paint cut paste

over spring break in april, it was time for me to plant some potted herbs for the season. with all of the fairy house excitement as of late, N wanted to make them into “fairy herb gardens,” naturally.

even without her own pinterest account, this trend seemed to seep into the consciousness of my 5-year-old. go figure. first we potted the herbs into two large pots. N said that she would decorate the basil and rosemary pot, and the other (sage, cilantro, and parsley) was for me to adorn. i felt honored to get to do one, as i assumed she’d do both. yay!

she decided we needed our shrinky dink herb tags here, but the ones we made a couple years ago weren’t the same types of herbs, so we spent an afternoon making new shrinky dink tags. (easy steps: scribble with colored pencil on rough side, cut shape, write herb name with sharpie on smooth side, heat shrink, stick in soil.)

then it was time for the houses. i gave her a choice of using natural materials (like she does in the yard) or painting some wooden birdhouses we have ($1 bin at michael’s.) she chose the painted route, and we got to work on our fairy houses.

next we gathered up some items for landscaping… like colorful marbles, stones, shells, sea glass, and even a few of the lovely painted sticks we made a couple years ago. N excitedly designed her fairy herb pot.

she spent a lot of time getting everything just right for the fairies. what a hostess!

the herb pots are so darn sweet… and we’ve spent some time over the past month (has it been that long!!!??!) clipping sprigs of herbs for our dinners and sprucing up the fairy neighborhoods.

my little fairy-lover has been making fairy houses out of natural materials for months. she loves to create them, and then check back in on them the following day to see if she sees signs of fairy activity. (sometimes the “fairies” leave colorful marbles or sparkly treasures for her overnight. *wink*) i just love these spontaneous nature creations that can happen without purchasing any materials or having any agenda. open-ended, outdoor art supreme!

on a recent family picnic in the park sort of sunday, she worked hard to create a fairy house at the base of a redwood tree.

she also loves making them in our backyard…

and adding to this one in her school yard during outside playtime…

do your little ones like to create little homes in nature? i’d love to hear about what you’re making. for some really sweet inspiration, we love this book on fairy houses. it’s one of our go-to bedtime reads at the moment. stay tuned for our fairy herb garden, coming up on the blog in a coupla days…

this rainbow carnation experiment is one i remember from my own childhood. not only is it a visually appealing activity, it’s also a great way for kids to learn the science behind water is absorbed by plants and how it travels through the different part of a flower.

the inspiration for this post was an old spice rack i had sitting in the garage. what wonderful little vials these are for this experiment! we grabbed some food coloring and white carnations (we had some in the bouquet we bought for our butterfly habitat – all of this happened a few weeks ago, i’m just late bringing it to the blogging world.)

N had fun dropping food coloring into the water, and creating her favorite color, since it was not in the cheapo food coloring pack we had – purple!

she placed a white carnation into each tiny vase, and we put them out of the way of our flower-chomping cat…

and waited. i asked N, “what do you think will happen next?” she said that maybe the flowers would grow, and that they might drink the colored water. let’s see if her hypothesis is correct…

even within a day and a half, we saw the petals taking on the colors of the water they were drinking.

ten days later, the colors were distributed throughout the different parts of the flower. we noticed that the purple color was not as saturated in the carnation as the other colors, and the darker colored waters in general seemed to be more full in the end.

there are some explanations of this experiment online that we checked out, like this one from ehow. i didn’t find any scientific reason the darker waters would not be absorbed as much. in fact, most of the write-ups i saw recommend using darker colors for more dramatic results. all in all, we had a rainbowy flowery good time with this one!

have you tried making rainbow carnations? if so, what did you notice?

“Did you hear that winter’s over?
The basil and the carnations cannot control their laughter.”

-Rumi

hooray for spring!

earth day is coming up this weekend, and what better way to celebrate than to experience some of mother nature’s magic?! we’ve just witness a slice of this in our house — following a butterfly from the larva stage through to the butterfly stage before our widened eyes…

N has always been interested in the stages of a butterfly, from her favorite book as a 1 year old (the very hungry caterpillar, of course) to the awesome butterfly storybox she created last spring! (have you seen this thing?) N received this groovy butterfly kit from insect lore for her birthday, and while i’m not getting paid at all for this review, i’d recommend it to anyone. (great birthday gift!)

we waited until temperatures were seasonably warm, and sent away for butterfly larvae in the mail. when the container arrived, there were six larvae inside, which looked like super-small caterpillars. see:

about five days later, the caterpillars had grown much larger…

four days after that, the caterpillars had munched their way to their maximum size. (that tan stuff in the jar with them is their food.)

the had entered chrysalis stage only two days after that. it’s hard to see here, but five of them attached to the lid of the jar (as expected) but the sixth formed its cocoon on the bottom of the jar. we weren’t sure if that dude would make it, and ultimately and sadly, he did not.

now it was time to transfer the chrysalids to their new netted habitat provided in the kit. the instructions said to pin the paper to which they’d attached to the net a few inches above the bottom. my husband (the less skeeved-out one) did the deed with the little one lending support.

in their new home!

we watched and watched. and waited and waited.

and on the eighth day, our first painted lady butterfly pushed her way out, unfurled her wet wings, and was a beautiful butterfly!

over the next four days, all five butterflies were born! each day, we read one of N’s favorite books, butterfly birthday, and sang happy birthday to the butterflies as they came into the world in their new form. we put carnations drizzled with sugar water and tangerine slices in their habitat, which N prepared.

we hung out with them until the youngest butterfly was one day old.

on easter sunday, we brought the habitat into our backyard and unzipped it… one by one, we watched each butterfly take flight! it was so exciting for N …and for me and my husband, too!

what an a beautifully educational and magical spring activity to do with children! i think we might have to get the ladybug kit next…

how are you celebrating earth day on sunday?

i thought this might be a nice place to share our family recipe, passed down through generations, for buttercream easter eggs. mostly because this blog serves as a record for N to have (i print my blog into books for her to keep,) and so that my mom, sister, and i don’t have to frantically call each other every spring asking for recipe details. this is one of the easter rituals that has been passed down for YEARS in my family, so let’s archive it here and share the sweetness!

every easter when my mom was a kid, and when i was a kid, it has been tradition for us to find a large chocolate-covered buttercream easter egg, with our name on it, in the center of our easter baskets. these eggs are like diabetes in a ball – they are SUGARY SWEET through and through. this isn’t like a piece of candy you can bite into and eat. it’s one to slice ever so thinly and eat over time… if you can exercise restraint.

we don’t put the egg in N’s basket as though a bunny brought it. rather, it’s something we make together around easter time and enjoy and share with friends on easter sunday. here’s the secret family recipe… shhhh…

stir together:

• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2/3 cup sweetened condensed milk*
• 6 cups or 1 1/2 lb. of powdered sugar

use hands to form mixture into egg-shaped orbs of whatever size you wish. set aside.

for the chocolate coating melt (over a double boiler) a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips with a tablespoon of vegetable shortening. on my first attempt this year, i tried to use milk chocolate ghirardelli chips first, and it just clumped into a ball instead of melting nice and smooth. had to try again with the old stand-by semi-sweets and it worked fine.

once liquified, spread spoonfuls of this chocolate directly on wax paper to serve as the bottom of the buttercream eggs.

place buttercream orb atop this chocolate, then spoon chocolate over top of the orb until it is coated. you can smooth it out with the back of the spoon.

once it is hardened (you can expedite this by putting it in the fridge) you can decorate the eggs with royal icing or any icing that will harden (not gels.) this year, i got lazy and just used that cake mate brand icing in a tube.

voila! you’re finished. garnish your easter baskets and share with your loved ones and friends and co-workers. the recipe makes PLENTY!

bookmark or pin this for next easter. or you can make these in other shapes for other holidays, i’m sure! let me know what you come up with!

*as you’ve noticed by now, pretty much any “secret family recipe” in my family involves sweetened condensed milk. remember our snow ice cream recipe? perhaps that’s why i’m a vietnamese coffee fiend!

we’re one of several wonderful blogs taking part in the tinkerlab creative challenge: create something using egg cartons! we made cute and tiny egg carton baskets.

what a timely challenge this was, too! on saturday when dyeing our easter eggs, i challenged my little N to make whatever she wanted with the egg carton.

first she instructed me to cut it up for her (after realizing it was too tough for the kid scissors. darn.)

N decided to paint each little cup with watercolors. i’m not sure if she had an idea in mind yet, but as she painted, she said they should be small easter baskets.

some were pretty intricate in their design.

she wanted to “sew” a handle to the cartons, but later decided that if she painted strips of the egg carton to staple to the egg cups, that would create a basket!

each basket was filled with a bit of easter grass. N was delighted to find these were the perfect size and shape to hold the wooden watercolor eggs she painted to give to friends.

a couple were even created for our tinkerfriends themselves, as we were lucky enough to have easter brunch with the tinkerlab crew! can you believe our good fortune in being neighbors with these folks?!?

N declared that the unpainted cups would be good drying spots for our dyed eggs…

…which turned out suuuuuper-bright this year, by the way — we used intense ukrainian egg dye!

check out what many other amazing bloggers did with egg cartons:

wishing everyone a colorful spring!

for the past three spring seasons, we have enjoyed watercoloring wooden eggs that we get from casey’s wood products, each time with a different twist.

the first year and second year we posted about this project, we woodburned eggs with the names of N’s friends and gave them as easter or spring gifts. this year, N intends to give an egg to each child in her class this week. in waldorf kindergarten, each student has a visual symbol that identifies their cubby, their coat hook, and each piece of their art work. these symbols have become important to N, so she asked me to woodburn the symbols onto each egg.

after the symbols were on the eggs, N was excited to watercolor them in colors that remind her of each friend.

after they were painted, we sealed them with our homemade wood creme. (see our recipe here.) i have to say that the imaginary play that ensued almost tempted me to keep the whole “kindergarten class egg set” for N to use to act out scenarios amongst her friends. it was fascinating play to witness!

but we’re sticking with the original plan and gifting these little lovely eggs to each child in her class, as well as two larger eggs for her teachers. (and perhaps we’ll create a kindergarten class set another time for home?)

we love this annual egg ritual because these are eggs that stick around year after year. i think i’m going to create a few story eggs for N’s easter basket this week, too.

have you ever wood-burned and/or painted wooden eggs before? what types to do like to create?