Happy 4th of July!

Been a little lazy and under the weather this week, but managed a fun little project today painting fireworks. We've been talking about 4th of July all week, and though we probably won't make it to any real fireworks tomorrow, she had fun with this fireworks craft.

Pinteresting: What To Do With All Those Plastic Easter Eggs

I saw this Easter craft on Pinterest last month using actual eggs, but since we already dyed ours I thought it would be a fun thing to try using plastic Easter eggs since we have an abundance of them.

I filled the eggs with coins so they would have some weight to roll around. Placed a sheet of paper in the bottom of a plastic tray. Then I had her dip the eggs on paint, put them on the tray and roll them around. After the paint dried it pretty much flaked right off the eggs, but the paintings that resulted were great.

Wordless Wednesday

Påskris or Easter Tree

I really love the idea of passing down cultural family traditions. As the child of a very unusual mix of backgrounds, Iranian and Swedish, I celebrated a lot of different traditions growing up and I want to share those same things with my little one.

This past weekend we got ready for Easter with some egg dyeing. While we don't celebrate the holiday religiously, it's still a lot of fun to celebrate, a great way to talk about Spring and, of course, a great opportunity for fun Spring crafts.

First I poked holes in each end of an egg and blew out the insides into a bowl. I separated the whites and yolks so I could cook some meringue kisses with the whites after. We dyed our eggs using food coloring and decorated them with stickers. Finally I tied a loop of ribbon around each egg and S hung them all in the blooming branches I had arranged in a vase. All in all I'd say our first egg dye was a success!

Dad At Play

Yet another bad cold left us stuck inside on this beautiful, sunny Saturday. This time both the little one and I have the bug, so dad was nice enough to give me a break and do all the indoor entertaining today.

On a whim they decided to make some butterflies. Turned out great! Amazing all the things you can do with an empty toilet paper roll.

Valentines Day Crafts For Toddlers

We've been talking a lot about Valentine's Day and love this past week. With a cold that never seems to quit we've been cooped up and had a lot of time for crafts.

We had a lot of fun with some sponge painting, I just cut some hearts out of regular dish sponges, not as easy as it looks, but turned out well.

Finger painting is still her favorite, so I tried an activity I saw on Pinterest where you create an image or a word with masking tape, paint over it and then remove the tape. This one was a lot of fun too.

'Twas The Week Before Valentine's Day and I Just Finished My Christmas Project

It's almost Valentine's Day and I just managed to finish my big craft project for Christmas. Yes you read that right. This pocket calendar took me since November to finish. We still managed to use it all through December to countdown to Christmas with the help of a few dozen sewing pins holding it together. The little one had a ton of fun checking it every morning for a surprise inside.

Here are the directions, though I changed the dimensions a bit after measuring the door I had planned to hang it up on --with all the pins we had to just keep it draped over a chair.