Tie Dye Easter Eggs - Pinterest Buster

Soak the hard boiled egg for a few minutes in vinegar to ready the shell to take up as much dye as possible. Wrap the egg in a paper towel securing it with a twist tie.

Put a few drops of food coloring randomly on the paper towel.

Spritz with a spray bottle set on mist to make the colors bleed.

Leaving the eggs in the paper towel, set them in front of a fan until the towel is dry.

Open them up and if they aren't completely dry leave them in front of the fan for a few more minutes.

These turned out stunning!

They have a sort of night time, celestial sky look to them.

Dying Easter Eggs with Cool Whip - Pinterest Buster

This was so simple I wish I had known about this when my kids were little.  

Put a container of Cool Whip in a cake pan.  Dot with several different colors of food coloring.  Swirl the color around with a tooth pick, not too much though or it turns laundry lint grey.  We wore gloves for easy clean up.

Roll the hard boiled eggs in the Cool Whip until they are completely covered.  Let sit for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, take the eggs out and gingerly rinse them in a bowl of water so as not to disturb the color.  Allow to dry and they are good to go.

Give the leftover Cool Whip to your chickens.

Easter Bunny Origami - Pinterest Busters

A Tale of Two Bunnies

  The first one had over 20 steps to make this little bunny basket that will hold small trinkets.  Cute on the web site, but didn't work for us.  

Dancer would say this pin is busted.  Maybe if you are skilled in the art of origami, but for the beginner this is not a winner.

Second bunny had only nine folds and we successfully made a whole fluffle of bunnies.  The bunny stands up and you can brighten up your Easter table by using them as name place cards.  We have to say that this pin is winner, winner, bunny dinner.

Wood Slice Wreath

We're on a roll here with these wood slice projects, this time a wreath. Again super simple and inexpensive.  

The wreath. For the base of the wreath have about 12-15 slices of wood roughly the same size.  My base slices were about 4 inches across so how many you need will depend on how large you want your wreath and how big they are.  Lay them out on the table in a circle arranged so that they have the most surface edge touching.  Hot glue the pieces where they touch and this is the base of the wreath.  By itself it will not be sturdy enough, this is where the smaller slices come in.  Lay them over the middle of two of the base layer slices and glue the heck out of them.  Do this all the way around and there is no way this wreath is coming apart.  Keep adding slices to add depth and dimension.  

The bow.  Making a perfect bow is difficult at best, especially if you are working with a stiff material like burlap.  For this reason I don't even try and no one will know the difference.  The bow on this wreath is made of four pieces.  Two for the loops and two for the streamers that hang down.  Hot glue is again your friend for making this look like it is the perfectly tied bow. The hot glue also insures that this bow isn't going anywhere.  Add an adornment and it's done.

The cost. Others of these I have seen made had a store bought base. I skipped that part for two reasons.  First, I would have to wait to make this until I had a chance to go into town and I'm not even sure where you buy such a thing so I would have to go looking around.  And second, it would add to an already heavy project.  Unless you know you are hanging this where there is a stud in your wall, over time it will make a large hole in dry wall.  Also it needs more than a picture frame nail to hang it up. The slices Dad cut for me from downed branches in the yard.  I have seen these slices in craft stores for an insane amount of money.  If you don't have a table saw to cut your own, do some networking in your neighborhood, someone must have some sort of saw that will cut these for you. Bring them some fresh baked cookies if they seem hesitant.  The pine cones I had in the craft closet that I picked one day when we were geocaching, so free.  The ribbon I got on clearance at Walmart.  It wasn't the right size so I had to cut it. Don't let the wrong size ribbon keep you from a good deal.  The ribbon was $1.50 and I used about a quarter of it making the final cost of the wreath 37 cents plus however much hot glue you use. 

  

  

We made a bunch of these for a church festival and added fake flowers and ribbon.  This made them a little more expensive, but not by much as we were able to use store coupons.  This one we added a couple painted wood pumpkins and a couple of spiders Dancer made.

Wood Slice Pumpkins

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We were cleaning and burning up some brush the other day to get the yard ready for fall. When Dad was cutting the wood up I said to cut me some slices of a branch to make pumpkins.  Super simple, paint the slice orange leaving a little margin on the edge, then glue a stick and some Spanish moss on the top with hot glue.  Done! I used a semi gloss paint from Walmart that was about $1.50. I made seven and used about half the bottle of paint making them about 10 cents apiece.   The moss I had saved from some dried arrangement so no cost there.  If I hadn't had the moss I would have used dried grass or a bit of green fabric for an embellishment.      

When the pumpkins were all lined up it made me think of the book I read to the kids at least a hundred times when they are little to teach ordinal numbers, "Five Little Pumpkins Sitting On a Gate."  Click  here to hear the song if you aren't familiar with it or just want to walk down memory lane.

Vanilla Fire Starters

These fire starters are made with those cotton face cleaning pads instead of cotton balls. These stack really well and a lot would fit in a sandwich Ziploc bag and take up less room in your camping supplies.

Melt down a candle, they don't have to be vanilla like my title says.  Actually, they would be prettier with another colored candle, but vanilla is my favorite scent so that's what we had on hand.  

Our stove is broken so when I put the paper plate in to melt the wax in the "toaster" oven, surprisingly the plate started to "toast." Wasn't thinking there.  Anyway, once the wax melts, dip the cotton pad in the wax until it is completely saturated. Lay it on wax paper or some other nonporous surface so they don't stick what ever you put them on to harden.  

Try number two.  Make an aluminum foil bowl to melt the candle in.  "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work" Thomas Edison  See, we are getting smarter and it only took us one fail.

 And now the test, did it work?  Sure did, and it only used one match. We proceeded to have to have perhaps the world's smallest bonfire.  It burned quite a while though, about five minutes so you would have plenty of time to get a fire going if you didn't have all the wood handy or your tinder was a bit wet.

Stacked Front Porch Planter

Most of the parts to the planter in the order from bottom to top of the picture how I stacked them together, I added one more saucer and pot not pictured. No need for all of them to be the same color, because I have confidence I am going to keep all the plants alive and they are going to thrive so much on the porch that no one will even notice the non white pots.  Plus I am cheap and there was no way I was going to go out and buy new pots for a project when we have a shed full of old ones. Wait, I'll just tell people, if they ask, that I am so green I reused pots from other years, that sounds better than cheap.

First layer, pot with saucer in it and upside down pot on the saucer.  Fill in dirt around the saucer and insert plants

Second layer is saucer, large pot then another saucer to make a planting area. By putting the saucers in the large pots it also took way less potting mix which would have added a lot of weight and money to the project. I will have to water it a lot more often because less dirts means it will dry out faster, but if I decide to move it I won't need two men and small boy to lift it.

View from the side, just keep adding saucers and pots until it is the desired height.

Top view, can hardly wait for the flowers to start growing and make all the layers full and beautiful!

Welcome Spring Wooden Blocks

Saw this on Pinterest.  We had the wooden blocks in a bag in the garage from another project and the paint leftover from other projects so this cost us nothing.  We brought it to Grandma's to remind her what season it is and to brighten up her very white room.  I love how it turned out and almost wish we had made one for our house while we had all the stuff out.

Wooden Bowl and Pottery

Spark started to go to a local art studio on Thursday nights.  For $5 they can go for three hours and all the materials are provided.  He made this wooden bowl on the lathe one of the first nights.  He has also done some pottery, sculpting, painting, drawing and glass work.  There is a teacher in each room and the kids just wander from room to room trying whatever projects they want.

  

Christmas Hot Chocolate Snapple Bottles

Loved the Snapple bottles we decorated for Halloween so I made a couple with a Christmas theme.

Paint the tops red.  It is now too cold to spray paint so I painted them with those acrylic paints by Apple Barrel.  When dry it was really flat looking so I put a layer of clear nail polish over the top to make them shine.  Then I hot glued on a red ribbon and put a plaid one with a tiny bow tie over the top it.  

Inside the bottle, I filled it about 4o% with hot chocolate mix, a layer of crushed candy canes (make sure the bow is on top of this layer or it won't show), and the rest of the bottle with mini marshmallows.  The first one I put all the contents in the bottle before decorating it and some settling occurred as I was rolling it around to get the ribbon on and I had to add a few more marshmallows.  The second one I had the hot chocolate mix in it, but not the rest so that I wouldn't have to add more marshmallows when it was done. The hot chocolate mix rolled around on the inside so when I put the marshmallows in a few had a dusting of mix on them from the side of the jar.  I didn't think it looked as nice as the one where the marshmallows were pristine white.  

Jean Pocket Memo Boards

Cover a heavy piece of foam tag board, or an actual board would work great, with fabric.    We used hot glue and glued around the edge of the back of the board to get the fabric to stick.  If we could do it over, I would have put some glue on the front so the fabric wouldn't sage from the weight of what gets put in the pockets.

 

Using lots of different jean pockets (or the bib off a pair of bibs) glue pockets onto pockets leaving the tops open to put in papers etc.

 

 

Glue the pockets on to the board, again leaving the tops open.

 

 

Add buttons, appliques, ribbon, lace, letters etc. and hanger on the back.

Christmas Gift Craft Day

 

For December our co-op is making either Christmas gifts or decorations.  First one was stocking snowmen.  Pulled a tube sock over a large cardboard tube, added some rice in the bottom so it stay where you set it, made a hat and scarf out of fabric and added a face. 

 

All lined up they are super cute.  Our craft/gift was Russian tea in decorated pint jars, find the recipe here at A Farmish Kind Of Life blog.

 

Painted socks with puff paint.  

 

A quick game while waiting for lunch to be ready.  Stand in a line holding hands and see how fast you can get a hula hoop down the line.

 

Success!

Homemade Lava Lamp

Years ago, when lava lamps were all the rage, we had a red one.  Then we dropped it on the stairs and that was that.  I don't know if you can even get them any more but you can make your own.

 

 

In a large vase put a couple of inches of colored water.  Pour vegetable oil up until about an inch from the top.  Plop a couple broken Alka Seltzer tablets (the more pieces the better) in the vase and watch your lava lamp come to life.

For the real lava lamp experience, turn out the lights and shine a flash light up from the bottom of the vase. This is good for about three minutes of excitement but, it does work over and over.  Pretty cool. 

Pinterest Busters - Glow Jars

A jar that glows, pretty cool concept.  I have seen these as fairy jars touted as a great party activity or to make a summer night just a little more magical.  But, here is the big Pinterest busting question, does it work?

 

 

The supplies were simple, glow sticks, glitter and glass jar.  Cut off the top of the glow stick CAREFULLY.  These have glass in them that will jab into your thumb.  Also sweep right after you do this activity because we found teeny, tiny slivers of glass on the floor.

 

Tip the glow stick over into the glass jar and cut the other end of the stick off to release the glow juice.  If you don't cut the other end off it acts as a vacuum and doesn't come out.  For a pint size jar use at the least, three sticks.

 

Add some magic glitter and swirl it around. 

 

 

Did it work?  Yes, it sure did.  They didn't last too long but, would make it through a party or if set on a dresser, long enough for a child to fall asleep. 

 

The next glow jar pin was to paint the insides of jars with glow in the dark paint.  Make little dots all over the jars and when charged in the light they will work over and over.  Did we bust this pin?  Yes, this one was a flop for us.  The colored glow paint was a total bust.  To try and resurrect this project we covered the inside with white glow paint and that worked better but, the results were still disappointing.  So disappointing we didn't even take a picture.  You can see pictures of our attempt here, the Hmmm.....schooling Mom blog who are our Pinterest Busting pals. 

Tie Blanket Service Project

 

Pajama Day was on the docket for homeschool co-op and we couldn't think of a better project to do at the same time than making tie blankets. 

 

 

We tied ten blankets and gave them to a chaplain that goes out when tragedies happen.  The kids wore them a little bit to "put some love in them."