on decorating some real eggs.  They used three different techniques:

crayon on hot eggs (this is my favorite; I love the way the crayon melts and looks so bright),

food dye in the egg twirling machine,

and painting with food dye and cotton swabs.

A Tisket, A Tasket

....a multicolored tissue/contact paper sun catcher basket.

I cut a basket shape out of clear contact paper and let C and R cover it with all of the little scraps of tissue paper we had lying around.

I then stuck another piece of contact paper over the tissue paper to sandwich it between the two sticky clear layers; I cut off any excess contact paper.

I hung the sun catcher on our sliding glass door, and C and R used our Crayola window crayons to fill the basket with goodies.

Once again we made a sun catcher on a cloudy day; it must be wishful thinking.  If the sun shows up this week, the basket will look very pretty!

Easter Craft from Last Year

This is a repost from last year.  We are big fans of salt paint, and this is one of our favorite uses for it.  There is a good chance we will redo this sometime this week, but I thought I would repost this now just in case anyone else wants to try it before it gets too late!

We have been enjoying two books about marshmallow chicks, and I have been waiting anxiously for the right opportunity to revisit the salt paint technique we used for our Texas cactus painting.  Marshmallow chicks have the perfect texture to recreate with this technique.  The finished product really feels like a marshmallow chick.  I love this paint.

The books we read are:

Max Counts His Chickens by Rosemary Wells - R LOVES Max and Ruby and this book is really cute.  The Easter Bunny has hidden ten pink marshmallow chicks and Ruby finds all of them while Max just makes a mess.  When it looks like there are no chicks for Max, Grandma makes a phone call and the Easter Bunny comes to the rescue.  R likes to help Max count the right way when he gets the numbers mixed up at the end!

Owen's Marshmallow Chick by Kevin Henkes - We have owned this book for years, and it is definitely for younger children, but R still loves it.  Even though she has progressed to longer picture books, she still enjoys listening to toddler books! 

For the craft, I drew chicks similar to those in the Rosemary Wells book.

I then mixed up some salt paint.

Here is the recipe:  1/4 cup liquid laundry starch
                             1/4 cup water
                             2 TBSP paint
                             1 cup salt
                             Mix it well and paint!
                             This recipe makes a lot of paint and R continued painting with it long after she was done    painting the marshmallow chicks.

R had a blast making pink marshmallow chicks!  Then she enjoyed one or two of the real thing!

Easter Garland

C and R made Easter garland yesterday.  It was so easy to make, and we are very happy with the new decoration.

First, I cut egg shapes out of cereal and cracker boxes.  Then I covered them in aluminum foil.

C and R could have done this, but I wanted to have the eggs ready for painting when C came home from school.

R used pink and purple acrylic paint, and C used green and blue acrylic paint; they painted over the foil however they wanted.

When they were done painting, they used cotton swabs to create designs in the paint and to let some of the shiny silver foil show through the paint.

Once the paint was completely dry, I used a hole punch to make holes in the top of the eggs.  We threaded the egg shapes with yarn.

Here are a couple of close ups of a few of the finished eggs:

In the past, we have also used toothpicks to scratch designs in the dry paint.  Both techniques are fun, and the results are great either way!