Helping The Birds Make Beautiful Nests

We have really enjoyed watching the birds building their nests this year. We have a family of crows who live in the tree in our back yard. Apart from the terrible squarking they make in the early mornings, we love them. They are particularly fun to watch when they are building their nests as they choose big sticks to build with, sometimes even longer than themselves. And, they are funny because they bicker and fight and often make each other drop their sticks and then try to find them again. We have had many a laugh watching them this spring.

With our garden birds in mind, we have a tradition of helping them make their nests as comfy as possible. In years past, we have decorated branches with wool roving for the birds to use as nesting material. But this year, we decided to do something different and made them a yarn ball instead. We fashioned a bit of wire into a ball to hold the yarn. The birds have been helping themselves all week and we are delighting in the visions of their eggs, nestled comfortably in their colorful yarn nests.

To make our yarn balls, we needed nice bendable wire, wire cutters, a ball and bits of yarn.

We cut a long length of wire and wrapped it around the ball to get a round shape, twisting it around itself at the join.

Then we extracted the ball and used the dimensions we already had to make our yarn holder. 

When we were finished it looked like a wire pumpkin! We added a little hook for hanging.

Then we cut our yarn into different lengths for the birds.

Stuffed the yarn into our handmade yarn holder.

And hung it in the tree for the birds.

Oh, what pretty nests they'll have.

Be sure not to miss out on our Fairy Garden Series and Contest.

Blessings and magic,
Donni

Make Pretty Spring Blossoms

Please enjoy this Spring craft from our archives -

How to make:

Pretty Spring Blossoms

Blessings and magic,
Donni

Spring Break

Yay... we are so excited that it's Spring Break. I get to have my children home with me for two whole wonderful weeks. I feel so lucky to be able to spend this time with them. Lazy days gardening at home, fun days at the beach, days spent exploring nature with no time constraints nor things to rush off to.

Alas, I have heard some moms huff and sigh and say... 'two whole weeks!!! Why does it have to be so long? How are we going to get through it?' What a waste of a precious gift this perspective is. Time passes so quickly, years rush bye, children get bigger. Soon enough they will be interested in anything BUT spending time with us. This is our time with them... we can't get it back, ever!

I do understand that juggling spring break and work commitments can be very challenging for lots of working moms. But, for those of us who are lucky enough to have the flexibility to put things off until they go back to school, this time with them can be an opportunity to grow our family bonds, reconnect with our children and make memories we will cherish forever.

So, here are just a few things we are going to do in these next two weeks...

We'll find some rock pools and discover all sorts of interesting sea creatures.

We'll go to the beach and play in the sand and run in the waves.

We'll take a jump rope along and skip!

We'll have a back yard bug safari like we did last year.

We'll go to our local CSA and take their farm tour.

We'll go to a local farm and feed and pet the animals.

We'll plant strawberry plants.

We might go camping for the weekend. We might go here or here.

We'll take a basket on a neighborhood walk and forage for treasures from nature. 

And, definitely, definitely, we'll make our fairy garden. We make one at this time every year, it's become our spring tradition. We will be holding our annual Fairy Garden Competition on The Magic Onions again this Spring, so, if you are a fellow fairy garden enthusiast, be sure not the miss the details of the competition that will be announced soon.

So many fun things to do... I wouldn't change Spring Break for anything :-)

Blessings and magic,
Donni

Dancing in the Rain

Quick! It's raining! Put on your rain boots, coat and hat and play in the rain! Be free, get wet, let raindrops land on your tongue. 

 For all too soon you'll be an adult and won't dream of dancing in the rain... unless in love, of course.

Happy April showers :-)
Blessings and magic,
Donni

Watercolor Painted Easter Eggs

Today, we painted some eggs with watercolor paints.

Here is a tutorial of how we blow out our eggs for Easter crafting.

How pretty our eggs became. Such gentle and pastel colors.

To keep our eggs steady for painting, Kitty had a marvelous idea to use playdough we had in the fridge as a base.

Happy Easter crafting.

Here is a link to our other Easter crafts,

Blessings and magic,
Donni

Natural Dyes For Easer Eggs

I think Teddy and I have a new obsession (yes, to add to all the others!). We spent the weekend dyeing white eggs with natural dyes from goodies we already had in our fridge. My word, it's amazing what colors you can get from things we eat... some colors we expected and others were a total surprise. You'll hardly believe it when I tell you what organic ingredients made these gorgeous bright colors...

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We started with a batch of peeled, hard boiled eggs and used beetroot, red cabbage, red onion skins and blueberries. I bet you can't guess which of these ingredients dyed the above eggs (I'll tell you later).

Teddy helped me through the whole process. It's a joy to me to see them as into a project as I am myself... especially an involved process like this with a bit of hard work and waiting.

We washed the ingredients, chopped them up and put each in a separate pot of boiling water, along with a couple of table spoons of vinegar. (Of course, I don't need to tell you that if you are working with your child, make sure your work slowly and deliberately and avoid getting burned).

Beetroot:

 I made sure that Teddy and I worked in old clothes so that we could both get totally involved in playing with the dyes without a care for spoiling our clothes. He rubbed his hands along the cool beet and was amazed that his hands remained red, even after washing them.

We popped our hard boiled, peeled, eggs into the red beet water. Would they go red?

Blueberries:

It was great fun squishing the plump berries.

And wonderfully messy and sticky. We couldn't resist an occasional lick of our berry juicy hands :-)

When all our berries were squished, we put the mush in a pot of boiling water along with our hard boiled eggs and waited for them to change color... would they go blue?

Red Cabbage:

We sliced some red cabbage and noticed how wonderfully purple it was. We were certain it would make our eggs purple.

We put it into a pot of boiling water with our eggs and notice immediately how the water turned a lovely shade of blue.

Ha... perhaps our eggs would turn blue!

Red Onion:

We peeled our onions, using only the dried up top layer and the first juicy layer. In the pot with the water and eggs.

After a few minutes, we took the eggs out of our beetroot water - bright ORANGE!

We had expected them to be red and the anticipation to see what the other colors were, was palpable!

We took out the blueberry eggs - oh my... they had turned a gorgeous dark gray!

The red cabbage was next - bright BLUE!!

The onion a soft earty yellow!

Here they all are together - aren't the colors pretty! Don't they look edible!

Starting with the blue egg at 11 o'clock, here is what made each color - red cabbage, red onion skins, beetroot, red cabbage, blueberries, beetroot and blueberries. Not what we expected at all!

 So, guess what we had for lunch... yes, colorful, all organic, dyed eggs!

All gone now! I'm a little nervous Teddy and Kitty will never eat boring old white eggs again :-)

Here is a link to our other Easter crafts.

Blessings and magic,
Donni