The Beginnings of Spring

Hey, hey!  It's officially Spring!  This should mean that I'm sewing cute Easter dresses for my girls and making Easter decorations and treats and kid crafts.... right?  Well, if you live at my house, Spring so far has looked like snow, and being wiped out on the couch sick. 

We are just now on the upswing, and I'm beginning to feel that Spring will bring life.  All of this extra light in the evening, and just the promise of warmer weather to come is enough to brighten my spirits. 


























Today we dyed Easter eggs using natural food dyes.  The idea is that you take colourful foods, simmer with a bit of water, remove the food, and then you are left with a natural dye.  A basic recipe is 1 cup of food to 1 cup water, simmered for 30 minutes.  You can either add a bit of vinegar to your dye or dip each egg in vinegar before dyeing it.  In addition to the dye, we used rubber bands and wax crayons for decorating.  I used the following colours:

• Ground Turmeric - Yellow
• Blueberries - Dark Purple
• Beets - Pink
• Red Onion Skins - Red
• Yellow Onion Skins - Orange
• Purple Cabbage - Blue

The colours are not quite as vivid as commercial dyes, but it was a fun experiment, and I also felt quite safe letting kids eat the hard boiled eggs after decorating them. 


























My daughter and I also had fun changing our Valentine's heart tree to a spring leaf tree.  I originally had pulled a few branches off of a tree in my yard, stuck them in a mason jar, and covered them with little paper hearts.  I wasn't ready for the branches to be tossed, so I changed the coloured beads on the bottom to greens and yellows, and exchanged the hearts for paper leaves.

Now that I am finished with this being sick business, I'll have to put my mind to more Easter projects.