2013 Easter Luncheon

In keeping with yesterday's post on last year's Easter baskets, here's a little peek at the family Easter luncheon we had last year.

The spread. I discuss how my daughter and her friend made the colorful cotton round garland here. In this picture, you get a shameful glimpse in the lower left hand corner of the disastrous ;) deviled egg chicks. The caps wouldn't stay put, the eyes looked insane, and the bottom half cracked all the way down on every one from the pressure of the filling. It was also really hard to get the yolk out of the eggs when cut this direction. They were comically bad.

Simple food picks made from washi tape and toothpicks.

My husband's delicious pulled chicken sandwiches.

My very very very strong Greek salad. Did you know there's a difference between a clove of garlic and a head of garlic? Yeah. There's a reason my husband does all the cooking around here...

Ginger ale with blackberry ice cubes. Our favorite easy party punch.

2013 Easter Baskets

I've had Easter on the brain lately, and as I was dreaming up what my kids might find in their baskets this year, I remembered that I never shared last year's Easter baskets.

Meg's Basket

Jamie's Basket

The kids' baskets are from Target, purchased on clearance the year before. They function as toy storage bins throughout the rest of the year. They each received a felt bunny hand puppet (tutorial and pattern here), a felt bunny finger puppet (tutorial and pattern here), and a new book (Meg, James). Meg also received a small wooden jewelry box for her rings, and James received some bunny beanbags filled with lavender-scented beans. I was inspired by these but was running low on time and slapped them together from memory the night before Easter. They're cute, and the kids like to play with them, but the inspiration picture is way cuter.

December Activity Shelves

This year's December activity shelves revolve, surprisingly enough, around winter and Christmas.

As usual, the top two shelves are filled with themed activities while the lower two hold a variety of non-themed toys.

Our sensory bin is a white dish tub from Dollar Tree. It's filled with white rice scented with almond extract (I'd originally planned to use mint, but we were out), a bit of glitter, miniature mylar gift bows from Dollar Tree, and a scoop that I believe we purchased from Target's Dollar Spot earlier this year.

Our treasure basket holds a few of the same things our Shiny Stuff Treasure Tin held last year (holographic foil tissue paper, a large jingle bell, and a shiny gift bow), but we've also added some other jingly instruments.

There's an art tin with a variety of papers - old dollar store greeting cards, pages from a Christmas picture book that got ruined, a snowman notepad, and festive foam shapes from Target's Dollar Spot after-Christmas clearance last year - as well as feathers, spangles, scissors, glue, and markers.

We have a basket of books about various December holidays and wintry fun, some plush reindeer the kids were given last year at "Story Time with Mrs. Claus" at the mall, and a tree stacker from Plan Toys (purchased for a steal at the consignment store, since it was massing the top piece).

Previous Seasonal Activity Shelves
February and Valentine's 2013
Springtime and Easter 2013
Autumn 2013

Previous Seasonal Sensory Bins
Springtime and Easter 2013
Autumn 2013

Previous Seasonal Treasure Baskets
Autumn 2012
Winter 2012
Valentine's 2013

Previous Seasonal Shelf Activities
Christmas 2012
Valentine's 2013
Halloween 2013

Halloween Colored Glue Suncatchers

We got the idea for these colored glue suncatchers from the fabulous early childhood blog, Teach Preschool.

To make the colored glue, we filled empty condiment bottles ($1 apiece from Wal-Mart) with white school glue and a squirt of tempera paint. You can use food coloring or liquid watercolor to tint, if you prefer. I stuck autumn and Halloween cookie cutters (a Wilton set - $4 at Michael's) to contact paper to hold them in place.

Meg simply filled the cutters up with the glue. I encouraged her to use different colors in the same cutter to highlight features, but she wanted to stick with one color per cutter. Just as well, because the glue did run quite a bit and the colors may have mixed too much. I've read that you can run a bead of hot glue around the inside and outside of the cutters to prevent the colored glue from escaping underneath, but, despite a lot of leakage, our cutters were still nice and thick, so I don't think it's necessary.

The shapes took a few days to dry, but they finally remained firm instead of sticking when we lifted a corner to peek underneath. The oranges and reds dried the slowest, probably because they had more pigment. After we popped them from the cutters (much easier when they're still a bit stretchy, by the way, than if you let them harden completely), we poked holes in the top and bottom of each shape and strung them together with thread to hang in the windows. For fun, I added some faces and other simple (very simple) features with a Sharpie before we hung them, like so:

This was one that we left in the cutter until it hardened completely, and you can see that his hand and tail didn't pop out cleanly.

Ghost Suckers/Lollipops and a Pumpkin Goodie Display

It's been a long-standing family tradition to make ghostie suckers to hand out to trick-or-treaters on Halloween.

Tootsie or Blow Pops, a tissue, some ribbon or twine or string, and a couple dots with a marker for eyes. We love to turn on a family-friendly Halloween movie and spend an evening making up 50 or 100 of these guys.

We usually just arrange them in a bowl, but last year we made them even cuter by drilling holes in a pretty pumpkin and sticking the suckers in. We had to refill frequently through the night, as these little ghosties were popular. I loved hearing the kids' exclamations of how cute and cool the candies looked!

Grace Kelly and The Hipster - Creative Kids' Halloween Costumes

It's nearly Halloween again, and I just realized I never took a moment to share the kids' costumes from last year. So, without further ado, I give you Grace Kelly and The Hipster:

Three year old Meg and I were watching an old movie one afternoon when she told me, "I want to be her for Halloween," gesturing to the lovely Miss Kelly. We searched through Google images to find a suitably fabulous gown to recreate (taking some serious artistic liberties), and I then set about making a skirt with miles and miles of pink, black, and white tulle. Meg already had the hat, purchased from the adult section at Target on clearance for $5. A black long-sleeved top and an old purse of mine finished the look off splendidly.

I made the skirt by simply cutting long, thin strips of tulle and looping them around a piece of elastic. I stacked pieces of black and white or black and pink tulle before looping to be sure the colors were variegated nicely and not too stripey.

A few strips of tulle tied around the hat helped it blend seamlessly with the rest of the costume.

Baby costumes are my favorite, because you can get a little silly or whimsical or downright ridiculous, with no protests from the wearer.

James already owned the hat, t-shirt, jeggings (I purchase all his jeggings and leggings from the girls' department, because I love the fit and variety), and socks. I picked up the flannel top and shoes from the kids' consignment store for less than $5 total, the glasses from Dollar Tree (just popped out the lenses), and cut out a mustache from craft foam and hot glued it to a pacifier.

We're still giddy we managed to catch this awesome candid on camera!

Autumn Activity Shelves

I've mentioned before that we have a bookshelf in our kitchen full of novel toys and seasonal activities to keep our kids engaged while we're cooking dinner or otherwise occupied on the main floor of our house.

For autumn, it's stocked with:

Art Supplies

glue, feathers, leaf stickers, autumn foam stickers, Halloween cookie cutters to trace, foam leaves, colored card stock and white art paper, and a jack-o-lantern sticker book

The supplies are tucked away in a felt Halloween basket purchased on clearance last year.

Fine Motor Activity

tiny jack-o-lantern erasers, pumpkin ice cube tray, and tongs

Story Props and Book

Seasonal Picture Books

and our autumn sensory bin and last year's autumn treasure basket.

The art supplies, books, and fine motor activity fit neatly inside a basket.

Autumn Sensory Bin

Our autumn sensory bin contains black beans, white beans, orange-dyed rice*, plastic leaf table scatter from Target's Dollar Spot (purchased last year after-Halloween clearance, but I believe they have it again this year), painted acorns, bowls, a scoop, and tongs.

We collected some acorns at the park recently, washed them, baked them in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes (to kill off any insects/larvae), painted the nuts with soy paint, hot glued the caps on, then polished them up with some beeswax to protect the paint. They make a fun sensory bin addition.

*To color the rice, I just dumped some vinegar and a few drops of red and yellow food coloring onto the rice, stirred thoroughly, then spread it flat to dry for a few hours.

Five Little Pumpkins Child-Made Story Props

One of Meg's favorite autumn books is 5 Little Pumpkins. When I was at Michael's craft store recently and saw some little wooden pumpkin cutouts, I had a feeling she'd love using them to make her own story props.

I offered her orange tempera on a plastic palette, a paintbrush, a black Sharpie, and the cutouts. She chose to prop the book in front of her as she worked.

She put approximately 112 coats of paint on the pumpkins then left them to dry while she napped.

When she awoke, she carefully drew each pumpkin face with the Sharpie. She really studied each pumpkin and tried to replicate its unique features. This is something fairly new for her, copying an image. She's usually adamant that she wants to do things her own way.

She was so proud of how they turned out.