My daughter must be getting just as excited for the spring as I am. She has been laying out picnics on our living room floor for the past couple of weeks. I was impressed when she made herself a picnic basket out of a tissue box and pipe cleaners to carrying her food in. I was very proud of her for being so inventive.
A funny thing happened at my daughter’s preschool last week. One of the teachers mentioned to me that my daughter talks to her about all of the crafts that we do at home. She said to me in a very puzzled voice that my daughter was telling her about Kandinsky. This made me smile. I gave her a little lesson on Kandinsky last month and then did an art project with her inspired by his works. She remembered it well and when she sees circles now, she observes that they look like a Kandinsky. We did the same with Jackson Pollock last month & this weekend we learned about one of my personal favorites, Andy Warhol.
Easter is quickly approaching and with the holiday comes all of its delicious sweet treats. 
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Last year I had experimented with pretzel bunnies. They were a big hit with my family, so I wanted to try them again with a little help from my favorite little helper. We had recently purchased a set of food markers & we both could not wait to use them.
What you will need:
Pretzel sticks
Peanut butter
Confectioners sugar
Butter
Vanilla
Directions:
Melt 3 Tbsp of butter. Mix it with 1/2 cup of creamy peanut butter, 1 cup of confectioners sugar & 1 tsp of vanilla. Mix it well. Scoop a heaping tsp of peanut butter mixture and roll into a ball. Place on a sheet of wax paper & use a spoon to flatten into a disc. Put them into the freezer for about a half hour or until they are slightly hardened.
Melt the chocolate according to package directions.
Lay out another sheet of wax paper. Dip the pretzel sticks, two at a time into the melted chocolate. Let the excess chocolate drip off & place them on the wax paper in a V shape.
Remove the peanut butter discs from the freezer a few at a time. Dip them one at a time making sure to cover the top, bottoms & sides & place over the pretzel, just covering about 1/4 of the bottom. Use a rubber spatula to fill in any empty space. Let the chocolate cool & harden.
Then comes the fun part. Use your food markers to draw in the bunny faces. My daughter couldn’t wait to draw on her bunnies.
Here was her favorite bunny that she made, complete with hair bow & scarf.
They were a huge hit again with my family and my friends at work.
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We had a lot of plans for this weekend. My daughter had a birthday party for one of her best friends & we were throwing a Super Bowl party at our own house. Unfortunately, a case of the sniffles changed things a bit. Mai had a nasty cough & a runny nose, so we stayed in our jammies all weekend. She may have been a little under the weather, but it did not slow her down any. She was still running around like crazy. I wanted to get her to sit down & relax, so we sat down & did a quiet & simple activity together.
We cut the center of a paper plate out.
Mai loves using the paper hole punch, so she was excited when I gave it to her & let her punch around the inside & outside of the paper plate. I started it & showed her where to punch so that it didn’t clip just the edges.
I punched the outer edge of a paper bowl because that was a bit too tricky for her & then poked the bowl through the center of the plate and glued it into place.
We used a yarn needle to sew the bowl & plate together with yarn & then to sew lacing around the edge of the plate. I showed my daughter how to use the needle under & over, under & over. She skipped some holes at first & would ask me for help when it would tangle, but eventually she got into the groove & was able to do it perfectly without any help.
We had so much fun with our project that we made several.
She enjoyed the sewing so much that I wanted to see if she would enjoy weaving as well.
I took a paper bowl & cut around the edges like shown.
The weaving was similar. It weaved over & under, over & under between sections.
My daughter was not interested in weaving. I finished the weave myself. We glued the woven bowl into the center of another paper plate & then punched more holes around the plate for sewing.
She liked this hat the best of all. We had fun sewing our hats, sniffles and all.
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I know that I have told you all before, but my daughter has a love for the creepy crawlies. She likes snakes & all sorts of insects. She especially loves spiders. I am not sure what the fascination is. Perhaps it is because her favorite book is Miss Spider’s Tea Party. We read it every night. Our house is filled with drawings of spiders. The spider on the left is Miss Spider.
Yesterday while doing yard work, I saw a daddy-long-legs climbing up the side of our house.
When I told my daughter, she came running. “Look at that big daddy spider. Where is the mama?” She studied that spider. “Pick me up. I want to get closer.”
When we went back into the house, we made a quick craft in honor of our new little friend. We still have a bin full of plastic Easter eggs, so we used them for the spider’s body. We used pipe cleaners for the legs. We used 4 for each spider.
Use a hot glue gun to glue the legs to the bottom of the egg. (Adults should operate the glue gun.) Add googly eyes & draw in a smile with a Sharpie.
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It has been 2 months since Easter & I still have a pile of plastic Easter eggs filling up my craft drawers. We have used them many times in water play in the past. I thought we could dress them up a bit and make colorful fish out of them.
Plastic Egg Fish
What you will need:
Plastic Easter eggs
Foam sheets
Glue gun – As always use caution when operating. Adults should operate.
Googly eyes
Directions: Glue the plastic eggs together. Be careful when using hot glue on plastic as it can melt easily. Do not let the gun get too hot.
Cut pieces out of the foam for the different fins.
Squeeze a bead of glue onto the end of the back fin. Let the glue cool for a few seconds & add to the fatter part of the egg.
Add the top fin & googly eyes.
Add the side fins to each side of the egg.
Mai took these into the bath this evening & loved them.
“Mama, can I take a bath with them again tomorrow?”
“Of course!”
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I took a poll on my Facebook page yesterday. I was curious about what people preferred, sweet or salty. My husband is salty & I am definitely sweet, but the truth is I love the two mixed together the best. One of my weaknesses is for chocolate covered pretzels.
With only one week left before Easter, I have a few more days of Easter inspired fun. Tonight we made some sweet & salty Easter treats in the form of our favorite Easter pal.
Melt white chocolate in the microwave. Put the chocolate in a microwave safe dish & heat for a minute. Check it & microwave in 30 second intervals, checking to see if it is melted before each interval. Be careful not to burn.
When the chips are soft & shiny stir with a spoon.
Dip pretzel dipper sized rods into the melted chocolate & lay out on wax paper. Lay two dipped pretzels side by side to form a V shape.
With a spoon, spoon out a dollop of chocolate over the bottom in the shape of a circle. Be careful to not dribble chocolate over the top. It works best when the chocolate is smooth. Use a rubber spatula to smooth out any rough edges while chocolate is still hot.
Melt pink chocolate or in a pinch use white chocolate with just a touch of food coloring gel. Using a toothpick draw a line for the inside of the ears & add a dot for the nose.
Melt a small dish of milk or dark chocolate & add in eyes, mouth & whiskers. Let your chocolate cool & remove from the wax paper. If you have any imperfections, which I had a plenty, scrape the hardened chocolate with a knife to smooth out.
Now let’s hop on over to our main event. Welcome to week 13 of our Sunday’s Best Link-Up.
This week we’re celebrating the thaw across the country, so linkup Easter posts, crafts, recipes, gardening, decorating ideas, room makeovers, Easter tablescapes, spring cleaning and organizational tips. Blow the dust off your old posts and link those too. Don’t have posts that fit into the theme, link up whatever post you would like to share. We would love to have SEO, blogging, and parenting tips, DIY projects, homesteading, homeschooling, and your posts on life. Your linkups and giveaways are welcome too. Anything goes here, as long as it’s family friendly and you may linkup as many as you would like.
Each week your hosts will select their favorite post and it will be featured the following week. An image from your post will be used on my blog the following week with a link back to your blog. Be sure to check back to see if you’re a Sunday’s Best featured blogger. All Featured Bloggers will have their posts Pinned to the Sunday’s Best Pinterest Board.
If you are interested in becoming a Sunday’s Best host, please contact me for details at rhonda@mother2motherblog.com
Your Sunday’s Best Hosts:
Rhonda – Mother 2 Mother Kim U. – Pinterested Parent Kim M. – Life In A House of Testosterone
Here’s the rules, please connect with us on social media before you leave or subscribe/follow our blogs:
Mother 2 Mother: Please like my Facebook Page, follow me on Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, BlogLovin or subscribe/join my blog on the right before you leave.
The Pinterested Parent: Please like Kim’s Facebook Page, follow her on Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Bloglovin before you leave.
Life In A House of Testosterone: Please like Kim’s Facebook Page, follow her on Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Bloglovin, or Instagram before you leave.
Kim U. selected Moss Covered Bunny from Pinterventures
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I selected Pastel Deviled Eggs from Intelligent Domestications
Kim M. choose Keeping Up With the Joneses from Sequins In The South
Play-Doh is my daughter’s favorite creative material. She has become quite the Play-Doh artist. Her creations include cakes, animals & even a mold of herself wearing a tutu. We buy it often, but make it in a pinch. When I told her that we would be making a fresh batch of play dough tonight, she became so excited that she could barely wait for the homemade dough to cool before she dug her mitts into it.
We kept going with our Easter theme. We used a piece of heavy stock paper & rolled out our dough onto it to form an egg shape.
Using cookie cutters & other tools, we rolled & cut out shapes in different colors.
We pressed our shapes into our play doughto decorate our Easter eggs. I pre-pressed lines into the dough to act as a guide for her to press her lines into. Add gems, string, buttons & other embellishments to dress up your eggs.
If you have a play dough lover in your home, they may love this cute & easy holiday activity.
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