Archive for April 2011
Egg Garden
A while ago I got to thinking about how to display dyed Easter eggs. Usually we put them back in their carton in the fridge. Refrigeration is a good idea, but I still wanted something cute. I came up with the idea to make flowers out of toilet paper rolls. I like using household items to make something pretty. 
One egg holder is no help at all, so I needed a garden. A garden needs a little fence. I had a box from a bakery (those brown doughnut boxes) and it looked to be just the right size. I cut down the sides and covered them with some green tape. Then I used hot glue and little tiny Popsicle sticks to make a picket fence. I used scissors to cut points on the Popsicle sticks because that’s fency. 
I filled the box with green Easter grass. I hate Easter grass so I glued it down with lots of hot glue so it won’t come loose and I won’t go crazy picking it up all over the house.
As for the flowers, I drew a flower freehand. Then I sat at the computer for an hour perfecting a completely not-freehand flower because I can’t stand petals that are different sizes. I made 3 different sizes of flowers just for variety. I cut slits in the middle so I could glue the flower to the cardboard tube I put a little strip of a different color around the inside.
Finally I wrapped green yarn around and around the tube/stem of each flower. I hot glued the flowers into the flower garden box with short flowers in front and taller ones in the back. Voila, flower garden to hold eggs:
I wanted to make something completely disposable because I don’t have anywhere to keep all the stuff I make. That’s why it’s made mostly out of paper and cardboard. This little garden was a lot of work though, so I don’t see myself throwing it away any time soon.
P.s. One day, after I had been working on this project for a while, I saw that FamilyFun’s website made flower Easter egg holders from toilet paper rolls too. I thought I had a pretty original idea here, but I was wrong. All well, I still like mine.
Colored Rice Picture
This weekend found me and my boys coloring rice. Don’t ask me why, it would take too long to explain. I will tell you this though, it was lots of fun.
I found my instructions on squidoo. It’s surprisingly easy, essentially you put a couple of cups of rice in a plastic zippy bag. Then you add a few drops of food coloring and a couple of Tbs of water, zip it up and squish to your hearts content. Last you just spread the rice out to dry. A different blog suggested drying out the rice in the oven at 200 degrees for about 15 min. I did use the oven to dry our rice mostly then laid it out to dry the rest of the way. I didn’t take photos of the process, but here’s the rice all laid out to dry.
Pretty, right? I love the vivid colors.
So what do you do with colored rice? Well we made rice pictures (like sand pictures but with rice).
To make our pictures I printed an egg shape (I can’t draw so don’t ask me to). The kids drew lines to show where to put the colors decorate the egg. They used white school glue to fill in the places they wanted color then shook some rice onto the glue. We let one color dry before moving on to the next color. That way the colors stayed where they belonged.
This was loads of fun and we love the results too. The only problem is that the rice keeps falling off, and the paper warped. How could I fix these problems? Could I spray them with something to make the rice stay put? could I have pressed them with something while drying to make them stay flat? I just don’t know. Any suggestions?
Stay tuned for another colored rice project. It’ll be fun.
Conference Knitting
This weekend is LDS General Conference. That means 3 of my favorite things happen all at the same time. I get to (1) be spiritually uplifted while (2) wearing my jammies all day and (3) I get to knit without feeling like I should be doing something else. You see, knitting is my passion. I love the rhythm of it, I love that you can create so many different things with just one big long string, and I love the satisfaction of a finished project. It being a hobby though, I don’t feel good about sitting around all day knitting. I usually wait until the kids are in bed before I pick up my needles. General Conference weekend is the exception though. I can feel good about listening and knitting all day long. 
I want to share with you my favorite knitting and crocheting tool. ravelry.com, sometimes I don’t know how the world functioned without ravelry. I will try to explain. Ravelry is an online community kind of like Facebook but not at all like Facebook. You can post photos of the knitted or crochet projects you’ve worked on. You can join groups (for instance I belong to a gluten free knitters group. What does gluten intolerance have to do with knitting? You’ll have to join to find out.) You can browse what other people have made to get ideas. You can look through hundreds of thousands of patterns using really great filters to narrow things down. You can save the projects or patterns you like to look at later. If you have ever knit or crochet anything you should check it out. If you do, click on the people tab and look me up . I’m Joooniper, friend me, I’d love to see what projects you are working on.