how to make confetti eggs

this year as i thought about fun easter things to do with little girl, i knew she was ready for confetti eggs -- hallowed eggs filled with confetti that you crack on people's heads.

(this became my favorite easter tradition when i lived in houston, and you could buy pre-made confetti eggs at the store. since leaving houston, my sister, mrs. turner, who still lives there, will send me a dozen or two each easter. but this year she was about to have a baby, and i didn't expect her to send me a box. even though she did!)

so about a month ago, i started saving my eggs, preparing to make my own confetti eggs this year. i used a cutting knife to tap around the top of the egg, creating a small hole that i'd drain the egg out of. i washed out my egg and kept it in an empty egg carton. (i've been saving my egg shell tops to grind up to add to the soil of my tomato plants.)

earlier this week, i pulled out all the empty eggs i had collected and mr. pike, little girl, and i dyed our eggs.

as a kid, i loved dyeing easter eggs. and i always wanted to dye more eggs than we had hard boiled. but, when it came to eating our hard boiled easter eggs, i was never a big fan and neither was the rest of my family. so, we stopped dyeing eggs before i left elementary school and i haven't really considered it again until this year. now we could dye eggs without having a mound of hard boiled eggs to eat or feel guilty about throwing away.

then we let our dyed eggs dry overnight in our empty egg cartons. we ended up dyeing about 25 eggs.

i punched confetti out of construction paper from our three-hole punch. and the next day filled each egg with a couple of spoonfuls of confetti. then i cut small squares of tissue paper, (i used white, but you could get colored tissue to match your eggs or try dyeing your tissue to match.) and glued them over the opening in the egg.

now you're ready to run around, chasing friends and family! happy easter!

back to snow

we left sunny, warm california last week -- and the very next day we got home, it started to snow. and snow. and snow. when it finally stopped we had almost a foot of snow.

while baby girl still isn't a huge fan of her snow suit, she doesn't mind being in her snow suit in the snow. she even fell over in the snow and the wind blew snow in her face, and she didn't even mind. she's a snow bunny for sure. (baby girl will actually brave any weather just to get outside. she loves being outdoors.)


with our welcome back snow storm upon us, i was glad that i had just finished a new scarf. i have learned to knit -- but am not that great. can't crochet. but this pattern called for braiding. and that's one skill i do decently.

it actually was pretty easy once you get the hang of reading the instructions, and i did do a few practice rounds before i felt like a true braiding pro. the pattern is courtesy of ah-yi, which i found through grosgrain's 2009 big scarf tutorial. (there are some other wonderful scarf ideas -- so, take a look.)

i added four extra strands of yarn to my scarf. although the next time around, i'd add more than that to make a nice fat scarf. (i also had about half a skein of yarn left.) my finished product ended up being about 3 inches wide and just over 6 feet long.

if you live somewhere cold, i hope you have a scarf -- i think it makes a huge difference! (i got one for mr. pike this year, and with his morning and evening walks from the train station, he thinks so too now!)