Wednesday on Wednesday

Some great pictures from our annual Easter egg hunt! The weather was amazing and the children were even more so!

The skirt was one of Wednesday's Easter presents. It was a long overdue requested "rainbow skirt" number. It is made from a combination of vintage sheets, new yardage, thrifted scarf and vintage trims. It was so much fun to make I am making another for sell. I hope your weekend was as beautiful and fun filled as ours! Cheers!

Wednesday on Wednesday

It is that time of year again. The time when Wednesday drives me bananas until she gets to dye some eggs. So yesterday I obliged. I had hopes of doing the Kool-Aid method but my local Wal-Mart didn't sell the individual packs.  I have done the food colouring with vinegar method and it did work but I felt you needed to leave the eggs in the bath too long or vivid colours. (Little ones need instant gratification.) So, I wandered over to the easter decorating section and found Dudley's Egg Decorating Kit. I had two criteria; bright vivid colours and our year old friendly processes. (Some kits called for smushing the egg in a bag of glitter etc.). This kit delivered. Super cheap and super bright colours and the girls loved it.

If we get the eggs eaten by Friday, I am going to do this one more time for Wednesday. Maybe by then the dye on her fingers will have washed away too! This weekend we'll be joining friends for our annual egg hunt. And I have some tricks up my sleeve for Wednesday on Sunday. What are some of your Easter traditions? Do you pay special attention to the religious reasons for the holiday? Do you have a child obsessed with dyeing eggs like me? However you celebrate I hope your Easter is magical.
<3

My Crafty Weekend : Bunnies & Eggs & Cookies! Oh My!

Welcome to the Easter Wrap Up edition of My Crafty Weekend We had more fun this weekend than a barrel full of soft fuzzy bunnies. What with all the crafts, egg hunts and park going we didn't stop! I had hoped to have a photo of a field berry pie up there too, but alas I got caught up in some spring cleaning. Today though, I promised to bring one to a belated Easter dinner today.

But we did get messy! We dyed hard boiled eggs with food colouring. We tried different resist methods including stickers and crayons. Our stickers bled and the crayons only looked good on light coloured eggs like yellow. Hot glue does not work. (Just in case anyone thought they were brilliant like I did.) But Wednesday had a blast! It combine all her favourite things, colours, water and play. We'll be doing this again soon I am sure, for the price of a dozen eggs she'll get so much joy!

We made the cotton bud bunnies and cards for Wednesday's friends. She gave them to them at an Easter egg hunt they put on. It was awesome, and sunny and wonderful and I cannot wait until next year! I am going to start collecting things now to put in the eggs next year. The amount of candy we are giving away is crazy!

Lastly, on Easter eve I squeaked out some pretend sweets. I made Oreos that open up for pretend dipping and licking. I also made some chocolate bunnies. I have some patterns and tutes coming tomorrow. SO stay tuned!

Oh yes, and I just had to share my favourite link from last week!

Is this not the most adorable thing yo have ever seen? Polly from Helping Little Hands created this for her daughter's first birthday. Along with matching cake! The tutorial has been done and can be found here as well. Who does not love anything Eric Carle inspired? If you have yet to visit her blog I encourage you to do so. Currently she has a serious of refashions happening called Hand Me Down Rehab and if you love felt food you will adore the Felt Food Cook Along for an entire pantry full!

And what did you get up to this weekend amongst all the fancy dresswearing-family feeding-church going-egg hiding chaos? Maybe you hosted a brilliant feast? Do you have a photo or recipe to share? Did you start something? Finally finish something? You should share with us!And now I am off to bake the aforementioned field berry pie! Wish me luck on the lattice top! Happy crafting!





   
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How To : Cotton Bud Bunny Crafts

Yesterday, I managed to squeeze in some great Easter crafting with Wednesday. It started out as a card craft for her friends but that inspired me to tear apart a cotton bud and glue it to some foam balls. You still with me? Good. It turned out awesome, have a look.




I will warn you it is messy (well more sticky than messy) and Wednesday is not a fan of icky. So this might be more suited to older kids, but at the end of the post you will see Wednesday's version of it. And she loved it so much she would only talk to Bunny until nap time. Below is all the steps photographed. If you need directions there is written instructions below. Have fun!

How To : Felt Flowered Papier Mache Easter Basket

Good morning! The sun is shining here today and it is slowly warming up. After I post this I am getting pretty and Wednesday and I are going out to play! But, before that I have a photo tutorial to share with you. I had it in my mind to make Wednesday's Easter basket this year, to go along with the eggs I made her and the soon-to-be-felt-food I am making her. I had a few issues though. It needed to be big enough to hold two dozen soft eggs, it needed to be light enough for her to carry and comfortable enough for her to want to carry it. I kept going back to papier mache for simplicity. I re-examined the mailbox I made her and found it to be light enough so, I went with it. The next snag was how to cover it. My head was not in the place to make a slip cover for it like the mailbox but I knew I wanted a nice soft look. Enter this tutorial from Love 2 Create. It was inspiring in both its simplicity and prettiness. Over the course of the weekend I think I made about 160 felt rosettes.

How To : Mod Podge Egg Garland

This was a labour of love but it was worth it and I am excited to have a new tutorial for you.

A few notes before beginning:

• To Modge Podge the fabric to the eggs took me about 3 hours from beginning to end and I did sixteen eggs. The flowers were easy peazy and the threading took only minutes as well.
  
• The Modge Podging makes the eggs strong enough to be collected by little ones on Easter but pretty enough to collect in a bowl or thread on a garland. If I hadn't already sewn up two dozen fabric eggs this is what I would have done for her to collect.
• I did notice after all was said and done that the darker/brighter the fabric the better it looked when dried. I did up four to begin with and almost didn't finish because I wasn't sure if I liked them with the paler fabrics. As soon as I added the bright yellow and purple though I loved them.
• Also, you want to talk frugal? These scraps are the size of quarters and the eggs came from a couple weeks of baking.
  
• I wasn't sure if you would want to make the same flowers I made, but just in case I made a quick video tute because pictures would have taken too long to show you what a video does in 1:30s. Also, don't laugh when you see me burn myself.

Recipe : Pipe-able Cream Cheese Frosting

I made some carrot cupcakes this weekend for a family get together and since it was close to Easter I wanted to make them a little bit fun. Cream cheese frosting is not necessarily known for it's pipe-able properties. It is definitely known for being delicious and pairing perfectly with carrot cake though so it was only natural I thicken it up some how to make the pretty little bird nests you see pictured.

This yields enough to pipe small nests on about ten cupcakes and spread another ten. (The cupcakes I made were very muffin like without frosting so I chose to leave some bare for snacking.)

Ingredients
2 cups icing sugar
1-8oz package of cream cheese (Softened)
1/4 cup butter
1 tsp vanilla
cream (Optional, use only if you find consistency not creamy enough)
Food colouring

Directions
With an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese and butter together.
Add vanilla and colouring
Add icing sugar slowly until well combined.
Add cream tsp by tsp if consistency too thick. Alternatively add more icing sugar if it is not thick enough.
Put into icing bag and use immediately on cooled cake/cupcakes/cookies.

This is not so stiff you cannot spread it nicely, but if you want it creamier add another 1/8 cup of butter and cream by the teaspoon until it reaches desired consistency.

Wednesday on Wednesday

Wednesday's first Easter egg hunt. This was last March. I was not nearly as crafty this time last year so I just bought some super shiny eggs and a bucket and threw them on the grass. She loved it. She was too young to really hunt so instead of making it hard for her we kept it simple. She loved it and when she would open them up and find some real fruit candy all the better. This year they will be one hundred percent less plastic but a zillion percent more awesomeness!