Easter Activities

A couple of weeks before Easter my big boy and I set out to decorate some eggs for Easter. I had of course been madly pinning lots of ideas for egg decorating on Pinterest, but in the end we returned to the old favorite of silk-dyed eggs. These looked so spectacular last time I did them, and I knew Noah would love watching the colors transfer onto the eggs. I had a willing egg-blower and we enjoyed some scrambled eggs for lunch after this activity. We had fun wrapping the eggs in the silk ties and Noah even assigned names to each of the eggs.

Whilst we waited for the silk eggs to boil, we attempted to melt crayon shavings onto hot eggs. Unfortunately, we had limited success, with large globs of melted crayon forming on the eggs. So we decided to just scribble different crayon colors onto the hot eggs instead. A much more pleasing result.

Together with the eggs the boys proudly painted with their Nan, we had a nice Easter display for our entrance table.

A few days later, my little boy and I made some Easter sticker garlands. Basically we stuck Easter stickers onto a piece of embroidery wool and then strung the garlands up over the boys door and on the bookshelf. They were super easy, and quick - ideal for keeping the attention on a 2 year old. They are small and unobtrusive, but added a little Easter spirit to our house along with the boys' Easter hats which they decorated at preschool.

With Baby No. 3 arriving just before Easter I was glad we managed a few Easter crafts before her arrival, as Easter was celebrated amidst the fog of having a newborn in the house.

Martha Stewart Easter

It seems that moving to New York has awakened my crafty-homemaker instincts. Ok maybe it is because I can actually call myself a "homemaker" now that these instincts have kicked in. Just this year I have completed a knitting course, and so far knitted one scarf and have both a jumper and another scarf on the go, embroidered several baby singlets for friends, and even converted an old desk into a play table for my son (post to follow).

So I guess it should not be all that surprising that in the lead up to Easter my brain was running overtime on egg decorating.This is not something I had done in years. I have memories of blowing eggs and dying them with onion skins with my Mum when I was little, but other than the occasional school art class, I have never thought about decorating eggs again. But here in New York, and maybe the USA generally, egg decorating is on every corner - ok not every corner, but the drugstores and supermarkets are stocked high with Easter Egg Decorating kits.

So a few weeks back I bought one of these packs and thought I would have some fun with Noah dying some eggs and letting him put stickers on them - and I thought this was a much better option than letting him gorge himself on chocolate eggs over the weekend. But alas my "craft-homemaker-cum-Martha-Stewart-instincts" kicked in. I read a blog post which described an art of tie-dying eggs (and by "tie" I mean the mens silk fashion accessory, not the colourful concentric ring style of clothing art popularised by hippies).

And so I set out to find some garishly bright 100% silk mens ties (hopefully on special) to use for my craft project. This took some work, but I finally found a discount mens suit store in TriBeCa which had a collection to meet my needs (pictured to the right) and I was all set. Eggs were blown (a harder process than I remembered from childhood), and ties cut up and tied around the eggs, before being boiled for 25 minutes.

This was all made more exciting by the fact that I was doing this at 12am (much to my husbands bewilderment) after returning from a nice evening out. It was a long 25 minutes for the first batch of 3 eggs, and I was nervous that my eggs would not be as vibrant as those I had seen.

So at 12:30am I unwrapped my first egg and it was disappointing - from the vibrant blue and gold tie almost no colour was imparted onto the egg (not pictured because lets face it, who likes to show off their failures?) I felt crushed - maybe more due to fatigue than anything else. The 2nd and 3rd eggs (pictured above) though were fantastic and I excitedly woke my husband to share in my crafty-homemaker-cum-Martha-Stewart prowess. He seemed less than thrilled but feigned some level of congratulatory pleasure for me and then asked if this meant I was going to sleep now?

The next day I did another batch of 3 eggs during the day and a final 4 late on Good Friday evening - after all I had set the table for our lunch-party the next day, and 6 eggs really didn't make a centre-piece (especially with one disappointing blue/gold creation). My husband bided me goodnight as I commenced blowing 4 eggs at 11pm.

The results were all great and I was very excited to place the eggs in the glass bowl for the centre-piece of our Easter table. I was even more thrilled when our guests commented on them and seemed impressed that I had dyed them myself using mens ties. I put it all down to my crafty-homemaker-cum-Martha-Stewart prowess.

(To see photos of all my eggs, please go to the "Crafty-Homemaker" page of this blog).