Everyday Learning – Page 9 – The Creative Salad

A Spring Surprise

As if the uncharacteristically warm weather wasn’t enough of a clue in, the surprise on our porch definitely is a sign that spring is here.

There’s a new bird’s nest in our wind chimes!

Last year a house finch lived in the re-purposed sugar bowl of our wind chimes and raised one nest of birds successfully in the spring. Unfortunately, the mama bird disappeared (and presumably died), abandoning her second clutch of baby birds. By the time we realized what was going on and checked on the babies, we were too late. They had also died.

Talk about witnessing life and death firsthand on our front porch!

It was a life-shaping experience for us, surprisingly more for me than for our young daughter. Her understanding and acceptance of the situation was a lesson for us all. She calmly said, “They died, Mama. It’s okay. There will be new baby birds.” Oh, how she was right.

I wasn’t sure this day would come, but here we are with with a different species of bird (that we have yet to identify!) moved into the nest and having laid (at last count!) three rather perfect little eggs.

I feel both excited and hesitant over this turn of events. Hopefully we’ll have a happy ending this year! And if we don’t, it’s a reminder that life goes on…

Easter Crafting

I know that buried under all that craft mess there’s a kitchen table somewhere. We haven’t seen it in a few days, but it’s there waiting for us to finish our Easter crafting. I don’t actually miss it all that much. We’re having too much fun sewing, cutting, dying, filling… and we’re in the homestretch!

May you all have a wonderful weekend!

More Ways to Decorate Easter Eggs

There are so many creative ways to decorate eggs for Spring. First I want to show you some Easter projects from our house, then I’ll share some of my favorite egg decorating ideas from Pinterest.

This year we’ve dyed eggs with natural ingredients:

(Above, the deep red eggs on the left were dyed with red onion skins and cabbage; the egg on the right is immersed in a saffron dye bath.)

We’ve also decoupaged small tissue paper circles to our eggs for a fun color-mixing lesson:

(Using skewers laid across shallow slits made in a toddler-sized shoe box worked perfectly for securing the eggs and allowing us to decorate the entire egg at once without get our fingers dirty or having to wait for the egg to dry while we worked!)

Last year we decorated oversized paper mache eggs with brightly colored tissue paper:

Here are some other fun ideas from my Spring Holiday Inspiration board on Pinterest:

Featured above:
1. Eggs decorated with edible ink pens (pin/source)
2. No dye Easter eggs (pin/source)
3. Decoupage flowered Easter eggs (pin/source)
4. Dip dyed eggs (pin/source)
5. Silhouette Easter Eggs (pin/source)
6. Washi tape Easter eggs (pin/source)
7. Melted crayon Easter eggs (pin/source)

I am blown away by the creativity out there on the web!

View these and many more Spring holiday crafts and activities on my Spring Holiday Inspiration Pinterest board.

(images obtained via Pinterest)

Decorating Easter Eggs With Tissue Paper

Last week we shared with you a quick and easy way to blow out eggs and how we dyed Easter eggs using natural ingridents found in our kitchen. This past week we’ve been decorating eggs with tissue paper, an easy and fun decoupage project!

My friend Dorothee cut notches in the top of toddler sized shoe boxes, so we could lay eggs speared with wooden skewers across them. What an easy way to hold the eggs! Using the skewers made for MUCH less mess than our holding the eggs for our kids while they decorated them:

We used small tissue paper circles (a great thrift store score!) and cellulose glue (you could easily use Mod Podge!) to glue the tissue paper to the egg. Be sure to do a coat of glue on top too so the circles stay on securely.

Mama had fun decorating eggs too:

Learning to Weave

Our daughter recently expressed an interest in learning to weave. (Oh, how we love a new art project!) As a child, I took weaving classes and even owned a full-sized loom on which to practice. I know first hand how good it feels to weave something from scratch!

Our daughter first practiced weaving on a little handmade loom (made of nails and wood) using small slips of paper:

Practicing moving the paper over, under, over, under.

She then graduated to a sturdy metal potholder loom (made in the USA by Harrisville Designs who primarily manufactures full-sized looms). I particularly like this metal loom because the loops stay on the metal hooks, instead of popping off the frame over and over again as they tend to do with plastic or wooden looms.

Our daughter has been steadily working away on holiday presents for the grandparents. I’ve found we can never start those handmade gifts too early, especially when it takes our four year old several weeks to complete one potholder!

Next up we’ll weave on a laploom or weaving frame. I have fantasies of owning a table loom (like the one I learned on as a girl!). We may need two though because I’m not sure how we’ll share. ;)