Need a quick way to send some love to your family? You still have time to recruit your child to make Easter extra special!  These Easter cards took less than a day and my 2 1/2 year old was delighted to make a mess with paint!

I used some pre-purchased plain white cards (the same ones I’ve used for St. Patty’s Day cards and sewn Birthday cards – it was a smart purchase!) I had paint in my craft closet and cardstock in my office. We were all set!

For the first step, I had my son paint on the front of each card.

This quickly diminished into finger painting but made it more fun too!

Since his hands were covered, we made him stamp the back of each card as a signature. He landed about a 30% success rate on this part.

Then we let all the cards dry. This was the longest part of the whole process. Some cards were pretty soaked with paint! While they dried, I used a cookie cutter to trace the egg shape onto cardstock (cut to the size of the front of a card) and cut those out.

We wrote Happy Easter on each one and started gluing them to the front of cards. We made ten total and were able to mail them the next morning!

We hope you enjoy great time with family this weekend and try some new fun crafty projects! And Tracy and I wish you all a:

!!!

For Easter, I realized I have very few decorations. I found a great project on thelongthread.com here and thought they’d make a cute addition to our home.

To start, you’ll need:

Knit cotton sweater (or yarn), scissors, white school glue, water, balloons, and some wax paper.

I used an old sweater that my sister was planning on giving to Goodwill. Once you cut a piece off it will unravel for you. I was able to get my son to help unravel it as destroying things seems to be especially fun to two-year-olds. At first it was just a few short pieces but the more I pulled, the more long strands came out.

Next, mix 1 part glue with 1 part water in a bowl.  Help your child blow up a few balloons. You don’t need to make them very big, just the size of a large egg. Dip a piece of yarn into the glue mixture until it’s covered with glue and wrap it around a balloon. Repeat with as many pieces of yarn as you need to create the egg.  This messy job is great for kids – my son took some convincing but started to enjoy the mess after a while.

Place the yarn wrapped balloon on wax paper and let dry overnight. In the morning, pop the balloons and gently remove them from the eggs.

Here is the final product:

Let me know if you try these. They are sturdy and can be saved for next year! If you don’t have a sweater you want to cut up, you can use pastel yarn and the project is quick and easy!

I know it’s a little late to be posting about Christmas cookies but these were so stinkin’ adorable, I couldn’t help myself!

I had over 250 cookies to make last month and this was one small batch of cut-outs. I had never made them before but found some great tips online for cutting them and then googled some images for how to decorate. In the end I was happy with how they turned out but devastated that they would have to be eaten!

This particular tray was one dozen cut outs and I used 6 cutters to make 2 of each. There are other designs out there but these were my favorites. I’ll show them to you close up in increasing order of cuteness:

The stocking and Candy cane were pretty simple. They are official staples of the Christmas holiday so they had to be included, but aren’t much to write home about.

I loved the snowflake! The blue was such a pretty background, although this one looks a little bubbly. The white snowflake on top makes me cold just looking at it! That might have something to do with the inch and a half of snow outside…

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree! How lovely are your green icing branches! Cute. I liked the star on top. It was simple but makes the tree official!

Wouldn’t you feel terrible eating this cute little guy? I’m reminded of the gingerbread man in Shrek. He looks too happy to be so close to being eaten.

Isn’t he just the cutest?!?! I loved the nose sticking out. I had to be so careful not to break it off during packaging. I hope to make many more of these in 2010!

New Year’s Reolution #27 – Post to blog more often. Here goes:

This year, I hoped to make more of my Christmas gifts than I bought. I’m not sure I accomplished that goal, but I did create some fun gifts that I am pretty proud of. I taught myself to Crochet using this aptly titled book. I then found a bunch of great patterns on etsy and on blogs, and then made up some of my own.

This first piece I made for my mother-in-law. It’s a neck wrap / cowel scarf. I don’t know what to call it but I do know that I love it! It is designed to have large buttons that can be hooked on just about anywhere so there are limitless ways to wear it. I like it as it is photographed here but my mother-in-law wore it completely differently on Christmas and it looked fabulous! I definitely need to make more of these:

The next project was similar to a normal scarf but I tweaked it a little bit and called it the “smart scarf.”

It’s smart because 1. It won’t strangle you, and 2. It will stay put. The large button can go through just about anywhere and anchor it to your shoulders. I love that it stays put – even on kids! Here it is unbuttoned:

I need to find a manly way to make one for my son!

This last project is from a pattern I purchased on etsy here with the intention of making 2 pairs for my twin nephews. I only got through one pair, and just barely. It was tough! It claimed to be easy but I disagree! I don’t think they look just like the picture either! Here is the one pair that made it:

And another view:

They had such potential but I’m not sure about the execution. I need to see a photo of at least one of the boys in them but I’ll have to keep bugging the other sister for it. If it comes, I will update the post.

Well that completes my crochet projects that I photographed. I also made a sweet coffee cozy but didn’t take a picture. I’ll see if I can get one of it in use as well. More crafty and homemade gifts to come!

Hope you are having as much delightful food and side-splitting laughter as we are this Christmas as we celebrate traditions new and old! We’ll be back soon with updates on gifts and projects we’ve been keeping hush-hush.

xoxo,

Tracy & Carrie