Easter Eggs and a Lesson in colour mixing

I was pretty excited today to start dying eggs with the C Man. He was equally as excited and I have to say it ended up going better than I expected.

As a kid we started preping to dye eggs about a month in advanced. We blew out every egg we ate so we would have the empty eggs to dye a week or so in advanced. My mom always bought a dying kit and I remember the vibrant colours of the eggs. This has started my pet peeve with egg kits as an adult. We always had a kit that had liquid colours. I'm not sure what throught process started this but someone somewhere decided they should make colour tablets you put in water instead. Okay so that might make for a cleaner experience but let me tell you what it does not make. VIBRANT EGGS. I continued to dye eggs into my adult years and thats before the C Man was even old enough to help me. I searched high and low for those kits like my mom used to buy but I could never seem to find one. If someone in the egg decorating kit world is listening bring those back I'm sure there are others like me who miss them as well. Anyways this year through the help of pinterest I happened to discover a pin from Wilton about using thier gel icing colours some water and a little bit of vinegar to create eggs in the vibrant hues. Guess what I just so happened to have on hand. So I thougth to myself why not give it a try.

Here's what you will need
Wilton Icing colours in which ever colours you would like to use, they come both in kits and in single colour containers.
3/4 cups of water
A table spoon of vinergar
something to put the dye in we used some plastic cups, as well as some paper cups. If you are going to use paper cups make sure they are both just wide enough to put the egg in but also tall enough that the liquid will not spill over when you place your egg in
Spoons (plastic or metal)
Eggs either blown out or hard boiled, we happened to use both.
A place to set the wet eggs so they can dry I used a paper towel roll and then cut it rings from it.
Markers, crayons, glitter, painters tape, stickers whatever you feel you would like to use to decorate your eggs after they are done.

Start by placing 3/4 cup very hot water in your cup and then add a few drops of gel colour at a time (for those with the gel food colours without a dropper do this with a tooth pick) until you get the colour you like. Mix it up and then add a tablespoon of vinegar. Pretty simple so far.

Next you have a few options. Option 1 is to colour your egg with crayons (you can use just white if you would like to teach a lesson on how the wax will resist the dye), option 2 is using stickers or painters tape to cover your egg so that when they are removed there is white left underneather where they were. If you would like to do these go ahead or skip that part either way when your ready yo uadd your egg to your colour mixture (using a spoon to put it in) and leave it in there checking to see if you have achieved the colour you like every minute or so, once you get the colour you like take it out with the spoon. Now this is where I learned a lesson about the difference between blown out and boiled eggs. If you use blown out eggs you will need to either keep the egg under the liquid untill it fills enough to leave it there or you can leave it floating and spin it. You will not get a uniform colour by spinning it but it does make a nice effect. If you use boiled eggs they will go to the bottom and you can let them sit no problem.

  This is an egg I blew out and then filled with a little of the liquid so it would stay put

 The C man examining an egg, he learned alot from this activity about what colours mix together to create what. He could tell you before that blue and yellow make green but I don't think that he really go it till today.

  He put a green egg in the yellow dye it was hard boiled, see how it dropped to the bottom.

 This was my egg, I used the painters tape to put a C on it before dying the egg. I had see Subway art eggs all over pinterest so this is what I came up with

 Now that our eggs are all dyed C Man started to colour on them with crayons. You can run wild after the eggs are all dyed, you can dip them back in to create stripes, you can colour with markers, crayons, paint stickers whatever your heart desires. I gave C Man some options but he always went back to the crayons.

 S Man wondering what we are doing.

 This was the one and only egg that C Man broke. Pretty impressed with that actually.

 Wait that egg is still good well atleast the shell is. So lets peel them off and save them for another craft in a few days.

I feel it was a great learning experience for C Man. It was pretty easy to just let him go right along with the process of creating. After we were done he wanted to carry the carton of eggs around and ended up bringing them to grandma and grampas while Mommy and Daddy went to catch Oz The Great and Powerful. It was really an all around great day for us all. I'll be back in a few days to show you what I plan to do with those left ofer eggs shells.

Passing on a joy of reading

 

I grew up only knowing one of my 4 half brothers. There are five years between us and lots of differences besides gender and age. I will be the first to say I was the wild child or teenager to be exact. Another big difference is how we veiw reading and writing. Of course my brother knows how to do both but to him they were always something he had to do while I loved and enjoyed and still do love and enjoy both. I would create libraries complete with check out cards at my grandmothers, I read every Babysitters Little Sisters book I could get my hands on starting from grade 3. That turned into the Babysitters Club. I frequently visited the used book store by my house and bought the books in the series and the great thing about that was I could also exchange the book for store credit when I was done. The day I discovered Harry Potter was the day I really remember discovering the world of fantasy. I love that I finished the series along with the Twilight series.

One thing I swore I would do with my children was read to them every night. My first memories of this just so happens to be rocking C Man to sleep reading Tales of the Beadle Bard an extension from the Harry Potter series. When C Man started sleeping in his own bed I began reading picture books. That turned into a picture book and reading my more adult books to him, as he wasn't quite old enough to understand what was going on in the Incarnations of Immortality series. As he got older though I found the need to start reading a more kid friendly series of books to him. Harry Potter is just to old for him but I do plan to read it once he is older. Any of the BabySitters Club books are too girly. I had a solution though.

Enter the Bailey School Kids. When I was younger I didn't get too into that series but I remembered enjoying the ones I did. For those of you not familiar with the series each book follows a similar plot line, a group of four friends attend school in Bailey City where one of the friends will suspect a new grown up of being some kind of mythical creature. From mermaid to werewolf to leperchaun they go through why they suspect them and the book will climax with a scene that really has all four friends convinced. I bought a set of three and read through them quickly. They are rather short but entertaining and C Man really enjoyed the three we read. I find the series is perfect for reading to younger readers and since they aren't too long make a great read for kids just starting the journey into chapter books. Each book follows a similar title pattern for example we read Mermaids Don't Run Track and Werewolves Don't Go to Summer Camp. I did a quick search and found that there are 51 books in the Adventures of the Bailey School Kids series as well as three additional series including the Bailey School Kids Jr series which switches up the don't in the title for the word do and some special edition and holiday edition books. If your child is a fan of a particular type of mythical creature you shouldn't have a problem finding one to suit thier interest.

Another series C Man really enjoyed reading and I plan to get further into is the Magic Treehouse series. The books follow a sister and a brother who find a tree house and journey in time to many different places. We read the first 2 in the series before taking a break. I really enjoyed the two we read, and had bought the first four in a boxed set. The only problem with this was C Man was pretty set on a particular book so while he enjoyed the first two I think he was more concentrated on getting through the books themselves as opposed to enjoying the content. One thing I really liked about the ones we did get to read was the little bit of historical fact they had in them. They weren't over kill with facts but did have enough that there was also a little bit of learning involved. The the Bailey School Kids they weren't super long and would be another series I would suggest for those just embarking on a journey into beginner chapter books.

Now why did we take a break from the Magic Treehouse series? Well about a week or so ago I started reading Charlotte's Web to C Man. So far so good but we aren't quite finished with it yet. I ended up buying a boxed EB White set. I had never read Charlotte's Web but it was of course one of my favourite movies as a child. All the memories of that movie come back to me as I'm reading through the book and they did a good job of keeping the movie true to the book from what I have read so far. I was excited to start reading it to C Man and was glad he chose that over Stuart Little as I had read that as a child so don't mind waiting so much. I'll be sure to review both books after we have read them

If you want to pass a joy of reading to your child I think reading to them is a great way to start and if your interested in starting out with any of the books I mentioned here are the links to thier amazon pages

Great Books for Girls
Baby Sitters Little Sisters #1
Baby Sitters Club #1 both by Ann M Martin

Books for older Children
Harry Potter series by JK Rowling
Twilight by Stephanie Meyers

Great for any age
Bailey School Kids series by Marcia T. Jones and Debbie Dadey
#1 Vampires Don't wear Polka Dots for those who want to start at the beginning of the series
#2 Werewolves Don't go to Summer Camp
#26 Mermaids Don't Run Track

The Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne
Books 1-4

The EB White Boxed Set conatining Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little and Trumpet of The Swan

Lets start at the beginning

Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Amanda and this is where I not only start this blog but tell you about myself and my family. I am a mother of three boys. A freshly turned 4 year old and twin 10 month olds. I am orginally from New Brunswick but I have spent almost all of my adult life in Ontario. Moving to Ontario was probably the best decision I could have made. I guess it was orignally in a time where I needed to find myself. I not only found her or me however you would like to word that, but I also found love and a family.

With the birth of my twins also came the decision to stay at home. Before that I was an assistant teacher at a local daycare. Yes I love kids, especially mine even though sometimes they make me want to pull my hair out those moments are worth it when they smile, laugh or in the case of my 4 year old say something so halarious or sweet your heart warms and in some cases you forget why you were lecturing him in the first place.

Besides mommy duty I enjoy crocheting and finding little craft projects. I enjoy Pilates, and in May will be starting Yoga. Don't get me wrong I am far from a health nut. In fact give me a fork and a poutine and you have one happy momma.

So what can you find in this blog, well lots of daily ramblings are sure to appear, perhaps a few crafts both kid related and more adult skilled ones, maybe even a recipe or two. I am not the cook in my house though thats dh's department and he is pretty good at it but when I do cook something here you may find a blog post about it. You will find some tips on raising twins and a family. I wish I had a blog to show me life in the early days of twins before I got the hang of it thats for sure. If I love a product I'll be sure to tell you. My yoga journey might even appear. Basically anything under the sun I happen to be involved in.

In the words of Tigger TTFN
Amanda