Easter baking & crafting: 6 things to do with the kids

I love a good baking or crafting session with the kids

…said no mother ever! Luckily the kids are old enough to keep their interest for longer than they used to be and they are less messy.

I’ll admit, I do get a bit over enthusiastic about the potential end product and envisage perfection but have to keep checking myself. I’m crafting with a four year old and a two year old. There’s a lot of mess involved, a lot of chaos and the end product usually look like a bomb has hit it. At least they’re being creative…

Hot cross buns

I love making bread anyway so this is just a variation really. Plus, if you have a machine to do the kneading for you it doesn’t really take much effort. The effort is in the waiting around because given proving times it can mean that a batch can take up to three hours to make!

I used the recipe from Paul Hollywood but left out the mixed peel [yuk] and shaped some of them into eggs and wreaths adding little mini eggs to them [which Rufus picked off before I had the chance to take a pic!]

Easter Wreath

I have always fancied making an Easter wreath that had the little yellow chicks all over it. I’ll be honest though, those chicks are expensive! So for a cheaper version I bought a willow type wreath from Hobbycraft, a few chicks and hot glued them on. Obviously given the hot glue gun, the kids did not help me with this but Cecily thought it was mega cute when she saw it hung up!

Easter Bonnets

Ah. Love this time of year when parents get the dreaded call to make Easter bonnets for the parade. To be honest, our nursery doesn’t put too much pressure on parents but rest assured, they all make an effort so I can’t let my kids down!

I always envisage certain bonnets each year. Whether they turn out how I imagine is another thing – especially when I have the kids helping me!

This year I imagined Rufus as a rabbit – I picked up some foam sheets from Hobbycraft to make the ears, I know that I have some pipe cleaners somewhere for the whiskers and a pom pom for the nose.

I bought some fake flowers from The Range for Cecily to cut up and stick onto hers with a chick family in a nest. Cute. Luckily one of Cecily’s favourite people came over and helped her out…

How did they turn out?

Well…

Easter Tree

Last year the kids and I made a cute Easter tree which we will be putting up again. You can read how we made the salt dough decorations here.

I have also made another colourful Easter tree for our hallway – I bought some colourful pussy willow from Aldi, popped it into a vase and bob’s your uncle! I think it looks quite cute and effective, especially when I have added my little chickadee that I bought from Naomi Gale.

Mini Egg Fudge

This was so easy to make! I saw that Naomi [above!] posted it on her instagram stories the other week and she used a recipe from Today we Cooked. An easy three ingredient fudge that I made all ‘Easter’ by adding mini eggs to it. And yes, it’s sinful but I’m sure Jesus would have approved [and I will be going to hell for that too].

You can view the recipe here.

Easter Nests

The classic! We didn’t need a recipe because it’s just chocolate and cereal isn’t it??? We possibly used too much chocolate because they were very difficult to bite!!!

Hope you get to try at least one of these ideas either on your own or with the kids! We had fun and it whiled away a few hours!

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