Easter Quarantine Activities for All Ages

How is everyone doing being locked up in their houses during this pandemic? Besides my kids telling me they are bored every 10 minutes, I am truly loving it! If I could stay home, make crafts, diy projects, food AND GET PAID, well I would! Unfortunately I do not live an extravagant lifestyle like that and still need to go to work to pay my bills. Right now though I am taking full advantage of staying home for a few weeks or months (who knows when this will last) and finding every unfinished project I’ve left unfinished to get them completed.

Easter is coming up and that means you’ll have to find some fun things to do indoors to keep the kids occupied so I have complied a list of activities, some that we have done as a family and some from other creative bloggers. This list provides hours of fun for all ages!

1. EASTER EGG SCAVENGER HUNT: If you live in a place that’s snowing or cold like here in Canada, then you’ll most likely do your Easter egg hunt indoors. Click HERE for a free download to print a generic Easter Egg scavenger hunt that I’ve created just for you! Here’s a couple more links to other amazing blogs for age appropriate scavenger hunts….
   • Raising Little Superheros – Nursery Rhyme Easter Egg Hunt
   • Spend with Pennies – SweetTarts Scavenger Hunt
   • Fun with Mama – Editable Scavenger Hunt
   • Happiness is Homemade – Easter Scavenger Hunt
2. EASTER EGG CHALLENGE: My family and I do this every year as a friendly competition with one another. It’s a fun game to play with the eggs that get decorated the days before. Find the full instructions here on my blog
3. STAINED GLASS SUNCATCHERS: Adventure-in-a-box has a great tutorial to make some really beautiful Easter egg suncatchers. These can be achieved with clear plastic (a clear binder sheet protector would work great), black elmers glue and sharpie markers! Look at how beautiful these turned out!
4. TIE DYE SHIRTS: Have you ever wondered how to get different designs in your tie dye shirts? Over at Parents.com there is step by step guides on how to twist your shirt to achieve a different pattern. This might not be the best idea for cold weather, but if you have older kids, it should stay fairly tidy if doing it indoors.
5. DECORATING COOKIES: This is fun for any age and to get a very easy recipe, click here for my 4 ingredient shortbread cookie recipe and here for a royal icing recipe.
6. SHAVING CREAM ARTWORK: Over at Crafty Morning you can find a tutorial on how to make some funky shaving cream artwork. To make this craft more age appropriate for the older kids, cut out some egg shapes in cardstock and decorate them with painters tape before marbelizing them or do this technique on some hard boiled eggs!
7. CLAY FLOWER VASES: Oh I can’t wait to try this with my kids! Here is a really easy tutorial over at A SHADE OF teal with a cool ombre effect. This a great craft to do with your older kids and makes for a stylish decor piece in their rooms.
8. SPRING WREATH MAKING: This is another craft I can’t wait to do with my girls. Do we need three spring wreaths? No, but they could each make one for their bedroom door and it will be a cute spring decoration! Another easy, straight forward tutorial over at Rocky Mountain Bliss

I hope these activities give you some peace and quiet during your Quarantined Easter weekend. Since we are not supposed to be seeing our extended families this year, I am hoping that you still enjoy some quality time with your kids and spread as much love as you can through video chats and good ol’ fashion telephone conversation.

Hoppy Easter Everyone!

 

Back to School? 5 Ways to Save

Dang, do school supplies get eeexpenssive and do stores get cccroowwded when it’s back to school! I love school supply shopping, but I always overspend on the cute and (way more expensive) crap that my kids really don’t need. Here’s 5 ways to help you with your school supply savings this year…

A Royal Tea Party Themed Birthday

This post is brought to you in part by the Queen and the Royal Wedding…. j.k, but it is the motivation I got to stop watching TV and finally post Anna’s birthday theme from 2 years ago. I really should of been on the ball with this post before the wedding occurred, but life happened and I’ve been a tad busy… so moving on….

….Isn’t it every little girls dream to become a princess; to live in a castle; marry a prince and drink a spot of tea each day? Yes, I believe so and if you say it’s not, you’re really just lying to yourself. Well, if you’ve hit reality and realized that becoming a princess won’t happen to most of us, here’s a way to make your lovely lady and her friends feel like royalty (because let’s face it, we can’t all be introduced to a prince by our best friend, live in a castle and have someone make our daily decisions for the rest of our lives #jealous #dontcare #yesido)

Food Free & Kid Friendly Apothecary Halloween Jars

It’s almost that time of year…..the time where all I do is talk/think and pin about Halloween, where everyone around me either finds my enthusiasm about the holiday really annoying & weird or adorable & fun. I just can’t help being excited for the holiday!! Who doesn’t love bringing out their dark side to create creepy and wicked things…..so it’s just me then? Lol Anyways, for all you weirdos (like myself) who are looking for a kid-friendly/less disgusting apothecary jar option, you’ve come to the right place!

Have you ever thought those apothecary jars look amazingly creepy and just really cool to incorporate for your Halloween decor? Have you ever read up on what kinds of things go into them?! Have you ever thought, “Gross, what if my crazy toddler touches one of those and breaks it onto the floor – what kinda mess would I be cleaning up and what kind of smell would go with it?”

Pottery Barn Inspired Coffee Table – DIY

Raise your hand if you can afford to shop at Pottery Barn ✋🏻 …. ya me neither! My husband just started getting into building furniture for our house, as a part-time hobby during the summer, since he gets this time off, so I’ve been loading him up with project after project to keep him busy and to get our money’s worth from all the power tools he’s purchased. We found these plans over on Ana White, but they originally came from More Like Home. We did a little bit of modification with the drawers and made it with two instead of six. I wanted to put blankets and throw pillows inside, so 6 little drawers didn’t make sense for us.

You can find the plans here … More Like Home: Rhyan Coffee Table

Here are some photos of ours

My pup thinks he owns the couch

Basketball Washer Necklace Tutorial

If you are a parent involved in coaching or managing your child(ren)’s sports team, hats off to you! Being involved is very time consuming but so rewarding at the end of the day. My family didn’t play a lot of sports growing up, mostly because we didn’t have a lot of money, but I’ve made it my goal to participate in any activity with my kids, whether it be tossing a ball in the summer, to cartwheels in the backyard, to coaching/managing their team. I believe in a healthy and fit lifestyle for my kids and the best way of having that is through demonstration.

These necklaces were a hit, not only with the kids, but the parents too. Many of the parents thought they were bought from a store and couldn’t believe that they were made from a Home Depot washer! Why thank you, thank you very much! ;D

Here are the supplies you’ll need for this craft….

A Science Birthday Party!

The nice thing about having a husband who teaches science, is that we got to use his classroom for our birthday party and it took most of the stress off me, since he conducted most of the experiments (I really had NO idea what I was doing) lol. I have to admit, while I thought the kids were going to be bored out of their minds and think that they were ‘back in school’, this party turned out to be so much fun! The kids, although some said, “it feels like we’re at school”, were ‘ooing’ and ‘ahhing’ with almost every thing we did. So yeah, they were back in school and maybe they learned a thing or two but they still had fun doing it.

You don’t need to be a scientist or a teacher to pull off this type of birthday party. You can do this in your home or better yet outside (it can get kinda messy). This is a great indoor birthday party idea and it keeps the kids occupied with all sorts of projects. My husband did some other cool exploding/fire displays, however he has all the knowledge on what to mix without blowing things up, so unless you know someone who has this knowledge, I would just stick to the basics…

Fortune Teller Valentine’s Day Cards

I remember when I was in grade school and my friends and I would make these paper crafts that would tell us if we were going to get married, how many kids we were going to have or what kind of house we were going to live in. Remember MASH!? haha Anyways, these paper fortune tellers would give us girls hours of fun during school and after!

4 Ingredient Shortbread Cookies

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner and what better way to celebrate than with some delicious shortbread cookies? I obtained this quick and easy recipe from a friend and it is my go to recipe! I rarely enjoy baking and if and when I decide to make something from scratch I don’t want anything complicated or that includes too many ingredients. I much prefer decorating the cookies over baking them.

These cookies are great for all seasons and are soft and will melt in your mouth! You can shape them round and stick a maraschino cherry in them for a classic Christmas treat or make a batch of royal icing to decorate for any occasion.

This style of cookie is best mixed with your hands. No fancy mixer is needed but I would suggest you wear gloves (the dough is sticky in the beginning). Your butter should be softened before you add it to your mixture. I always refrigerate mine and by the time I realize I need butter for my mixture I have no patience to wait for it to soften. I usually cut it into small sections and squish it with my hands and fingers to soften it.

Don’t get discouraged when mixing the ingredients together. Every time I make these, I think I need to add more butter because it seems like I have so much powder ingredients. But I continue to fold the dough over and over and it eventually becomes all mixed and forms into the perfect cookie mixture.

Once you have folded all the ingredients together, it is time to start rolling! I hate rolling dough because I feel like I press harder on one side or I make the middle section way thicker then the outside. If this happens to you, just put the thinner cookies in the middle of the pan instead of on the outside. I don’t know if there is an actual theory behind this but I feel like the middle takes longer to cook…OR maybe I just need a new oven?

I have ruined a few batches of these cookies, mostly because I don’t take a lot of time or care to measure the ingredients exactly and my husband will tell you I have absolutely no patience. Things I have learned in the chaos…

• Don’t put your cookies too close together when baking. Apparently this can cause air pockets in your cookies (as you can see in this photo).

• Don’t overbake. I don’t know what it is about me and cooking things but I always overcook everything. I get nervous if things don’t cook long enough. The last thing I want is for my family to get sick from something I made…hmm come to think of it maybe if they do get sick they won’t want me to cook and I’d never have to make a dinner again Muhahaha Lol  just a thought…
• Don’t increase the temperature to get them baked faster. I didn’t even realize it but I set my oven to 350 degrees instead of 300 and the bottoms burnt.

Anyways here is the recipe and I hope I have shared enough of my bad experience with you to make your shortbread cookies turn out tasty and beautiful!

 

Click here for the perfect royal icing cookie recipe.

 

Crappy parents make for crappy kids…

Santa had gotten our family of four, tickets to ‘Cirque du Soleil-Toruk’ December 26th show. I have to start off by saying, I LOVE Avatar! It’s one of my favorite movies and the movie really spoke to me about how humans suck and how much the Na’vi people respect and love the world they live in. Anyways, my family of 4 got all dressed up and it took us about an hour and a half to get downtown and then search for parking. We made the trek through the snow to get to Roger’s Place and found our seats. We sat down and made ourselves comfortable and I then reminded my girls to sit still during the show and make sure to not kick their feet into the back of the other person’s chair, which they didn’t and they turned out to be very good girls. Behind us, however, was a family of 11 (Grandpa, Grandma, 5 kids: ages 2 to 8 and mom/dad, aunties and uncles).