Easter Ideas

My daughter's birthday was on Easter this year, which I guess won't happen for another 220 years. That's a good thing, because with Easter, a birthday, and a party, it has been busy! So yeah, this post is way late for Easter '08, but I'd much rather you consider it early for '09. :)

Abi shares a birthday with a friend, and we made this for her - a paper mache egg with a stuffed animal chick. It was so much fun, that we made more little eggs as party favors.


EASTER PINATAS

What You'll Need: Balloon, newspaper, large bowl, water, flour, paint, paintbrush, goodies.

What To Do: Tear newspaper into strips. Mix flour and water together to make a paste. Blow up a balloon, and cover it with strips of newspaper dipped in the flour and water paste. Cover the balloon completely. Allow it to dry for a day or 2, turning it occasionally during that time.

If you're going to try this, here's something I learned....

I made two batches of little eggs, and at this point, I tried two different methods. The first time, I cut the egg, filled with goodies, and taped shut before painting and found that the egg stayed closed better. For the second batch, I painted the egg before cutting inside to add the goodies and found the egg looked prettier, but the tape didn't stick as well.



When the balloon is dry, paint it in bright, decorative colors. We painted a little everyday for about a week...










My five year old loved dividing all the goodies into equal piles for each party guest.

Tying them up with yarn was great shoe tying practice!









Here are some of our eggs in different stages of the process!

This may be a new Easter tradition for us. It was a really fun and creatively forgiving project. We reused some old newspapers and really created something out of not much at all! The girls LOVED opening their eggs to reveal surprises.




Another (less messy) Easter alternative is filling plastic eggs with stickers, candy, pictures, and small trinkets. Use the same plastic eggs year after year.










Or, you could make salt clay dough ornaments. Have the kids use Spring cookie cutters to make bunny rabbits, butterflies, or flowers. Before cooking the dough, use a chop stick or toothpick to poke a hole so that you can hang your ornaments by a ribbon. Here's the recipe and directions.

Hope you're having a spectacular Spring! I'll be bunny blog hopping soon...