Personalized Book Giveaway and DIY Kite Easter Eggs

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We are flying high with today’s post. Literally, we are as high as a kite in the sky! We love our newest DIY Kite Easter Eggs, and they were inspired by an I See Me! book, My Little Book of Blessings. We have always loved I See Me! products, and they remain one of our favorite newborn gifts. Recently we opened up the blessings book and found the graphics to be magical, and the words to be meaningful. A book that teaches children the golden rule, the importance of friendship and how to lend a helping hand is a book we want on our bookshelves. Plus, every page is customized with a child’s name, and a special note and photo on the front and back pages.

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The page about friendship has kite illustrations, and thus our DIY easter eggs were born. Please keep reading for a tutorial on the eggs, as well as a giveaway for a I See Me! book of your choice, just in time for Easter. The books are amazing, and the gift of reading is priceless.

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Materials:

Directions:

Draw the kite designs with a pencil. If you mess up, you can erase it. We used free-hand to draw our designs.

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Outline the egg with a thin black Sharpie marker. Once the design is outlined, erase any pencil marks that remain on the egg.

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Begin to color inside the lines with Sharpie colorful markers. Continue until all kites are brightly colored.

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To begin to make the kite tails, cut strands of embroidery string and cut mini bows from the card stock. You can find a template for mini bows online.

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Add glue to one side of the bow, and quickly place the string in the middle, and then cover with another bow.

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Once all the bows are in place, dab a tiny amount of glue to the bottom of the kite, and press the end of the string down on the glue.

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You’re done!

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Now, it’s giveaway time. Entry info below. Please make sure to leave your Instagram account name, because we will check the winner’s account. Good luck! The giveaway ends March 10, 2016.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

We received a product from I See Me! in conjunction with this post, but we would love I See Me! even if we didn’t. Thanks for supporting the companies that support our blog.

DIY Photo Easter Eggs with Flower Crown

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We have some egg-tastic Easter eggs coming your way. First up, photo eggs with flower crowns.

If we could wake up every day and wear a flower crown, we would. Ok, Jenna probably wouldn’t unless it was made of black and white anemone’s. But, seriously, how pretty would we feel if we were crowned with such beauty on a daily basis? We would feel like a beautiful princess.

One day, just to be spontaneous and special, we are going to go through our daily, wonderful mom routine {cooking, cleaning, tantrums, laundry, poopy diapers and playdates} with a DIY flower crown on our heads. Who says we can’t walk around in our yoga clothes and feel like a princess for the day?

Since wearing a floral crown everyday is not always feasible, we found an adorable plan b – DIY photo easter eggs with flower crowns. Now we can crown our heads with pretty flowers, and put it on display. This egg project is an easy and fun project to do with kids {or friends}, and it’s a lovely easter egg display. Plus it also makes for beautiful place cards on easter. Everyone just needs to look for their beautiful face at the brunch table. For the men, add a bow tie or newsboy hat!

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Materials:

  • wood or paper mache eggs
  • Mod Podge
  • card stock
  • White tissue paper
  • Frog tape
  • Paintbrush
  • Photos
  • Scissors
  • Fake flowers
  • Floral wire
  • Hot glue gun and hot glue

Directions:

Find photos of your family and friends. Crop and edit them in Microsoft Word. No Photoshop necessary for this. Just crop them into an oval shape, and make sure they fit the size of your eggs.

Tape a piece of tissue paper onto the card stock and print. Then, cut out the photos.

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Paint a small amount of Mod Podge {about the size of the photo} onto the egg. Gently press the photo down on the egg and smooth out as many wrinkles as you can. We don’t need more wrinkles than we already have, right?

After about 5 minutes, paint a small amount of Mod Podge over the photo and surrounding area. Do not swipe the paint brush too many times over the photo, or the ink will smear. Let the egg dry.

To craft the DIY floral crown, cut the small stems from your branch and put together with floral wire wrapped around each stem, and shape into a circle. Make sure the size/shape fits over the top of your egg.

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Dab a tiny dot of glue to the back of the egg, and press the back of the crown down on the glue{so the flowers are in front}. This will keep the crown in place.

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Display on egg holders, plates or in baskets. FYI – this is the only time you will see a pink flower crown on Jenna, so let’s take it all in.

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Ladies Bachelorette Weekend at the Beach

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There are so many things about this photo shoot that make us happy. Not only do we love the girly bachelorette party happening, and the custom gold foil shirts with numbers on the front and Mrs. on the back, but also the candid beach shots and the tradition behind the whole thing {keep reading}.

These women make us…
1. want to take the time away from our busy lives to make special memories with our girlfriends
2. remind us that we’re never too old to play with balloons on the beach
3. before there was a Mr. in our lives, there was a Ms./Mrs. by our side

We’ve been blessed by amazing girlfriends in our lives, and what a gift it is. Never underestimate the power of a good girlfriend. When you surround yourself with smart, strong, respectable, kind and honest women that bring out the best in you, you are surrounding yourself with joy, friendship and love.

This is such a cool story to go along with these beautiful photos from Linda Fourie Photography, so make sure you read it in Lizanda’s {one of the ladies} words.

We are a group of friends from University, and when the first one of us got married, we pledged to have a weekend away dedicated to each one of us, where the Bachelorette does not know about anything, and gets surprised and spoiled.
 
Margot was the last of the seven to get married, so we decided to have a shoot to celebrate the last weekend and our friendship. 
 
The plan would be that Linda would start taking ‘stalker’ photo’s of us in a local coffee shop. It was really funny when Margot said “Guys, I swear that woman is taking pictures of us!” So she was quite happy to find out that we had a shoot planned.
 
We just had fun walking around Hermanus and Linda, our photographer, was great!
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Vendor Love
Photography: Linda Fourie Photography
Location: Hermanus, South Africa
Coffee shop: Oskars Delikatessen 
Beach: Harbour and Grotto beach

 

Poke the Rainbow Activity for Kids on St. Patrick’s Day

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St. Patrick’s Day is a favorite among adults to raise a glass with Guinness or Jameson in hand. For kids, it’s all about the leprechaun, a colorful rainbow, wearing green and the gold. We made an easy, fun and non-candy Poke-the-Rainbow activity for kids on St. Patrick’s Day.

The rules of the game are simple. Each child takes a turn to pick one cup to poke through. Once the leprechaun is found, everyone can reach for the gold. The best part…everyone walks away with a treat. Who will be the first to poke the cup with the leprechaun?

Important side note: this game could be really fun and adult-friendly with each cup filled with a mini shot of Irish liquor. Cheers!

Materials:

  • plastic cups {white}
  • napkins in every color of the rainbow
  • pot and gold coins
  • white tissue paper
  • mini leprechaun or photo of leprechaun
  • non-candy gifts such as bead necklaces, buttons, bracelets
  • rubber bands
  • foam core board, white
  • hot glue gun and glue
  • stickers, shamrock cut-outs

Directions:

Randomly place the non-candy items in the cups. Pick one special cups for the leprechaun.

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Cover each cup with a napkin, and wrap a rubber band around the top.

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Once all the cups have colors, arrange in a rainbow-like pattern on a foam core board, and glue all of them in place. Glue the bottom of the cups so the top of the cup is facing outward.

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Make white tissue paper clouds, and glue them on the end{s} of the rainbow.

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Write, stencil, glue or stick letters on the foam board for simple directions.

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Set up in the classroom {this will be a hit if you’re in charge of this year’s classroom party} , or at your St. Patrick’s Day celebration, and make sure the pot of gold is under the rainbow.

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DIY Tropical Leaf Eggs

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We are seeing green! The color is not exactly visible on the snow-covered ground outside yet, and we know Colorado has more snow in her, but inside we have Spring fever. We’re dreaming of warmer days, and the vibe is showing up in our eggs. We love the clean, modern, tropical eggs that adorn our kitchen this year. Here’s how you can do it.

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Materials:

Directions:
Step one: Tape a piece of white tissue paper onto a piece of cardstock.

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Step two: Print a photo of palm leaves on the tissue paper. We were able to print 9 at a time with our printer without editing the file {thanks for sharing the file, Studio DIY and Balloon Time}.

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Step three: Cut the leaves out in small circles, leaving some white around them.

Step four: Paint a small amount of Mod Podge on the egg where you will place the photo.

Step five: Press the photo of the leaf down gently onto the egg. Try to get out all the wrinkles by pressing down on each of them to smooth it out.

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Step six: After about 2 minutes, paint a thin layer of Mod Podge on top of the leaves, and the surrounding area. Do not swipe the paintbrush too many times over the leaves, or it will make the ink run. Just paint it enough to cover it with a thin layer.

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Step seven: Let the eggs dry, then display.

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