Wishing you a Happy Easter ❤

Wishing everyone a wonderful Easter full of chocolate and happy memories made.
Lots of love from our family to yours. xxx

p.s. I'm putting together a mega-post of Easters-past! Lots of cute egg and bunnies to come. Stay tuned.

A Collection of Fun Easter Activities

I put together a little collection of Easter-inspired activities from the archives :)

What craftiness are you up to this Easter?
Amber. x

Sweet Easter transfers



Stuffing real eggs with Easter treats

Dying a Rainbow of Easter Eggs

While you have the dyes out... | A little science experiment

Making Easter gifts with kids (chocolate alert!)

That one time I made REAL chocolate Easter Eggs! 

* Please consider kitchen hygiene, make sure you keep them in the fridge and eat them within 24 hours if you make these.

Pretty DIY Patterned Eggs

Easter is on it's way! Easy Easter bunny craft.

And finally - some photos from Easter 2013. Now I'm wondering which box I need to unpack to find these beautiful Easter mugs!!

101/365 Easter Is On It's Way!

L was most pleased with his school Easter crafts. And chocolate eggs! He saved them to bring home and insisted on sharing them with us. Sweet kid.

A mostly-gluten-and-dairy-free Easter!

Hola! 

Our lovely Lovely has been gluten-free and dairy-free since the start of last year.

Hence, we just survived* our second mostly-gluten-and-dairy-free Easter!

And this year - we are all gluten-free.

* I say survived because I L-O-V-E chocolate (and, full admission: I am the one who didn't do too well with the dairy-free part ;)

I was thrilled that Coles supermarkets were stocking gluten-free / dairy-free HOT CROSS BUNS this year !! It's often a challenge to find things that are both. We actually took some to the hotel we stayed at for Easter and toasted them in their toaster :) 

Lovely was very happy. #understatement

He has actually started doing dairy challenges (reintroducing small amounts of dairy) and has had success with butter (ie. no apparent reaction). So, he got to have butter on his hotties. Look at that smile.

The Easter bunny needs to get a bit creative for dairy-free kids. 

Last year our boys got toffee apples. 

This year, these beautiful ceramic mugs.  

Luckily, the Easter B. also found D/F + G/F Sweet William Easter Bunnies and the *super yummy* D/F + G/F Rocky Road from Rowie's Cakes. 

Mostly dairy-free. Yes, you can you see my wrappers. Whoops. Thanks breakfast buffet.

 What dietary modifications do you make in your household?

Rainbow Easter Egg Surprise!

Feeling inspired by lots of lovely easter crafts I've seen online I decided that we would try & make our own version of these beautiful eggs featured on the very groovy Not Martha blog :) Rainbow eggs with a suprise!

First I set up glasses of liquid food colours in a rainbow selection. I had blown & sterilised the egg shells earlier in the week so we were ready 2 get dying. 

Dip! Dip! We drew on some of the egg shells with a wax crayon before we dipped. And stuck removable stickers on others. 

Voila! Ready to dry... 

Now, the 'plan' is that this afternoon I will fill the dried eggs with mini easter eggs and seal the open end by gently gluing a mini patty-pan onto the shell... Wish me luck!

We will share them with our little-friends tomorrow morning - there's a street Easter Hunt planned - & I'm sure that all of the kids will enjoy both the cracking and the surprise filling :)

Those eggs...

Okay, so even I thought I'd finished with my Easter posts but then I saw these pix & I just had to add them!

 The eggs we used were laid by the chickens at our friends house where we were staying over the weekend & the boys got to feed the chickens & collect the eggs all by themselves. They loved it! 

Over the same weekend I was reading the *amazing* book' A Montessori Mother' (more to come on this wonderful book or look it up on Google Reader if you can't wait :) and reading about the importance of the children being responsible for the welfare of animals and plants. Fascinating stuff. 

But. back to the eggs...

One proud Mama hen.

Hug finds an egg.

Hanging by the coop :)

Easter Activity | Real chocolate eggs!

** Please consider kitchen hygiene, make sure you keep them in the fridge and eat them within 24 hours if you make these **

So, this might be a crazy idea!

But we had some of that delicious organic milk chocolate left over from making the bunnies... & it occurred to me that it would be lots of fun for the boys to have a real egg filled with chocolate on Easter morning.

I blew out, washed & dried some eggs (in the sun to make sure they were clean & dry). 

Melted the chocolate.

Put some masking tape over the small hole at the top of the egg & tipped it upside down...

And attempted to get that chocolate in! 

It wasn't as easy as one would think. Here I am taking a photo of myself trying to get it in with a funnel. Put down the camera Amber & focus ;)

The funnel was a bit of a messy disaster (not that I was complaining about being covered in chocolate! yum.) but I eventually discovered that it was quite easy to use a piping bag.

So, they're in the fridge now & I had thought to try to 'mend' the hole at the bottom with some tissue paper or the like but I think that I'll just sit them in an egg carton, or some of our colourful cracked shells. 

What will they be like? I can't see why they won't be fabulous but seeing that they're still to be tested I can only advise you to recreate them at your own risk ;)  I shall report back after the "big day".

Easter Activity | Stuffing an egg!

Inspired by Val at Homeschooling in the Rose Garden I decided to try & stuff some blown eggs with the little Easter gifts that I had bought for my boys. The gifts are a little wooden hand-painted chick (for Lovely) and a bunny (for Hug). I've had my eyes on that bunny for months!

First I blew out, washed & dried the egg shell. Then I stuffed the egg with some spun wool to make the chick cosy. Here she goes!

The bunny was too big to actually fit into the egg so he's sitting in a little egg shell & wool nest. I applied a transfer as a finishing touch to the chick-filled one. Too cute, if I say so myself :) 

The gifts then snuggled into a pair of Beatrix Potter mugs with some extra wool & some of those chocolate speckled eggs for company.

I actually thought I'd bought 2 Peter Rabbit mugs but one seems to be Jemima Puddle Duck. Oh well, it matches the chick at least ;) and fingers crossed there won't be any complaints.

Happy Easter!

Easter activity | Transfers onto plain eggs

When I bought the eggs dyes I also found these gorgeous bunny & chicken transfers. You just soak the transfer like a kid's tattoo & apply it to the egg.

So, today, while both boys were at school (& I could/should have been either washing a mountain of washing or attending to a myriad of other things that one can only do when munchkins are happily occupied) I found myself doing this & finalising their Easter gifts. Craziness ;)

Easter Activity | Our colourful eggs

Here are our finished rainbow eggs! The boys polished them with a little olive oil. 

And one of our sweet little cracked babies. I really love these! I didn't have any of those little chicks that you can buy so I've just put in these puff balls for now.

Awwww...

And some mini chocolate speckled eggs

In a basket on the kitchen table :) 

Easter Activity | Colour mixing masterclass!

So... we still had more left-over dye! 

Hug set to work mixing them all together until he had a variety of dark concoctions.

Easter Activity | Colour Experiment

After we'd dyed our share of eggs for the day we were left with all of the dyes. Hug remembered this experiment with milk (which we did sometime early last year) & on his own initiative set off to recreate it. 

Pour milk (full cream) into a dish. 

Add a few drops of food-colour (red/yellow/blus) in separate areas of the bowl.

Squirt in some dish liquid.

Sit back & watch as the colours swirl & merge & mix. 

Magic!

Hmmm, the milk we happened to use was low fat (it's the mix of the fat in the milk & the detergent that makes this magic happen) & the colours being watered down meant that it didn't really work this time but I was so impressed that Hug had remembered it!

Definitely worth a try if you happen to have spare colours after doing your eggs. I found this link to the same experiment if you want a bit more detail. I first discovered it for myself when I went to a Montessori  'Journey & Discovery' weekend. So much fun!

Easter activities | Dying Eggs

I discovered a wonderful selection of European egg dyes at our local toy store. We bought some traditional dyes but you could get metallics & glittery ones also. The boys helped me create a glass of each of the 5 colours in the pack (mixed with water - great for practicing their pouring skills - & a few tablespoons of vinegar - Hug is practicing using the measuring spoons).

A hard-boiled egg goes into the yellow...

We were staying at the house of friends when we did this & I couldn't find a needle to blow out the eggs so we cracked some & dyed the cracked halves also.

Later, I did manage to blow some eggs but they just wanted to float! These cracked shells sunk.

Today, I was googling about & saw on Martha Stewart that you should dye or paint or decorate your raw eggs *before* you blow them to solve that floating dilemma. Genius!