Coloring Easter eggs (with vegetables)

The kids wanted to color eggs for Easter, since we are trying to stay away from artificial colorings Miss E thought it would be fun to make up our own dyes.  She and Mr. R chopped up beets, red cabbage, carrots and spinach, boiled and strained them.  Before jumping into decorating eggs with these dyes, we thought we'd try out another method as well.  We wrapped some of our eggs in onion skins.

Along with the onion skins we used spinach leaves, rice and herbs.

After wrapping the eggs in the onion skins we wrapped them in muslin and secured it with yarn and put them in a pot of water to boil.  This cooked and colored the eggs at the same time.

 

Then we set to work on the other eggs.  Most of the colors did not work as well as we would have liked, but we liked the results with the beet coloring.

We were all very curious about our onion eggs.  Once they had cooled enough we were able to unwrap them to see our surprises.

We liked seeing how the muslin and yarn had been colored.  These smelled great too!

 

We loved how these turned out.

Uncle C comes to visit

My "little" brother came for a visit last week.  He just finished his PhD and had some time while waiting for his visa so that he can start his Formula 1 job in the UK (How fun does that sound?).

He was greeted by Mr. S's new buddy.

 

My step-mom surprised me by sending a set of Waltzing Hammers by my Dad with Uncle C.  It was a piece I had requested, but didn't know how soon I'd actually be able to get it into my house.  Mr. M helped put it back together.

 

We all went to the Children's Museum one morning (but that will be its own post), and had a great time.

The kids talked Rob into taking Uncle C to Trail Dust town to see a stunt show.   We got there a bit early so we went to the shooting gallery and posed for some pictures.

 

Mostly we just enjoyed hanging around the house letting the kids show Uncle C all of their activities and hobbies.


My brother's visit was great timing even though I'm having a rough time with morning sickness.  Because Rob was able to take the time off and the kids were just thrilled to get to play with their uncle I was able spend most of his visit resting.

Eight is Great!

Eight is great!

One, our parenting journey had just begun.
With two our home had more blue.
Three?  Yippee!
Four was certainly no bore.
Five brought such joy to our busy hive.
Six brought us another pink fix.
Seven was an answer from heaven.
Eight?  Oh this will be great!

Please join us in our excitement as we anticipate the birth of our eighth baby mid-October.


This was the little poem I sent out to family this past week announcing that our eight baby is on its way!  We are so excited, but I'm struggling through morning sickness as usual.  I am so thankful for The Body of Christ during this time, we've been blessed with wonderful meals and so much help making this time much more bearable than usual.

Things will be quite slow around here for the next few weeks.

In the kitchen with Miss E

Miss E has been spending quite a bit of time in the kitchen these days.  I think it is her favorite room in the house.  She just loves to bless her family with all sorts of goodies.  Even better?  She is great at letting the little ones help.

 I just love have a little kitchen ferry!

Being a helper has its perks.  Miss E always finds something to pass on to her helpers.

 

Sewing hearts

The other day Miss J asked if we could sew something together.  She knew just where my scrap fabric was, so could she go pick some?  She spotted the heart fabrics right away and just knew she wanted to use it.  We had fun looking through a book of scrap crafts trying to find just the right project.  Heart shaped coasters seemed to be a good pick; we only had small scraps and this was a simple project that could be completed that day.

Miss J stuck through the whole project.  I didn't do a thing without her, and she did as much of it as she could.  She enjoyed doing some of the cutting.

She learned to work with pins a bit better.

We sat together at the sewing machine, with her on my lap.  Lifting the presser foot and removing pins were great jobs for her as she watched me guide the fabric and run the machine.  Clipping and turning the hearts were great opportunities for her to learn and develop more fine motor skills.

 

She was so proud to present the finished product to Daddy when he got home that evening.

Ouch!

As I walked into the kitchen the other day I saw Mr. M sitting at the school room table.  He was supposed to be working out in the yard.  A closer look revealed the problem, he had a big piece of cactus stuck to his hand.  He had been attempting to remove it on his own but had just come to the realization that some help may be needed when I walked in.

I was able to clip off the big piece so I could work on the spines one at a time.  Poor guy, these were in deep.  He had a great attitude as I pulled them out one at a time.  To distract him we turned on "How its Made" and let him suck on some green tea mints.

 

One or two were in really deep.  I used some essential oils topped with a warm washcloth to help with the pain and to draw them out.

 

A moustache bandage makes it all better!

*If you are interested in using essential oils for your family check out this link or feel free to e-mail me with questions gabe @ largefamilysmallworld . com