Nature Imprinted Easter Eggs

OMG I am so in love with my Easter Eggs! I can't wait to show Holly in the morning! 

Inspired by a Facebook video I saw earlier this week I decided to do nature imprint eggs.. Lyra and I headed to Berkeley Bowl to grab some beets, (which I freeze and use for smoothies and decided to use instead of the cabbage or onion skin in the video) 

then we went to walgreens to get some hose... Finally we picked up Holly and Oliver from School.. 

We were early and Holly was in the garden so Lyra and I decided to find some leaves and flowers lying around in the garden to collect for our imprints.  When we came home Oliver and Holly got a few more plants from the back yard.

It was pretty fast and easy to set up.. Just put the stocking over your hand, choose the plant you want to use and then pull the stocking down to cover the egg and hold the plant in place.. Tie a tight knot.

Before you know it -it was like an assembly line with the kids taking turns.. This part went really fast..  We stopped for a strawberry break and decided to use the stem!

The kids had a lot of fun and holly decided to make arm bands with the left over toe cut stockings...

Then it was time to clean up the mess, chop up the beets and set everything in the pot to bowl...

As instructed by Joel (on how to both cook beets and boil an egg..) I let the water come to a bowl and after about a minute turned it off and let everything sit and soak and cool and soak...

It was at least 45 minutes when Oliver's dad arrived... The eggs were cooked and Oliver wanted to bring home the favorites he made but almost no color seeped in by then... 

So I let them sit and waited and waited and waited at 9:00 when they were just barely tinged with a pale pink I added a splash of vinegar a few drops of food coloring to the pot.. And waited some more... until 11:30 pm and voila!

Then it was the long messy process of cutting of the hose and washing off the plants... I think they are gorgeous!  It was cool how there was a tie dyed like spot where the know was..

And this one I think color transferred from the plant as it was some type of bright pink leaves..

There were from the strawberries...

We even used some cilantro that we got Joel for dinner..

This was one of my favorites.. I had thought the plant got crushed in my pocket but I blew on it in Holly's hand and all the little fine leaves spread out to make this miniature tree.

The larger greener leaves seemed to work best.

This one was cool.. It was another pink flower and I think some of the color must have transferred.. It's very subtle but pretty..

This was white flowers and the stem part worked but the dye went right through the fragile white leaves..

Another of my favorite a leaf pulled right from the bunny rabbit out front.. 

Another favorite looks like some type of sea creature.. This if from the bright orange flower.. One Lyra got in the garden..

Two of the eggs cracked.. But I thought this was still pretty like a crescent moon..

And there you have it!

My sister and I are taking the girls to the beach and then Disneyland starting this Saturday for spring break.. Since we will be traveling on Easter I was almost going to just skip all the holiday rituals.. But I just couldn't help myself and there you have it a dozen plus pink hard boiled eggs so snack on while on the road and to leave with Joel so he doesn't miss us too much!!

Happy Easter!

Dying Eggs

I really aught to have Tanta do a guest post, she took about 500 pics of us making eggs, these are the only ones I got as I was juggling Lyra.  But you get the idea!  Hopefully Tanta will post some pictures today.  

It was lots of fun, I had asked Tanta to boil eggs for us as we were on our way home but didn't realize I only had brown eggs.  She boiled 7 but then I couldn't find the decorating kit so I ran to walgreens to get a new one. I Aldo picked up another dozen of white eggs.

We got started dying and one one hand the brown eggs were not taking the color great, but it was still so much fun we decided to boil another 5.  But then those were so much fun that we boiled another 5 for 17 in all. 

We had a special white crayon that would keep the dye out so we could draw pictures on the eggs, that was my favorite part.  Kat's favorite part was mixing colors on the eggs and holding them in a second color after the first dye.

Holly's favorite part was putting them in to soak and then checking on them several times.

It was fun to see how they turned out.  After they dried we put stickers on a few.

Yesterday I ate done for breakfast and Holly asked to peel them, I think that was also her favorite part :-) 

100 Days Project - A reflection

Today was Holly's 100th day of school.  We have been spending the last two weeks working on her project.  

We decided to create a garden using 5 colored groups of 20 straws for the stems and 10 groups of ten colored tissue paper for the flower tops.  Each night we would commit to making a set of ten flowers and slowly over the last two weeks grew it too 100.

While the project I am assuming was meant to teach the kids about Math, groups, sets, counting, adding, ect it caused me to be rather reflective of time going by.

While today marks the 100th school day it has been 167 actual days since Holly started school - this seems like a life time ago - but - tomorrow Lyra will be 11 weeks old, that's 77 days since she was born and that seems like yesterday! Tonight she is 9lb 3oz almost double the weight she was when she came home - 5lbs 8oz yet she is only a pound heavier then when Holly was born...

Then there is Holly's growth, though she is probably only 3lbs heavier and maybe an inch taller she seems like a different child... In the last 100 days of school she has begun to read and write!

She completes a daily journal at school with actual sentences describing her weekend activities and pictures of parties and gardens and princesses.  She can write all her letters and even read simple books she has many many site words.  And as illustrated by the 100 day project she knows 50+50 is 100 or if we plan to complete 10 flowers a night and we have already done 7 we only need 3 more.

I reflect back further to last year at this time when we were touring kindergarten classes. I remember seeing the kids journals and artwork, hearing them count by 10's to 100 in circle time and thinking my kid will never be able to do this in just a year.

Fast forward to only 5 months ago when kindergarten was starting, my kid still couldn't begin to do any of those things, let alone sit in circle for more then 5 minutes or at the table for 10.  I was worried she might not make it through the first day of school.

Yet here we are 100 days in and I am amazed by all she has learned and all she can do and she is so independent and grown up too.  She learns about history, and landforms, plants and marine animals, she listens and answers questions, she reads and she writes and though on some nights these past two weeks it was a chore getting enough focus to get through ten whole flowers or figuring out number bonds and writing our weekly book reports she has come so far.  

I am amazed by all she has accomplished in Only 100 days of school.  And while she thinks it's a very big number and really can't discern it from a million in my almost 14,000 days of life I know it's such a drop in the bucket. So while it on one hand seems like a life time ago, when I look at the other hand it seems like just yesterday she was that 9lb baby only 77 days old... But no in just 1 month she will be my 6yr old and she will have over 2000 days under her belt.

100 straws

A description 

Ms. Kai's Daily message

Lionel's 100 candies

Holly looking around

100 googly eyes

100 Lego houses

100 cards

100 pieces of sea glass

100 popcorns - love the display

With over 100 kindergardeners

There were more then 100 displays to look at

100 things older the 100

By Boone 

This was great - 100 doggy treats

Oh and 100 pop cycle sticks

But each with the name of 1 kindergardener

100 bones

And 100 nails to make a giant fish

100 rocks

And 100 pine cones!

The projects were all so creative!

Here is Holly working on hers

While having a sleep over at Tanta Kat's!

I hope the next 100 days of school will be as great as the last!  Thank you Mslcolm X and especially Ms. Kai