Easter Eggs

Today we took some brown paper eggs that I bought at one of the craft stores and water color painted them.

Start

We even did some crayon resistance painting. I wrote "Happy Easter" on one and wrote "Mimi" and "Pop" on another and Hazel drew on a different one. Oh, and all of Hazel's are gnomes and not eggs. She was adamant about that.

First Ones

Crayon Resistance

Hazel's Masterpiece Gnome

Awhile ago we also decorated some plastic Easter eggs.

Hazel's eggs

Hazel decided she wanted to use glue that day and glued a few sheets of tissue paper on to each egg and then claimed she was done. I cut out some felt and used googly eyes and pom poms to make a chick and a bunny.

I also did some fabric covered ones. I experimented with it a bit and they did not come out nearly as nice as the ones my mother made me, but it is a great way to use up scraps of fabric. In the future I would use smaller pieces of fabric.

To make these you need Mod Podge or something similar for glue and thin strips of fabric and a plastic egg.

Paint some Mod Podge all over the plastic egg.

Then wrap the fabric all around it so none of the plastic is showing. Then cover again in Mod Podge to give it a seal (if you use glossy it will look even nicer, but I didn't have it). And let dry.

You could also do this with yarn, string, ribbon, etc. I would wrap with those in a more planned out way.

Finally when Hazel finished her eggs she made a picture. For some reason she didn't want to use the stickers on the eggs.

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Happy Pi Day!

I'm showing my geeky roots and going back to when I taught math. On March 14, math teachers have started celebrating a holiday called Pi Day! Earlier in the week I gave you some links and ideas of lessons to help with the celebration. Since Hazel is 3 and we are pursuing a Waldorf education we didn't bother with all the geometry stuff and we went to my favorite part--baking pie!

Quick Easter Craft

We made a quick Easter placemat the other day. We ran out of time before we did the St. Patrick's Day one. These are easy. Gather different relatively flat decorations for the holiday--ribbon, paper cut outs, stickers, etc. Stick it on to a sheet of clear Contact paper (which should be cut twice the size you want so you can fold it over). Then fold over to seal it all in.

We are still waiting to hear from one knitter in the Knitted Farm Swap, but have an opening if we do not hear from her soon. If you are interested please email me.

Popsicle Stick Puppets

Ok, I couldn't leave today without some toddler fun--so here it is!!

Hazel brought me one of these puppets we made back in November and asked if we could make some more. I of course said yes since they were mostly Christmas themed back then. So this morning before she went to Nonni's house for the day, we made some.

Hazel's Princess

To make them you glue a popsicle stick across a tongue depressor stick and then decorate with felt clothes and draw on a face. Then we decorate them with yarn for hair and glitter glue and ribbons, etc. Hazel wanted to make a princess. I cut the dress for her and she did the gluing and cut the yarn herself. Oh, and I cut a crown for her princess. Unfortunately, our fingers and other things kept hitting the glitter glue and thus smudging it. She also got the hair over the face I drew on it. Oh, well. It is her creation.

I made a leprechaun and an Easter Bunny. I even gave my Easter Bunny an Easter egg to be sure it was the Easter Bunny.

These are a simple craft to do with a toddler that can be played with some more.

Now that Hazel is gone I have been catching up on reading my magazines. I am loving the latest issue of Country Living. The craft section has some great Easter ideas. Unfortunately my favorite ones did not make their website so you will have to wait until we try them or put our spin on them.

Now I'm off to knit and rest before I have to go to work tonight. Hope you are having a great day!!

Ways to Celebrate Pi Day!

As a former math teacher, I am definitely an advocate of Pi Day which is on Wednesday this week--March 14 or 3.14. Math teachers don't always get the fun part of teaching so we have to take it whenever we can get it. Pi Day is one of those times.

Vegetable Baked Ziti

Since my husband is Catholic, he tries not to eat meat on Fridays during Lent. Since neither of us eat fish, this makes Friday meals a bit hard. Here is a recipe for baked ziti I came up with adding as many vegetables as he will tolerate. If I wasn't making this during Lent I would add a pound of ground turkey breast to the recipe.

Vegetable Baked Ziti

Your Recipe

6 PointsPlus Value (Weight Watchers)

Prep time:  20 min

Cook time:  30 min

Serves: 8

Ingredients

	1 pound(s) cooked whole wheat ziti
	1 cup(s) uncooked zucchini, chopped
	1 clove(s) (medium) garlic clove, minced
	1 pound(s) fresh baby spinach
	3 tsp olive oil
	1 cup(s) Carrots, pureed or grated
	29 oz canned diced tomatoes, 2 cans
	24 oz canned tomato sauce
	2 cup(s) fat-free ricotta cheese
	10 oz shredded fat free mozzarella
	1 oz parmesan cheese
	1 tsp dried oregano
	1 tsp ground basil

Instructions

• Cook pasta. While pasta is cooking saute zucchini and garlic in oil. Add spinach and carrots when zucchini is looking basically cooked. Add tomatoes and tomato sauce and herbs and parmesan cheese. Turn to low. After pasta is drained, combine in pan with ricotta. Mix. Then stir in sauce. Pour into 13 by 9 inch pan. Sprinkle mozzarella on top. Bake at 400 for 30 minutes. 

 Enjoy!!

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Sharing Saturday #10

Thank you to everyone who shared with us last week! We are always amazed at the wonderful ideas you each share with us. If you have not checked them out you should!!

Ok, now onto the features!!

St. Patrick's Day Cards and More Spring Fairies

Our First Spring Bulb Has a Flower!

Today we decided it was time to make the St. Patrick's Day cards to mail to our family. I am part Irish--Hazel is named after my Irish grandmother and her godmother is Irish, so we will do a small celebration for it.  I bought her a shamrock plant at Trader Joe's the other day. We took some of the shamrocks off to paint with them.

The prints did not come out exactly as I had planned, but we tried.

Then we decorated with stickers and we stamped the insides with a Happy St. Patrick's Day stamp.

Hazel wanted to do a rainbow on one, so I gave her some heart stickers for it.

And the insides:

Yesterday at school the teacher had a beautiful bendy doll fairy that was much smaller than what I have made, so I tried some. If you don't know what a bendy doll is there are several tutorials around. They are made of pipe cleaners wrapped with embroidery floss and usually a wooden bead for a head and more embroidery floss or yarn for hair. The tutorial I first used is at The Enchanted Tree. I still need to add some wings to my fairies, but thought I would share them anyway.

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Spring and Muffins

Yesterday and today feel like spring. It has been close to 60 if not over 60 and we are loving it. However we still have the feeling of brown all around us. Everything still looks brown. We see a few spots of spring bulbs starting to break through the earth, but not enough to change the overall color you see. We found a book at the library about this, And Then It's Spring by Julie Fogliano. This book literally talks about how everything is brown and you plant seeds and wait and wait and then one day suddenly everything is green. It is a great book for this time of year at least around here.

This morning we decided to make muffins before heading to school. I pulled out my Deceptively Delicious cookbook (by Jessica Seinfeld) and amended her applesauce muffin recipe. The recipe can be found here. I used whole wheat flour and used raw carrot puree instead of the butternut squash puree.

Hazel helping puree the carrots

I also used more carrots than called for (either squash or carrot in the book). Hazel has no problems eating most vegetables so she doesn't mind me putting them in. Her father on the other hand doesn't really eat enough vegetables so we do try to hide them in things for him.

Hazel mixing the dry ingredients

Hazel of course did the mixing and pouring of measured ingredients. Her technique has definitely improved.

Cracking an egg

She has gotten better with eggs as well, but still needs to do them in a separate bowl so we can get all the shells out.

We ate them warm for breakfast and then rushed off to school. It was one of the first times we were not the first ones in class there. They are changing the start time next week since everyone always comes late to our class. Oh, well. The muffins were delicious!

Oh, and why did we bake muffins today. So we would have something to link up at

Won't you join us over there!! Thanks, Kelly for hosting a great baking party!

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Bath Time Tea Party and Easter Egg Fun

We are still looking for a knitter to join us in our knitted farm swap. If you want to join please e-mail me. A few people have left messages wanting to join with a no-reply e-mail, so I cannot get in touch with them.

Bath Time Tea Party and Other Kitchen/Bath Fun

Now I would like to feature a wonderful idea from last week's Sharing Saturday. This idea is from Glittering Muffins and she called it Sensory Bath - Kitchen Fun. (Note: I'm not sharing any of her pictures since her son is in all of them.) Well we have tried it and I have to say Hazel is asking for baths again. She absolutely loved it. I invaded her play kitchen for items to take in and we had a tea party and she made cakes and all sorts of things.

Steve and I always said we would not take pictures that would embarrass Hazel later in life especially bath or naked ones so I am only going to post pictures of what we had in the bath tub. Also Hazel has sensitive skin so on doctor's orders we only use one brand of soap, lotion, suntan lotion, shampoo, etc., so I thought coloring the water was not a great idea. However we have given her a few bath time paints and she used that to color the water when she was mixing. The blue wasn't coming out anymore so I opened it up and put water in it for her and she loved getting blue water in her bowl.

She had so much fun with this bath that we visited the Dollar Tree to replace some of the things we stole from her kitchen like the travel size spray bottle and soap dispenser. We also picked up the slotted spoons and strainer. She loved it!!

Easter Egg Fun

Next we had fun with Easter eggs. I got this idea from The Imagination Tree. We started with a tub full of water and plastic Easter eggs. We tried to sink them. We tried them together and apart. For the most part they floated though the open ones we could get to sink faster. Then we tried adding coins to them. At first we added only a few coins and they still floated. We checked to see if the coins would float on their own. Hazel enjoyed this part because they splashed so she kept dropping them in. Then we filled the eggs with coins and those sunk.

Next we tried filling some with rice. Again they floated until they took on water. Then we pushed them down and got them all to sink by filling them with water. Hazel enjoyed picking them up to empty the water out.

We had a lot of fun experimenting with the eggs in the water. Then we went to decorate them. We will share that for another post. Have a great day!!

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We have a winner!!

Just wanted to let everyone know that the PrintRunner sticker giveaway is over and the winner is DomesticDiva. Rafflecopter picked her number 36 entry. Congratulations. I will be sending you an email shortly to get your information.

A Snowy Day

Lenten Share:
Just thought I would give you an update on our Easter egg grass. We were very excited to notice some grass growing this week.

Blogger Tag

I've been tagged by Stephanie over at Toastie Studio Sewing Blog. To play when you are tagged your tagger sends you 11 questions to answer and then you tag 11 blogger friends and send them 11 questions.

RULES 
**You must post the rules {?!}
**Answer the 11 questions that the tagger posted for you & then create 11 questions to ask the people you’ve tagged
**Tag 11 people and link them in your post
**Let them know you have tagged them

My questions from Stephanie:

1. How did you get into crafting?
My mother. She always was doing crafts with us as well as always sewing clothes for us and eventually quilting. I am no where near her level of skill, but have fun with it.

One of my completed dollhouses--I saved this one for Hazel!

2. Fabric, felt, card, wood? What is your favourite material?
Depends on my mood and my project. I love sewing and quilting and buying fabric (this is a big storage problem). I love paper/card crafts as well. I have recently starting really working with felt and love the ease of it. And my dollhouses are wood, but I don't really have the correct tools or skills to work with wood much besides the dollhouse kits.

One of my first quilt projects

3. What do you aspire to be?
A wonderful mom.

4. What is the nicest fabric you own/want to own?
My daughter plays with silks I finished for her so I guess that is it.

5. Buttons or ribbon?
Ribbon.

6. On the weekend when you are not sewing etc, what do you like to do?
Time with my family. Getting outside, playing oh, and go to church.

7. Does your boyfriend/husband/partner get your crafting?
Not completely.

8. What is your greatest crafting dream?
To build a dollhouse from scratch.

9. Have you ever received a handmade gift and been disappointed with it?
Well, not really. My mother showed me a purse she was making me for my birthday, but I never received it. She is a perfectionist and it wasn't coming out correctly so she didn't finish it.

10. How many crafty friends do you have?
On-line friends or meet in life friends. On-line many!! Meet in life friends that I hang out with all the time probably 4 or 5.

11. What do you prefer? Working from a pattern, or just doing it as you go?
  Depends on what I'm doing. Usually I like working from a pattern, but if I want to feel creative I just go along.

The bloggers I am going to tag:
Toys In The Dryer
One Artsy Mama
Happy Whimsical Hearts
I HEART CRAFTY THINGS
Mama Mia's Heart2Heart
La-La's Home Daycare
April's Homemaking
Mom On Timeout
Sew Happy Geek
Reading Confetti
Tot Treasures

My questions for these bloggers:
1) What got you into blogging?
2) What got you into crafting?
3) What is your favorite media for crafting (fabric, paper, wood, etc.)?
4) What books are you reading?
5) If applicable what children's books are favorites in your house right now?
6) What is your most accomplished craft?
7) What is your greatest craft dream?
8) What do you aspire to be?
9) Do you own or plan to won an e-reader (Kindle, Nook, etc.)?
10) What recent craft trend are you excited to try out?
11) What's the best gift you have ever received?

Spring Fairies and a Leprechaun

Today is the last day to enter my second giveaway. There are some amazing entries over at Sharing Saturday. Please go check them out and get inspired, and feel free to share your newest creations and ideas while there.

Put Together

Knitted Farm Swap

Please note: All of the pictures in this post are from Living Crafts Magazine and are used with their permission. Please do not pin any of them since they are not mine.

Some of the patches closer up (Winter 2008)

Sharing Saturday #9

Wow!! What amazing entries we had in last week's Sharing Saturday. If you haven't had a chance to check them out you really should. There were some really great ones added at the end of it. I know I had a hard time picking features. It seems to get harder and harder the more entries we get.