Crafts & DIY

How to Dye Easter Eggs And Keep Them From Cracking

It’s that time once again to dye eggs for Easter and here are a few tips to help keep them from cracking and make them easy to dye. Did you know that Americans dye and decorate more than 180 million eggs during the Easter season each year. First, you must gather your supplies to dye Easter Eggs. You will need fresh eggs, Distilled white vinegar, food coloring or Paas color tabs, saucepan, water, spoons, and small dishes or cups. Distilled white vinegar is easily found in most grocery, big box, and drug stores around the country and is very affordable at around $1.34 for a 16-ounce bottle.

How to Dye Hard Boiled Eggs for Easter

You can also prepare hard-cooked eggs in the oven instead of boiling them.

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

2. Place uncooked eggs into muffin tins.

3. Cook for 30 minutes.

4. While the eggs are cooking, fill a large bowl with cold water.

5. When the eggs are done, remove them using a pot holder and transfer the eggs, one at a time, to the cold water in the bowl. Be careful because the eggs will be very hot.

6. Wait 10 minutes and remove the eggs from the water.

Eggs cooked in the oven will have brown spots on the egg shells where the eggs were in contact with the hot metal from the muffin tin. The discoloration may fade in the water but it may also leave marks on white eggs.

Tips for Preventing Cracked Hard-Boiled Eggs

To help make your Easter egg colors vivid and bright, add one Paas color tablet or 3 drops of food coloring and three tablespoons of Distilled White vinegar to a mixing cup. Once the tablet has dissolved (no waiting for food coloring), add 1/2 cup of water and gently stir.

To help keep hard-boiled eggs from cracking, add two tablespoons of Heinz Distilled white vinegar per quart of water before placing the eggs in the pot to cook. By adding vinegar the shells will also peel off faster and easier when you are ready to eat them after egg hunting is over.

Do not over cook the eggs.

Quickly cool the eggs after cooking by running them under cold water.

Wait until the boiled eggs have cooled and refrigerate eggs in their shells until they are ready to use.

Tip Source: Heinz Vinegar.

Natural Cleaning Tips with Heinz Cleaning Vinegar

We have taken on a more natural approach to things in our house over the last few years. We have been trying to use more “green”, eco-friendly, and natural methods of cleaning and running our household. We will be using energy saving lightbulbs to cut our electricity bill down to size, burn wood in our wood-stove to save on our oil bill, and will be using more natural methods for cleaning.

When a friend suggested that I try Heinz Cleaning Vinegar I went looking for it in my local grocery store to give it a try. I know you can clean with vinegar but I didn’t know what Heinz Cleaning Vinegar had to offer and what was so different about it.

I didn’t find it in the cleaning supply aisle, although that is where I would assume it would be. I found it in the aisle with the other vinegars. You might have to search around the store until you find it. I guess that is where you would expect vinegar to be but I really expected to find this cleaning vinegar in the cleaning supplies department. I read the label and it said it is “safe for cooking, perfect for cleaning”. Sweet! Now I can use it for cooking and cleaning, all from the same bottle. Now that I know it is good for cooking and cleaning I see why they had it there. Maybe they should put it in both places so it’s easier to spot. If you don’t find it then I suggest you ask for help.

Heinz Cleaning Vinegar is available at most grocery stores, Walmart and on Amazon. It comes in a big gallon plastic jug, has a bright green label. The Gallon jug of Heinz Cleaning Vinegar was $2.98, such a bargain.

When I was checking out, the sales person at the store told me she used Heinz Cleaning Vinegar and told me, “vinegar is magic that God gave us” and that we should go back to “old school methods of cleaning” and stop using chemical cleaners. She even gave me her tips for cleaning with vinegar. One tip I thought was especially interesting was how to use vinegar to kill weeds.

Her suggestion for weed was, “When it is humid outside in the summer, add half water to white vinegar and put in a spray bottle. Then spray on your weeds. Next day they will be all withered up. She said to make sure you don’t do this if it is going to rain though.

What a great idea! Not only can Heinz vinegar clean it can kill weeds!

Another one was how she uses Heinz Vinegar to clean her clothes. She uses Purex and adds half water to the vinegar, a little detergent, and a little lemon juice to get the smell out and she swears her clothes come out cleaner.

Back at home I read the bottle more and learned that Heinz Cleaning Vinegar is still all natural vinegar but it is diluted with water to a cleaning strength of 6% acidity. Regular Heinz White Vinegar is only 5% acidity.

When you try something, it takes time to learn and my new methods of cleaning are going to take some “retraining of the brain” but I think we are off to a good start with Heinz Cleaning Vinegar.

The things I like the most about this product are that it is non-toxic, eco-friendly, and is so natural you could even cook with it. That is one safe product to use in my house in my book.

Natural Cleaning Tips with Heinz Cleaning Vinegar

Make Your Floors Shine: Combine one-half cup Heinz Cleaning Vinegar and one gallon of water to clean tile or linoleum. For tough stains, apply undiluted Cleaning Vinegar directly on the stain.

Eliminate Bathroom Film: Remove bathtub and tile film buildup by wiping surfaces with Heinz Cleaning Vinegar.

Keep Coffee Tasting Great: Remove mineral deposits from your coffee pot by filling the reservoir with Heinz Cleaning Vinegar and running through a brew cycle. Rinse thoroughly with two brew cycles of water.

Cut Dust and Grease: Keep exhaust fan grills, ceiling fan blades and air-conditioning grills grease- and dust-free by wiping with Heinz Cleaning Vinegar

Create Dancing Scarecrows for Thanksgiving

Here’s a quick and easy projects kids can make for Thanksgiving. The project kit comes from Oriental Trading Company and is perfect for classroom, Sunday school, home school or an afternoon fun-time project.

Suggested Age: 5 and older

There are 12 individual kits in one package and each kit comes with pre-cut cardboard pieces, red paper fasteners, a ribbon awhat you nd some extra pieces. The rivets are used to hold the arms, leg and head to the body piece and make your scarecrow jointed. Each piece also has pre-drilled holes so it’s all ready to assemble. The ribbon can be taped on the back to be used as a hanger or tie it on the front and glue it on for a bow decoration. Each scarecrow ends up being about 15″ tall when assembled.

The first step is to have the kids use markers or crayons and color in each of the scarecrow pieces.

Next, use the red paper fasteners to attach the pieces together. Then tape the ribbon on the back of the head to make a hanger and Voila! Your scarecrow puppet is all finished. Easy Peasy!

Disclosure: Oriental Trading Company sent us these kits to test out for our article.

How to Make a Tiny Unicorn Backpack (Free Template)

Tiny toys and crafts are all over YouTube. We decided to try making the Tiny unicorn backpack we have seen on the “Alexa DIY & Crafts” YouTube Channel. She makes it look so easy and she is super talented. We could watch her videos for hours.

This is actually a pretty complex project so make sure you set aside about an hour to work on it. Oh, and you need a bit of patience. We made plenty of mistakes so don’t worry if you make mistakes too.

Some of the steps are optional because they are based on how you want your unicorn to look. Feel free to design and decorate your backpack the way you want. You don’t have to follow the video exactly as shown. Each child will want to do their own thing and skill level depends on the age of your child.

The smile on the face of a 5-year old tells you our attempt was a success. It might not look as perfect as the one in the video but kids are happy just getting to make the project and see how it comes out. They aren’t looking for perfection.

Tiny Unicorn Backpack Supplies List

First, we gathered our supplies. This is what we bought or had on hand

Craft Foam
Scissors
Ruler
Scoring tool
Pipe cleaner or piping cord
Glue Gun with glue sticks
Tacky Glue
Sparkle stickers
Markers (Sharpies are great)
7″ zipper ($1 each at Walmart)

Tiny Unicorn Backpack Template

Next we printed out the paper unicorn backpack template pattern. The pattern Alexa provided is super small so we made our own version slightly bigger and made into a PDF so you can download and use it too. The template Alexa offers only includes the backpack. We also included the center strip the zipper gets added to, the tiny ears, unicorn horn, straps, and nose piece in our template. Hopefully they are to scale. We aren’t experts in these things but we tried the best we could.

Our tiny unicorn backpack measures finished approximately 3″ tall x 2-1/2″ wide.

Click here to download and print the tiny unicorn backpack template pattern.

Kids even as young as age 5 can easily cut out the paper template, trace it on the craft foam and then cut some of the larger items out of the craft foam.

Tiny Unicorn Backpack Printable Instructions

Follow along with our instructions and use the video as needed. We found the video to be super helpful because we could pause when we needed and rewind to go back to previous steps. We just wanted to give you a kind of printed summary of what the video shows along with some helpful tips.

Prep: Plug in the glue gun to get it warmed up so it is ready to go.

Step 1: A grown up needs to use a scoring tool and ruler to make the fold lines at the base.

Step 2: Cut the side strip piece and then cut out the center area.

Step 3: Place the zipper on this center piece and cut off the excess from either end of the zipper.

Step 4: Use the glue gun to glue the zipper to the center piece. This step was tricky. You have to make sure you don’t get too much glue near the teeth of the zipper or the pull. Otherwise it won’t open or close easily.

Step 5: Glue the main backpack piece and the zipper piece together. Alexa makes it look easy and seamless in the video but we struggled a bit. In the end we did manage to get it all glue together. Watch those fingers because the glue gun gets hot!

Step 6: Glue piping cord or pipe cleaner around the edges. If you are adding a pipe cleaner make sure to add a bit of glue on the tip to cover the metal ends.

Step 7: Cut out the tiny ears. Using a marker, fill in the center with the color of your choice. You may want to add piping around the edges but we skipped this step. Those ears are tiny! (3:53 in video)

Step 8: Cut out the unicorn horn. Decorate as you like. (4:26 in video)

Step 9: Glue the ears and unicorn horn to the top of the backpack (see 4:35 in video for placement)

Step 10: Using a Marker, draw the eyes on the front of the backpack.

Step 11: Using pink paint or a pink marker, lightly add pink to the cheek area. You may skip this step if you don’t want rosy cheeks on your unicorn.

Step 12: Cut out the nose piece and draw 2 dots with a black marker (Sharpies work great). We skipped this step on one of our backpacks. It’s a cute idea but it almost makes it look like you are making a unicorn pig! (5:18 in video)

Step 13: Cut slits in the back of the backpack and add straps. (5:30-6:18 in video)

We hope you had fun with this tiny unicorn backpack project.

Let us know if you would like printed instructions, templates and tips for other YouTube craft videos.

Creative Valentine’s Greeting Card Boxes to Make at Home

When I was a child, we covered shoe boxes with brown paper and pasted colorful paper doilies and construction paper hearts onto the outside of the box to make a Valentine’s Day Greeting card box. Today there are many, many ways to decorate Valentine’s greeting card boxes. You don’t even need to use a shoebox, you can decorate a gift bag as as shown below. A Valentine’s Card mailbox craft is perfect for kids to complete before they share candy and cards on Valentine’s Day.

Visit Giggles Galore for instructions for Valentine’s Monster greeting card box.

Duct Tape Valentine’s Box

Instructions and photo by Michael’s Craft Store. These directions are for the Valentine’s Box on the top in the photo above.

Supplies Needed:

Shoe Box (or other box with removable lid)
White Duck Tape
Foam heart stickers
Pink Polka Dot Duck Tape
Retractable Utility Knife
Glue Stick
Sharpie Marker

Instructions:

Leave the lid on the box and attach a strip of White Duck Tape horizontally around the center of the outside of the box.
Remove the lid and set aside.
Draw a curlicue line in the center of the White Duck Tape strip all of the way around the box.
Embellish the top and bottom edges of the Duck Tape strip with foam heart stickers. Set aside.
Cover the lid of the box with Pink Polka Dot Duck Tape.
Cut a large slit opening with the utility knife.
Add a foam heart sticker to each side of the opening on the lid and draw an arrow on the outer side of each heart with a Sharpie® marker.
Write the child’s name near the opening with a Sharpie marker.

XOXO Valentine’s Mailbox Instructions:

Use an empty cereal box, freezer paper, some felt letters and hearts to make this simple, and cheap Valentine’s Mailbox.

Supplies Needed:

Empty Cereal box
White Freezer Paper (you can buy this at the grocery store)
Felt hearts and letters
Tape
Glue Stick

Instructions:

Tape the top of the cereal box closed.
Cover the cereal box with freezer paper just like you were wrapping a present.
Cut a long slit in the one front panel of the box. Make the slit wide enough for a card to be pushed through, about 1/2″ high.
Decorate the box by using the glue stick to stick on hearts and letters. If you don’t want to spend the money on felt hearts and letters, cut them out of construction paper.

Luv Bug Valentine’s Day Card Bag

You may purchase this as a kit from Oriental Trading Company or use your own supplies and our instructions below. You can’t buy just one kit from OTC and you would need to buy a lot of 12. This Valentine’s card bag can easily be made by using our instructions and craft supplies you have on hand or buy at your local craft store.

Supplies Needed: a pink bag with handles, foam hearts in various sizes, glue, one sheet of red construction paper, a single sheet of red felt, a single large pink pom pom (or cotton ball if you don’t have a pom pom), two small pink pom poms, silver pipe cleaner, and a pair of googly eyes.

Instructions: Cut four red construction paper strips, 1″ wide by the length of the paper. Fold each the strip accordion style. Glue a medium size, red foam heart to the end of each strip. Cut a large heart from the single sheet of red felt. If you want to make it more stable, cut the same size of cardboard and glue the heart onto it. Cut a mouth opening in the the heart and in the bag (as shown). Staple or glue the large heart onto the bag, matching up the mouth. Using the photo above, decorate the front of the bag by gluing other small hearts. If you staple the heart onto the bag cover the staples by gluing a heart over each staple. Glue the arms and legs onto the bag (as shown).

Owl Valentine Box Card Holder Craft Kit

This foam owl thinks it’s wise to keep your cards in one Valentine’s box! This is a craft kit that may be purchased from Oriental Trading Company. Includes self-adhesive foam pieces. All craft kit pieces are pre-packaged for individual use. These kits include instructions and extra pieces.