Spring Grass Egg Head Project

Making some spring egg heads!

Start with some egg shells. The easiest thing to do is to just break open the top of the egg and rinse the shells out with some warm water. (I did this on a Saturday morning and had some wonderful scrambled eggs for breakfast before doing this craft.

An egg carton makes a great holder for these little guys. I added some faces for fun then let my daughter fill them with potting soil.

Bonus: when you are tired of these little guys growing in your house you can throw them out knowing that they are 100% biodegradable!

I use rye grass seed for these spring grass projects because it is fast growing! Don't be intimidated by how big the seeds are. (Plus my mother-in-law always buys a bag of it for her Easter center piece so she has extra to share with me).

My daughter sprinkled the seeds in and we gave it a little water and we waited....

After 5 days......

After 2 weeks......

The first "hair cut".....

Here is another way I use my grass seed. I plant it in a shallow dis and it grows into a thick lush grass, then I put a little ceramic bunny in it and it makes a great table centerpiece.

3D Butterfly Art

This was a total Pintrest steal. The pin was originally from Etsy but I wasn't going to pay $25 for a project I could make at home.

Supplies:

Canvas

Paint

Cardstock in a range of similar hues

Cricut machine or a punch to cut out shapes

Coat an 8x8 mounted canvas it with black spray paint.

Cut out 15 to 20 of each butterfly in each shade at 1" each.

Use small Glue Dots to adhear the paper to painted canvas. If you use regular glue the paper may, and probably will, fall off easily.

To make the process faster I put multiple butterflies on the glue dot strips at once so I could work faster.

I chose to make a heart shape. You could make this become any shape you'd like. Start by placing one in the bottom and then work your way up using each hue.

When I got to the top I had a few butterflies "break off from the pack" and fly away. Just for a fun effect.

Finished product.

Product Review: Eye Creams

This week as I was putting on and taking off my make up I was thinking how much I love my current eye creams. My new morning eye product was recommended to me by a friend and I am so glad I took her advice. It is currently one of my favorite products!

 

Garnier Skin Renew Eye Roller

I am unfortunately one of those people that no matter how long or how well I sleep, I wake up with really puffy eyes. Makeup can cover dark circles, but no amount of makeup that I have found can cover puffy eyes. This little roller and the "magic" liquid inside bring down that puffiness to almost un-noticeable!  I use this on an almost daily basis. It feels so cool and refreshing going on and really does work wonders. Sometimes after a long day I will give myself a few extra minutes to give my face a good scrub or maybe a mask (a time and luxury that doesn't happen often) and will use this too because it just feels so great. Thumbs up and high recommendations for this. Best part off all this is available at your local store. No need to go to a specialty makeup store for this. Wal-Mart carries it for around $10. :-) 

 

 

Here are some reviews on the other eye creams I have tried:

 

Bare Minerals Firming Eye Cream

I love Bare Mineral products and have rarely been disappointed in the results. However, this is one of the few things that didn't work for me. It was a nice cream, went on smoothly, didn't' leave a greasy feel, but it didn't do anything noticeable for me. :-(

Organics GinZing Eye Cream
This one I was so psyched about. I did all the research and read tons of customer reviews. I had a gift card so I allowed  myself to splurge and spend the extra $ on this one.... Wasn't happy. After 2 months of use and being half way though the jar I saw no results. It smelled good and thats about all it had going for it in positives. If you applied it too thickly it left a chalky residue and I hadn't noticed any results. I usually use a products all the way through to give them a chance to work (unless I have a sever reaction to it).... but am tossing this one out and going back to the old stuff.  :-(

 

Bare Minerals Renew and Rehydrate Eye Cream

This is the "old stuff" I just referred to above. I tried this about 3 years ago and this is probably equal with Garnier Skin Renew eye roller. I used this on an almost nightly basis and could really see the difference. What really hit home with me was when ran out and went a week without it. Suddenly I noticed they my eyes seemed more wrinkled and puffy and all around less youthful. Using this stuff on a daily basis really did make my under-eyes look much better. From now on this stays in constant supply in my home! :-)

 

Kids vitamins....

I am on the fence about making my daughter take a daily vitamin. Some days she takes a vitamin and some days she doesn't. I am blessed that she isn't too picky when it comes to eating and gets a good balanced diet so I'm not worried.

 

However, After reading an article titled, "Top Children’s Vitamins Full of Aspartame, GMOs & Harmful Chemicals" (published on July 18, 2013 by Arjun Walia) Link to article here

I had to stop and think. Do I really know what is in my child's vitamin? Can I trust that if I grab one of the shelf at the local store that everything in it is ok for my child to ingest?

 

 

 

I do recall the days as a child when I took a daily Flintstones vitamin. It didn't hurt me, at least that I can tell..... but maybe I need to reconsider what I buy for my child.

 

I'm not rushing to jump on the all 'natural holistic wagon'.... but I'm not in the 'nothing can hurt you' club either. I think a lot more studying and research need to be done to see what are the long term consequences of ingesting these various substances. Maybe in the mean time I will look more carefully at the ingredients in my child's vitamins and select something that I feel ok with until I can see long term studies on some of the ingredients.

 

Do you have your child take daily vitamins or supplements? 

What are your thoughts on this?

 

Click to link to my Facebook page and share your thoughts





Original article and materials related to  "Top Children’s Vitamins Full of Aspartame, GMOs & Harmful Chemicals" (published on July 18, 2013 by Arjun Walia) were found on the website: http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/07/18/top-childrens-vitamins-full-of-aspartame-gmos-harmful-chemicals/

Kid activity…Pintrest idea-Try and Fail.

I tried to make one of those cool layered density bottles with my daughter thinking it would be a cool way to teach about different substances and also just a really cool thing to look at….

The directions and other types of bottles can be found on http://familylicious.com/layered-density-discovery-bottle/. 

We did not have all the items so we opted to use only 

First pour in…
1. Corn Syrup
2. Dawn Dish Soap
4. Colored Water
5. Vegetable Oil

I wish I would have taken a before picture… the syrup and soap stayed separate, however, the colored water and oil were starting to mix. My daughter added some sparkly stars and little buttons. Then she had a blast shaking….

Here was the issue, after the fun was had she set it to the side to let it settle and separate.

36 hours later and we are still waiting for it to separate…..

Note: I threw away the bottle and accidentally deleted the picture from my phone before I posted this so unfortunately I can't show you what it looked like. But its not hard to picture,  just imagine a 1 liter bottle full of dark blue oil water and soap mixture... :-(