Our healthier {butter and marshmallow-free} version of rice crispy treats have been a huge hit in our house since we first created them a few months ago. For Valentine’s Day we made a heart-shaped strawberry version, and I knew I wanted to come up with an Easter version too. As it tends to, my mind went to getting more use out of the plastic eggs I still feel guilty about buying (even though we reuse them year after year, use them for sensory play, turn them into bath tub toys, and make fun popsicles with them).
While I had grand plans of creating a little hallow in the centres of the eggs and placing a couple of small treats in the middles, we ended up just making solid eggs. To do so, all we did was fill up each side of the egg generously with warm crispy rice treat mix, packed them down a little, and shut the eggs while they were still warm.
We let them cool and ended up with perfectly formed eggs that pop out of the shells effortlessly and make great on-the-go treats (the plastic eggs double as containers until you’re ready to eat them) . They were also a lovely addition to Gracen’s egg hunt and she’s been enjoying one every couple of days since.
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Seeing 
Here’s our line up of ingredients… Baking soda, cornstarch, coconut oil, citric acid, water in a spray bottle, epsom salts (we’d previously dyed ours pink just for fun), fresh rosemary from the garden, lavender essential oil, and purple food colouring. While we had most everything already on hand, we picked up the lavender essential oil at a local variety store that specializes in natural products and the citric acid from a very cool little Main Street shop called 
Making these was pretty simple, so as usual, my little helper did most of the work. First off, we measured out all of the dry ingredients, added them to a large mixing bowl, and dropped in a generous amount of essential oil before Gracen whisked everything together thoroughly.
Next, we focused on the wet ingredients. In a spray bottle that allows a very fine mist, we shook up some water, some liquid coconut oil (we just ran the jar under warm water for a minute to liquify it, but you could just as easily melt it in the microwave), and several drops of food colouring.
For the next step, you need to have some patience… Basically, the goal is to add the water and oil mixture into the dry mixture very slowly in order to avoid causing a fizzy reaction. If you get a little bit impatient (like we did the first time around), you’ll have all kinds of fizzy bubbles in your bowl, but your finished bath bombs won’t fizz all that much once in the tub (though they’ll still soften the water and smell fantastic). In order to do this, you want to mist some water/oil onto the dry ingredients, whisk it well, add a little more, whisk it well, and so on and so on. What’s fantastic about having a helper is that one of you can basically stir while the other sprays. 
As you go, you’ll notice that your mixture will eventually start to clump while mixing and look less like a floury powder. When you can grab a handful, squeeze it, and have it hold it’s shape, you’ll want to stop adding water.
We could have stopped where we were in order to make straight up lavender bath fizzies, but ripped up a bunch of fresh rosemary and added it into the mix instead.
Next we scooped the mixture into the 
This is the next test of patience when it comes to this project… At the two hour mark, I couldn’t help myself and attempted pushing out a couple of our little bath bombs. Though they sort of held their shape, it was a crumbly mess and I totalled a couple in the process.
At the 3 hour mark, they came out much more cleanly and easily, so I’d definitely recommend waiting. Once out of the moulds, we let them dry on the counter over night.
The next day, we carefully placed them in a vintage mason jar tied with some pretty bakers twine. 
And that was that. Simple and pretty. 
After an absolutely wonderful weekend in the Okanagan, we headed back to the Lower Mainland today… Lucky for us, there was a midpoint performance in Merritt to reenergize us for the remainder of the trip.
Now before I go on, I must admit I was totally clueless about the fact that the Easter Bunny is the one who hides eggs for kids to find. Seriously – what?! I knew he (or she) was in charge of leaving Easter baskets, but i guess I just thought parents hid eggs in the yard for kids… Is that crazy? Anyways, I’m glad I had this epiphany last night in the company of my brother and sister-in-law, because I totally would have been the terrible Auntie to ruin it all by saying something like, “Okay, guys. Your daddy and I need a minute to hide all of the eggs” after breakfast this morning. 
Knowing what I now know, we asked all of the kids to go downstairs and play while we tidied up the breakfast dishes, and Gary and I snuck out to quickly stash the eggs around the yard. That Easter Bunny sure is a smart rabbit… He (or she) left a baker’s dozen of one colour of eggs for each child, thus allowing the slower ones enough time to uncover their treasures (and us to make sure Miss G got all of the eggs filled with Gracen-style treats). 
The hunt went really well. The boys’ eggs were hidden well enough to keep them busy for almost the whole time, the kids were great about only collecting their colour of eggs, and everyone was excited about their goodies.
Grae’s eggs were filled some of her favourite snacks (trail mix, sunflower seeds, healthy banana chips, cashews, dried pineapple, and seedy crackers), 
I know that there are a million perks to going and that we’ll be home for 3 months of summer each year, but mornings like this make me a little bit sad that we’ll be taking Gracen away from her cousins and grandparents come August…
Perhaps my favourite photo of the entire weekend… This bunch has my heart.
Anxiously awaiting the arrival of her cousins.
Grandma Sue and her girls.
Dinner outdoors.
Girl talk.
Little performer.
Holidays like Halloween and Easter, which are most often filled with chocolate, candy, and other junk can definitely be a little challenging when you work hard to not have your child eat any of those things. And while I’m certainly not ready to throw in the towel and pass the jellybeans her way, I also really don’t want her to ever feel like she’s missing out on something special. My solution? Creating treats that are fun and delicious, but healthy at the same time. I won’t deny that it takes a little bit of extra planning, some extra effort, and some extra time, but for me, it’s 100% worth it that my little love gets to enjoy and indulge, while maintaining a wholesome, healthy diet. Needless to say, when I saw 
Before I could get to making the popsicles themselves, I had to prepare the moulds first. And by *I*, I mean I had to ask my hubby to drill holes in the bottoms of the plastic eggs, to which he recruited my father-in-law’s help. The two of them disappeared into the garage for a minute, and returned in no time with the job done. 
For the filling, I knew I’d have to make them a little sweeter than I normally would in order to coax my niece and nephews into eating them, but I also wanted to keep the ingredients very simple. Grae and I popped a cup of plain organic yogurt, a cup of no-sugar-added frozen berries, and 3 tablespoons of pure maple syrup (you could easily do with less – half even) into Grandma Sue’s food processor, and blended it up until nearly smooth. My plan was to fill a piping bag and carefully pipe the mixture into the closed plastic eggs via the drilled hole, but at the last minute, I decided to go with a less finicky and much more messy method. Basically, I dunked the egg halves into the mixture to fill them up separately, then quickly slapped the two halves together trying to lose as little as possible in the process. It worked fairly well.
With the eggs full, I plugged the drilled holes with my fingertips, quickly ran them under some cool water to clean off the exterior of the eggs, then popped them into an empty egg carton and added sucker sticks into the holes. We froze them for several hours, and voila! A new Easter treat was ready.
The good news is that most everyone really liked them. Even my 6 year old nephew who tried a piece of apple for the first time this weekend ate about a 1/4 of his before leaving it to melt in a cup (pretty much a huge success in my books). And most importantly, Grae loved them. While her cousins moved on to apple pie, Jell-O dessert, and salt water taffy afterwards, she happily asked for another popsicle. Yay.
Okanagan sunshine, my girl, my ma, my adorable niece, and my two sweet nephews… It all makes for a pretty great morning. 
When I heard about this technique from a fellow Vancouver mama, I almost didn’t believe it was possible. But after doing a little bit of online research, it seemed many people had had great success with it (some inspiration 
The first part of the project involved thrifting some 100% silk ties. Luckily, the task was an easy one… After scanning the rack at a local thrift store, we had over 30 different options to choose from. 
These are the ties we ended up choosing… A black one covered with strawberries, green leaves, and mustard flowers, an intricate paisley{ish}-patterned blue one, and a bold raspberry-coloured polka dotted one. Each had a tag clearly stating that they were made of 100% silk and they were all between $4.99 and $6.99 (though I think they would have been less expensive from a smaller, less popular thrift store).
Before actually dyeing the eggs, the ties needed to be deconstructed first. Using some small scissors, I snipped apart the thread at the back, removed the tags, and removed the innards (saving them for later), and ended up with some nice, big pieces of silk.
With the help of my little lady, I carefully wrapped a small piece of the silk around a raw egg (printed side touching the egg) as tightly and neatly as I could. Next time we attempt these, we’ll definitely do two things differently. First off, we’ll wet the silk in order to have it cling to the egg during the wrapping process, and secondly, we’ll use smaller pieces of silk in order to avoid all of the extra bulkiness and folding we had this time around.
Next, we took the tie innards and wrapped the silk-covered eggs like you would a mummy and secured everything with a generous amount of jute.
While Grae happily helped out for the first couple of silk-wrapped eggs, I must admit, it’s really not the most toddler-friendly process… Decorating eggs with good ol’ fashioned wax crayons was much more Miss G’s style. ☺
With all of the silk-wrapped eggs done, we popped them into a crockpot filled with cool water and about 1/2 a cup of white vinegar, turned it on high, and put the cover on. You could easily do this part of the process on the stove if you prefer, but the key is using a pot that is non-metallic.
As we waited for the water to heat up, we dip dyed Miss G’s wax crayon decorated eggs… Pretty colours, hey?
Once the water reached a good rolling boil (it takes quite a while in a crock pot), we turned the heat down to low and kept it gently boiling while covered for 4 long hours. Then we turned off the heat, and left the pot covered for another 4 hours (talk about patience!)
After nearly 9 hours of waiting, I slowly began unwrapping the layers to discover that the technique had in fact worked (quite well might I add!)
The white wrinkly sort of spots you can see are where the silk wasn’t laying perfectly flat against the egg, but I think it adds a little bit of character. ☺
What I love is how apparent the tiny details are… Even the silk’s texture and the teeny paisley patterns are visible.
Silk dyed eggs will definitely be anEaster tradition in our house from now on. The preparation, anticipation, and surprise are too much fun not to make it one. Now to begin my collection of beautiful silk ties…
Running on the grass…
Swinging in a tree…
Learning about lacrosse…
And Bella hugs. 
Yesterday I introduced my little lady to the beautiful nesting babushka dolls my dad brought back for me after one of his work stints in Russia… Today, Bradley introduced her to his childhood guitar (which for some reason, she calls a ‘dahk-tar’). It’s been a couple of very special days.
We’ve spent the last couple of days furiously reorganizing our garage and paring down while Grandma Charlotte’s been here to take Gracen for walks and visits to the park. One of the treasures I came across while going through years worth of boxed up goods were these wooden nesting dolls. My dad brought them home from Russia for me after one of his work stints there when I was a girl, and though I knew they were special then, I didn’t understand how much they’d mean to me one day down the road. What’s even better is now being able to share them with my little girl…