Category: craft

Easy DIY Easter Baskets

Easy DIY Easter Baskets

One of my favourite things to put together during the Easter season are children’s Easter baskets. I love designing, decorating and choosing chocolates that they will love. Creating our own baskets allow us to tailor the items in the basket to their likes and creates a personal gift for them.

Easy DIY Easter Baskets

For this basket you will need:

  • Easter basket (I picked up mine from the Dollar Store – two baskets for $1)
  • small chocolate eggs (I chose Hershey’s cookies and creme)
  • Kinder Surprise Eggs
  • foam
  • green filling for the basket
  • styrofoam eggs (these came attached to a stick so it was easy to insert)

Easy DIY Easter Baskets

Directions:

Using a knife or scissors trace the bottom of the container on the foam to ensure it will fit in the bottom of your basket. Using a knife cut out the foam and place it in the bottom of your basket.

Easy DIY Easter Baskets

Fill the basket with the green filling to cover up the foam.

Easy DIY Easter Baskets

Insert the styrofoam eggs and place the Kinder egg in the basket.

Easy DIY Easter Baskets

Fill the basket with chocolate eggs (or another favourite of your child’s).

Easy DIY Easter Baskets

And voila – your basket is complete!

These are perfect for the little ones that come over during the holidays or a friend’s child. I have stopped buying the store packaged Easter baskets due to the quality of items included so these are great alternatives to store-bought baskets!

Do you make your own Easter baskets? What do you like to include?

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Handprint Tulips Canvas #DIY #Crafts

Hand Print Tulip Canvas

Easter is just around the corner and this is a perfect time to get your children ready by creating crafts and decorations to place around your home.

Hand Print Tulip Canvas

I stumbled upon this idea while on Pinterest (my favourite place to spend some time online!). I thought this would be the perfect craft to do with my children and it leaves a lasting memory of this time period to treasure later on.

For this project you will need:

  • large white canvas
  • yellow, blue and green paint
  • paint brushes

Hand Print Tulip Canvas

Directions:

Set up a clean area and lay your canvas on the table. Put out your paint and paint brushes. With a pencil roughly plan out where you would like to place your tulips.

Hand Print Tulip Canvas

Take your child’s hand and generously coat it with the desired paint.

Hand Print Tulip Canvas

Place your child’s hand on the canvas in the area you had set for the bloom of the tulip. You can alternate hands and paint colour to create a garden of tulips. In our case we alternated older/younger child’s hand. Wash up nicely!

Hand Print Tulip Canvas

Using the green paint, draw on a stem on each of the tulips.

Hand Print Tulip Canvas

You can create a garden bed or grass bed at the bottom of the canvas.

Hand Print Tulip Canvas

Allow your painting to dry. Once your painting is dry you can place the tulip canvas in a prominent place in your home. For us this was in our livingroom so that everyone could see their hands when they come to visit us.

Hand Print Tulip Canvas

This would also make a great gift for the Grandparents this Easter season!
What crafts have you started this season?

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Let’s Get Crafty with DIY Valentine’s Day Centre Pieces! #Ad

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #CollectiveBias

Craft time is one of the best ways to fit in quality family time. A time to be silly and to experiment with new ideas and let the kids just be themselves. The holiday’s are a perfect time to get in some extra crafts and Valentine’s Day is no exception in our home. Each year we try to design a new craft – something different and unique for our family.

valentine's-day

Since dinner time is important in our family (nothing beats that kind of bonding time!) and we have just recently started eating out in the dining room with our wedding dishes we thought a craft for our table would fit our family the best. Our table, while looking pretty with all the good dishes on it, was just looking plain:

valentine's-day

Boring right?

So we thought, what better way to spice up our table than with Valentine’s Day themed centre pieces! We envisioned candles, candy, vases and with this in mind we headed out to Walmart to find some key pieces for our centre piece.

valentines-Day

While I was checking out vases and supplies, our youngest son had the time of his life in the children’s crafting aisle – he would have fully stocked our cart if he was allowed to!

Valentine's-Day

For our Valentine’s Day centre piece craft we purchased (and you will need to purchase to replicate!):

  • two medium-sized candles and one large candle
  • two small square vases
  • fabric in a colour of your choosing
  • cinnamon hearts
  • glue gun and sticks
  • white rectangular candle holder (we actually used a white appetizer tray for our craft!)
  • heart stickers
  • Valentine’s Day themed ribbon
  • clear wrapping paper

valentine's-day

Start first with the small glass vases (since this was our kid’s favourite part!). Choose which stickers you want to apply on to the glass and apply the stickers directly onto the glass. Fill your glasses with the cinnamon hearts. Wrap them up with the clear wrapping paper and tie off in a bow with the ribbon.

valentine's-day

Cut the fabric into rectangular pieces. The length should be enough so that the fabric will stretch around the candle once and just slightly overlap.

valentine's-day

Using the glue gun, glue the under side of the left side of the fabric onto the top part of the right side of the fabric. Make sure that you are pulling the fabric tightly to ensure that it does not slip off the candle. Word of advice – don’t apply the glue from the glue gun directly onto the candle (yes, I can admit it – I made this mistake and completely blame the lack of coffee and pure exhaustion). Also be careful with those fingers! I managed to apply the glue directly onto my fingers – ouch!

valentine's-day

Now comes the best part – arrangement!

Place the three candles onto the white candle holder (or in our case the app tray). Place hearts around the candles.

valentine's-day

Voila! A beautifully Valentine’s Day themed decorated centre piece. The best part is that it can be changed and updated when the season changes.

valentine's-day

Because the children in our life play such an important role in our life and it is important to us to let them know we love them, we decided to use the vases as a place setting. We put each vase on the children’s plate and it was a wonderful companion to our centre piece and the kids loved their extra surprise.

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How do you update your home decor to celebrate Valentine’s Day? Do you have a special craft that you like to make each year?

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DIY Hand Print Keepsake

My children are growing so fast – every time I look at them it feels like they have grown another inch! We wanted to capture them in this moment and decided to make hand print keepsakes to display in our home. It was the perfect holiday craft for our family – quick and simple! The boys loved it because they were able to get their hands nice and dirty although trying to get them to not paint each other was fun!

You Will Need:

  • paint
  • paintbrush
  • canvas print (8×10)
  • 8×10 frame

Using the paint colour your child has chosen (our boys wanted blue so blue it was) I painted their right hands applying a good amount of pain so that their hand was quite saturated with the paint.

One at a time, I took their hand and gently placed it on the canvas print. I gently put pressure on their hands to ensure the hand print would take to the canvas. You may have to help your little one to lift their hand back off of the canvas without smudging the print.

Allow the painting to dry, ours took roughly three hours to dry. I then placed it inside the 8×10 frame and hung it by our front door. Visitors love looking at their hands and this would be a fantastic gift for Grandparents!

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LEGO Door Hanger Crafts with Cathy Thinking Out Loud

Both of our boys have entered the phase where they like to decorate the door to their room in a fun and personalized way that represents them – from a Genius at Work to a Superhero at Work.

Cathy from Cathy Thinking Out Loud sent us these fantastic LEGO template door hangers for our boys to colour in and cut out to hang. They were super excited to personalize their LEGO mini figure to represent them (our youngest just went to town with the colouring!)

You Will Need:

  • white paper to print out template
  • pencil crayons or crayons
  • scissors
  • glue
  • Bristol board or cardboard paper

Directions:

1. Print out template:

2. Colour in template.

 

3. Cut out door hanger. Glue to bristol or cardboard paper.
4. Cut out the door hanger and Voila!
We hope you enjoy personalizing your own LEGO door hanger!
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