sweet and lovely crafts: March 2013

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Easter egg lunch

I hosted a little Easter lunch this week for Claire and Simon. I invited one of my good friends whose kids are the same age as my kids. I love planning parties, and waiting from Claire's birthday in February and Simon's birthday in May is way to long not to plan a fun get together for the kids.

I of course did not come up with this idea of putting food in Easter eggs, but I think that it's brilliant. The kids LOVED their Easter egg lunch. The great part is that you can use whatever you have on hand. I stuffed mine with blueberries, strawberries, grapes, clementines, cheese, and small bits of sandwiches.

See! He loved it. First thing that Simon did was open every egg and try to see how many had clementines in them.

I also included a joke with each egg lunch for the kids. I used the jokes found here at I Heart Naptime.

Since I knew that I would need to keep the kids entertained while Sylvia and I made the lunches, I printed out quite a few colouring and activity sheets for the kids to do. My kids love colouring, so this did keep them occupied for quite a while. I used colouring sheets from Style Me Gorgeous and Disney Spoonful. I also had some Easter stickers on hand for when colouring alone got a little boring for them.

I covered my tea party table with kraft paper, and added a little washi tape to add some colour. Check out Jillian's post and see the sweet Easter party that she did for her kids.

Sylvia made these Easter basket cupcakes for the kids after lunch. She used chocolate chip cookie dough that she pressed into a mini muffin tin. Then she put some icing on top of them, followed that by some shredded coconut. She topped the baskets with a few eggs (jelly beans) and then made basket handles from pipe cleaners.

Lastly, I printed this banner from Sandy Toes and Popsicles last year, and hung it up again for our lunch this year.

The kids had a great time at the lunch. It was so cute to see how each child had their own approach to opening and eating their eggs.

Who else has super excited children, just waiting for the Easter Bunny to come?

Friday, March 22, 2013

flower sandwich

I can't believe how quickly Easter is approaching! While I prepare a few posts on some of the Easter crafts that we've been making, I thought that I would share this easy spring, flower sandwich with you.

Recently I was shopping at our local dollar store, when I came across a set of nesting flower shaped cookie cutters. I was so excited, they immediately went into my shopping basket (along with the nesting square ones!)

This sandwich was so easy to make. I made Claire a ham sandwich (her favorite) and then I picked out the three smallest flower cookie cutters. I was able to cut out these three shapes (plus one more small flower) from a regular size sandwich. Just for fun, I added a few piece of washi tape to the top of a toothpick, as well as a bit of tape to the plate. It just makes everything prettier. Like closets.

Now if only Mother Nature would cooperate with us and give us a little spring weather here. It has been snowing all week. We are ready to see the sun (and the grass again)! What's the weather like where you live? Warmer? I'm jealous.

Monday, March 18, 2013

St. Patrick's Day tea party

Happy St. Patrick's Day!! I know, I'm a day late, but that's because I was busy hosting a little tea party for my kids yesterday. I always try to make the holiday's extra special for my kids, and so I thought that it would be nice to have a tea party to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

I made a few different type of muffins for the kids to eat, in different shapes just because I thought the kids would enjoy that. I'll post some of the recipes shortly. The star muffins are apple carrot muffins. They're pictured next to the chocolate chip muffins. Underneath that are banana muffins that I made in my mini donut pan. I used my Best Banana Muffin ever recipe. Lastly I made a few cake pops. (I had a cake in the freezer that fell apart when it came out of the pan, so I popped it in the freezer so that I could make cake pops.)

I also had dishes of green grapes out, but the kids mostly just ate the muffins, and drank their tea (chocolate milk, served with white milk in the creamer pot.)

The kids had a great time, so I'm going to call this tea party a success! Hope that everyone had a wonderful St. Patrick's Day!

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

rainbow lunch

How about a rainbow of fruit for a St. Patrick's day lunch? I'm always looking for ways to make the holidays extra special for the kids, and making a few cute lunches is something that they really enjoy. They don't take that much extra time to prepare, and the kids usually sit down and eat the whole thing. This rainbow of fruit was so easy to make, and obviously you can use whatever fruits you have on hand.

I made a ham sandwich for Claire, and cut the two shamrocks out of the one sandwich.

After the kids were done eating their fruit, they got the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, which was a bowl of jello. They didn't waste any time eating the jello!

Linking up with: Six Sister's Stuff & Skip to my Lou & Tip Junkie & Weekly Kids Co-op& Tatertots and Jello

Friday, March 1, 2013

St. Patrick's Day thumbprint art

I am so excited to post this project. We actually did this project a little while ago, but because it was Claire's birthday last week, it took me a little while to get around to finishing it off! I have made similar thumbprint art in the past (Easter and Halloween), but this one was simplified big time!

Supplies needed:
template
cardstock to print the template on
light green cardstock to make the thumbprint art on
washi tape or patterned paper
paint (green, orange, cream, black, red, yellow, blue, purple)
picture frame
paper trimmer
black and green markers (or pens)
2 googly eyes
gold paper, hole punched (or sequins, or yellow paper)
glue

Print out the template on a nice heavy weight cardstock.

Cut out the pieces of light green cardstock into 2x3 inch pieces.

Grab your paint and start making the thumbprints.

To make the leprechaun have your child stamp a green thumbprint, and and orange one right below the green one. Once the orange paint is dry, have the child stamp a cream fingerprint on top of the orange paint. Once that's dry, add the googly eyes, smile, black line on the hat, and small piece of gold paper, or sequin.

To make the pot of gold have your child stamp a black thumbprint. Once that's dry, you can add your gold. Use whatever you have on hand to make the gold. I had a piece of gold paper, so I used a hole puncher to punch out circles of paper for the gold. You could use yellow paper, sequins or tin foil.

To make the shamrock stamp three thumbprints in a shamrock shape. Draw on the stem when the paint is dry.

To make the rainbow very lightly draw a rainbow shape with a pencil. This will be very helpful if you have a child who already knows how to do the project, even before you explain it to them. (Guess which kind of child I have??) Make sure you draw it very lightly, because it will show through the paint if it's at all dark. Stamp one thumbprint of each color.

To assemble the whole project: Cut the template to fit your picture frame, 8x10 inches. (My frame was from the dollar store.) Put a piece of washi tape just above the St. Patrick's Day lettering. Use a piece of green patterned paper if you don't have washi tape. Using double sided tape, stick on the leprechaun, gold, shamrock and rainbow. I used another piece of washi tape to tape the pieces on the template.

Click on the picture to download the template.