J & A and Co.: Don’t stand back and watch, get creative and dive in.

This year for Spring Break, we took the kids to Southern Utah for a few days. Then we have spent the rest of the time at home having an awesome STAYCATION!!!

I love Staycations. I NEED more time with my kids just being at home. I LOVE having all our activities and sports canceled for the week, and having time to just chill; and cross some things off ~~our list~~.

Plus, I don’t love our kids thinking that we always have to big or go home!! It’s ok to just be together @ home. …or go small and travel via car to places closer to where we live. I grew up that way, and I had a great childhood.

This was the perfect week for us to dye Easter Eggs. Since the kids are older now, it was finally time to break out the magazines and try some of the fun stuff we have seen other people try. I thought it would be fun to show you what we did. I thought it would spark some ideas for you for this upcoming Easter Holiday.

I was ready to dive in and get creative too.

I thought I would give each project we tackled a level of difficulty.

Then you could assess if you want to attempt it with your age of children and decide if it would work with your family.

You don’t have to do all of these that we did. You could just choose one to try if your looking for something fun and new.

Level 1 being Easy- 5 being Advanced.

1) means it’s something that a 5 year old could manage

2) something that my 7 year old can do on her own

3) something that my 7 year old can do but might need help with in some areas

4) something that my 9 year old can manage on his own

5) something that my 12 year old can do, but she is super capable

(these all really need ADULT supervision)

OK. Lets dye eggs

We had such a great time together. Usually I stand back and photograph, but mostly I participated this time. Oh! and I just realized that the girls and I decided that it was a bun day today. It is going to storm today so why do your hair? Buns for the hair it is!

Jex didn’t join us, because it is the last day of ski season. Skiing is everything to that boy, so we let him pass this time.

I found that these mini muffin trays, hold the eggs so well.

I picked this one up at our local thrift store this last week. I even spray painted it to make it look adorable, not even knowing I would use it for this purpose. So go search out your thrift stores. I’m going to use it for jewelry or little craft supplies when I’m done with this.

We just used the normal dyes that you buy at the grocery store for egg dying. I made a few fun colors out of vinegar and food coloring too. I always buy two egg dying kits because none of the kids are patient enough to wait on colors. I also never like the process to take hours. That was a trick I learned a long time ago. It’s worth the extra $1.50.

We made sure to leave a few eggs white, because we had some plans for those.

The kids and I liked trying to make some of them hombre, and dipping in two colors and seeing what happens. We tried all sorts of fun things when it comes to the dying part.

THE GOLDEN LETTERED EGG

Ok! One of our favorite decorating tricks was actually with spray paint. We took a white egg, and added a sticker. Make sure to press it down hard.

Then we took the egg outside and spray painted them gold.

Once they were dry we took the sticker off

Seriously so much fun!! These would make great place cards at the dinner table on Easter.

Level: 5 because of Spray paint

GOLD SPONGING

We did another fun one with some Gold Paint.

We did some sponge painting on the eggs. We used gold paint and some sponge brushes. If you don’t have sponge brushes, you could use sponges cut in strips.

They give the eggs such a fun feel.

Level: 3 for sure. Tess did this mostly on her own. For sure needs a good hand washing after.

PUFF PAINT POLKA DOT EGGS

We have had a good stash of puff paint on hand for a while, so I thought why not?

The important thing to remember with this is that it takes a while to dry.

So you can only do about half of the egg at a time.

We did polka dots mostly, and even wrote a few words like Stella’s IDK for I don’t know.(cause she ran out of things to say)

Notice how only half of the egg is polka dotted. This is the kids tray. They need to come back and finish the egg.

Level:I would say this is between a 3 and 4 for difficulty. Tess needed some help with this, and Isaac just needed help getting started.

WASHI SHAPES AND STRIPES

Can you say WASHI?

We use it for everything at our house. We put washi tape on everything. We decided to put it on the eggs to. It made them look awesome.

Some we just put around the middle of the egg as a stripe around the middle. I cut teeny tiny triangles, and put them all over an egg.

Depending on what you are doing with the washi depends on the level.

Level:1 for just a simple wrap around stripe. Difficult shapes would be a 5.

GLITTER EGGS

Glitter is just too fun not to be added to the mix.

This was simple. We just used a simple glue pen and added it to our egg where we wanted the glitter to be. You can draw shapes, symbols, letters or words.

Then with the help of a big person, the glitter was added.

Tessa wrote the number 8, because she is turning 8 this year.

8 is a big year in our church. It is the year you are baptized, and she is excited about that.

Level: 1 for using a glue pen and drawing the design, 5 for adding the glitter

NOTE: I like the Heidi Swapp glitter it can be found at Hobby Lobby or Michaels.

MARBLE EGGS

The last one the kids loved was the marble eggs. It seemed to work best with white eggs; not dyed. I tried it on a colored egg, and it worked but not as well.

It involves fingernail polish and a bowl that you don’t care to keep.

Fill the bowl with warm water, and add a few drops of finger nail polish. Then stir with a small straw.

Drag egg through the polish until it is completely covered. Then just allow the polish to dry.

The pink one in the center is mine with mint nail polish on it. It didn’t work as well. You can see though, how we have done a few of these different techniques together on one egg. This pink egg is dyed, it’s got mint polish, and gold glitter on it. So try doing a few together and see what happens.

These polish ones look really cool and have a great marble effect. If you want to use another color when using the polish, just rinse out the bowl, and then pick a new polish color. Start the process over. When you are finish, throw the bowl away. You may want to use rubber gloves for this technique.

Level: 5 for sure!! Stella did these all by herself. She even did mine. I just supervised.

So… here is a little taste of how mine came together:

I do have a couple words written on mine with puff paint, but I am saving those for a later date. You will have to stay tuned to see what those say. It was fun writing on them in cursive with cursive handwriting and puff paint. That is something to try also.