Easter Delights

Hi all! Happy Chocolate Day for tomorrow!

I know a lot of people don’t do gifts for Easter, but my family does. The little ones are easy, I always give them a new set of play clothes or semi good clothes (because they go through them so quick LOL) and a small chocolate. My Dad normally gets a DVD (this year I scored The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies for $15!!) and a small chocolate and Mum’s changes each year. Where I struggle is with my brothers and their partners, one of my brothers is a complainer and has a whinge no matter what you give him (seriously, I am often tempted to give him nothing) and there is only so many times you can repeat the same gift for the others… sour lollies for one brother, peanut M&Ms for his partner and lollies for the whiny brother’s partner.

So this year I was kinda over it and decided to get creative and do something a bit different. So I went shopping and bought 4 masonry jars with lids and straws, I then bought a mix of all the stuff they like and filled the jars. This way I felt that they were all getting a little Easter treat, but also something they could keep and use for awesome beverages 🙂

I then did some Google image searches and found a vintage looking Easter-y pic I liked and created name tags.

The tags I made, the names were written on the reverse side. Sorry I don’t remember where I got the image from.

All that was left to do was a little dressing with some pretty purple straw packaging I kept from something IT related Hubby got delivered and voila… Easter presents 🙂

The finished product!!!

Thinking outside the box and inside the jar hahaha. What Easter creations have you made this year???

Kid friendly Easter activity – A day with Hendrix

I wanted to find a fun, easy and not overly messy or destructive activity to do with my nieces and nephews for Easter. So obviously because I am a Librarian I hit up the Googs and I saw some great ideas that I seriously considered.

Shredded Wheat nests

There were these Shredded Wheat Nests from BBC GoodFood – for the Aussies out there I am pretty sure shredded wheat is weet-bix 🙂 Whilst I didn’t end up going with these I was inspired by the nest concept and for their Easter gifts I made chocolate cupcakes and carrot cupcakes and in my first foray into cupcake making I decorated them like little nests.

Not bad for a first attempt if I do say so myself. Note for future: it is hard to prevent brown icing from looking like poo… consider another flavour icing 🙂

There were activities that needed dyeing, gluing, sticky taping, painting, cooking, cutting and many of them were things the kids would lose interest in after one day and then they would be broken on the floor and I would feel like crap because I had put a lot of effort into creating that activity for them. Before anyone says anything, I am aware that this is how the world works and I should get used to it, but I haven’t accepted that yet.

So I decided to develop an activity that was fun, educational and not wasteful… you all think I am mental don’t you? 🙂

But I did it 🙂 Pretty sure I am not the first to think of this, but it was my own idea.

So here is what I devised:

The kids would create, decorate and consume an Easter egg craft.

 

Easter Egg Biscuits

Here is what you will need:

• At least one packet of Arnott’s milk arrowroot biscuits (or equivalent biscuit that is vaguely egg shaped)
  
• Icing sugar
• A variety of food dye
• Mixed lollies and sprinkles

Yup that is all… so here is what we did. I had a fun test run with my nephew Hendrix and we had a whale of a time!

First I mixed up some plain icing mixture, I then sat him on the counter and asked what colour eggs he wanted. I added a few drops of blue (his choice) food dye to the mixture and got him to stir and change the colour. He LOVED this part and thought it was magic and yelled for everyone in the house to come watch him turn it blue 🙂

Then we iced the milk arrowroot biscuits and I put out the decorations for him to decorate it. Once he was finished we sat down and ate them.

Yummo!

Just a tip – to keep the mess factor down put sprinkles in a shaker and don’t put out massive amounts of the lollies… they will go everywhere hahaha.

Finished product

He was also fascinated by the fact the icing turned his tongue blue.

I love how kids get fascinated by gross stuff, so amusing!

By getting him to repeat out loud everything we were doing he also learned quite a few new words which was fabulous!

Rating: 9 out of 10 have fun with your friends

So in answer to the question: When you do something scary or stressful do you prefer to be surrounded by friends or by strangers? Why?
I would choose Hendrix my little Buddy/Nephew/Godson because when I do stressful or scary things I know that even if I fail utterly he will still think I am wonderful and invite me for a tea party afterwards.