create (with kids)

Things move a little bit slower around the house these days with a toddler and a baby. You learn to plan ahead, allot yourself more time than needed... and then a little bit more for good measure. So our egg decorating started last week even though Easter is still about three weeks away. And for good reason: I wanted to do hollow eggs this year, and of the few we began decorating last week only one survived little hands. They were all fine at first, but I mistakenly left them within reach. (When will I learn?) So to encourage us to try again- this time putting all decorated eggs out of reach- I'm doing a week's worth of egg-xcellent posts (smile).

 I don't know why, but the idea of making hollow eggs was a bit intimidating for me. There are many ways to do this, as Tinker Lab explains here. I've settled for now on a safety pin method from Family Fun magazine. You prick three holes on the top (see above), then a little circle of pin-pricks on the bottom. Covering all three holes on the top, you begin to blow, and blow, and blow as the innards leak out into your awaiting bowl. I usually have to help the bottom circle a bit, but it's worked for a couple dozen hollow eggs so far.

Another Family Fun article showed kids decorating their eggs which were being gently cradled on an egg cushion. We improvised by making these seed bags:

They are perfect to cradle fragile eggs from little hands and perfect for little hands to help make! We just filled sandwich bags with seeds (pumpkin seeds in the closest bag, sunflower seeds in the other) until the bags were moderately full. We then closed the bags, sealed the tops with packing tape, and began our decorating. And yes, that's a Mama egg above- it was the only one that survived. I'll have kiddo eggs the rest of the week... Tomorrow our decorating begins!