An egg-stra special Easter craft

I recently signed up for Martha Stewart's 'craft of the day' email. So far, the ideas have been far more elaborate than I can manage with my 2 year old. But yesterday's idea (here's the link) was simple, fun, and festive. Just crack an egg near the top, rinse it out, and fill it with some water and your favourite spring blooms. If you're not into flowers, you could fill each egg with some jelly bean treats as a table favour for each of your Easter dinner guests.

I love this craft for a few reasons. First, it's perfect for toddlers (as long as you can get them to be gentle with the egg shells!). Second, it fits well with my table dressing approach. I love a series of small arrangements on my dinner party tables instead of one large one, as they don't obstuct anyone's view. I often do a flight of small flower arrangements in small cups scattered around the table, or down a line in the middle. It's also a great way to get a lot of milage out of a cheap groceria bouquet.

We decided to one-up Martha and dip our eggs in various bowls of water dyed with food colouring. This increases the mess factor, but my daugther loved watching the egg absorb the various colours, and it was a fun way to learn about how mixing different colours create new ones.

Would you believe that the glass egg cups belonged to my Great Grandmother Smith?

Signs of spring

One of my favourite things about spring are all the gorgeous tulips available at the little grocerias.

Last weekend my sister brought a bouquet for my 2.5 year old daughter - it was the first time she officially received flowers. So sweet!

The tulips are about to bite the dust, but I couldn't help but photograph them before I threw them out; they took on a beautiful translucent quality as they died. Once my daughter wakes up from her nap we're going to pop out and buy some new ones for part of an afternoon Easter craft....stay tuned!!

Cake pops!

As I mentioned in this previous post, I am beginning to put together the details for my daugther's third birthday party (though it's the first time we've had a real party for her). I have been trolling other blogs for ideas, and ended up marrying inspiration from Lindsay and Shannon.

I loved Lindsay's idea here of using Tim Bits to make cake pops. We're going to have birthday cake, but I think cake pops are the perfect alternative dessert for little hands. I am going to keep it simple and not even ice them....Tim Bits are so delicious on their own!

Shannon blogged here the other day about Omiyage, a company that sells Japanese paper and tape. I decided to order myself some of the tape, and in keeping with the party's sports theme each of the cake pop sticks is going to have a little 'flag' on it. I just wrapped a piece of tape around each post and then cut it on the angle on either side.

I bought a bag of 35 lollipop sticks at IQ Living on the Danforth for $3.99, and cut them in half so I'll have 70 cake pops for the kids to feast on.

Fun!

Easter eggs

The spirit has not yet moved me to do anything homemade for Easter so far, but I've begun my decorating with some Shoppers Drug Mart specials (as an aside my SDM sells their milk extra cheap: $4.29 for 3 bags) (the exception is the eggs in the final photo, which I picked up at Pottery Barn on deep discount years ago).

Is the Easter bunny coming to your house next weekend?

Switch up: muffins made healthy for my baby

I have a 7 month old who is resisting solids and is eat a crazy amount of milk as a result. When I have tried purees (store bought, home made, mashed, blended, and strained, savory and sweet...I've tried it all) he just closes his lips as tight as a baloon knot and turns his head. So I am doing more of the baby led weening approach of just giving him big chunnks of food and letting him feed himself. I don't think he injests much, and it makes a terrible mess, but he seems happy.

Today I made him some mini muffins to try - they seem to be just the right size for little hands and can be frozen and just brought out one by one as your baby wants one. I used the standard Joy of Cooking muffin recipe and just swapped out a couple of key ingredients to make them baby friendly:

Original recipe:
1 and 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp double acting baking powder
2 eggs
2-4 tablespoos of melted butter
3/4 cup milk

My adjustments:
Replaced all purpose flour with spelt flour (thanks Julie for the tip!!!)
Eliminated salt
Replaced sugar with a splash of maple syrup
Replaced eggs with 1 mashed banana (this was an Internet tip I found since babies can't have egg)
Added a dusting of ground flax
Added a dusting of psyllum husks
Added handful of blueberries

Don't over mix!
Cook at 400 degrees until a skewer comes out clean!

They are yummy for babies and adults alike!

Hosting a birthday party 101

My daughter is turning 3 in June, and I have decided that this year I will finally host a little birthday party for her. I know I am probably getting started a bit early, but I have no idea what is required for kids' parties, so I am trying to make sure I don't miss a step!!

I haven't made many decisions yet, other than that I am going with a sports theme and am going to use a lot of red. I have rented the Clubhouse at Withrow Park, and the folks from Sportball are going to come and do some sporting activities with the kids.

For our invitations, I checked out lots of amazing ideas online (including this one and this one from Jen at Rambling Renovators), but I decided that something this elaborate was just not in the cards this year. Instead I designed the e-invitation below. It was easy - I just used auto shapes in Powerpoint, saved it as a Jpeg, and emailed it out to Izzy's friends (well actually to their parents)

What ideas do you have? What are the cool things to put in 3 year olds' loot bags these days?

Put down the iron!

I spent much of my free time (ie while the kids were napping) this weekend ironing. It wasn't fun, and I'm frankly not very good at it.

Luckily, I have transitioned many of my husband's work shirts to Brooks Brothers iron free shirts. They are 100% iron free. Seriously, they come right out of the dryer without so much as a crease. They also have fantastic women's shirts too. I often order mine to my cousin's house in the US (since it's cheaper), but they often go on deep discount at their Canadian locations (last summer I bought 4 men's shirts for $245 including tax.) Either way they are more than I would normally pay for my husband's shirts, but by the time I factor in the money saved at the dry cleaner, they pay off pretty quickly.

Iron free shirts are also available at Mark's (ie formerly Mark's Work Warehouse and Sears (Land's End brand), but I'm not sure how these brands stand up quality and fit-wise.

These iron free shirts make the thought of wearing work clothes again a bit more paletable!