Easter Round-Up

Over here at Casa Riley we're in full blown Easter mode. Decorating eggs with the kids, making handmade presents with my sister, cooking big family meals and even whipping up half a dozen batches of fudge to hand out as Easter gifts for the grown ups. After Christmas, Easter is the most important time of the year for me and I love to spend it busy and surrounded by family!

Seems I'm not the only one that feels this way... So many of my favourite bloggers are busy, busy, busy too! I've teamed up with some amazing bloggers to share a round up of some great Easter crafts, DIYs and recipes! Just what you need to find all kinds of amazing inspiration just in time for Easter! Make sure you take a second and stop by to visit these amazing bloggers and check out their great ideas!  

**Note: When pinning, pretty please pin directly from the original blog. Just click on the links or image and pin away!!**
 

DIY Easter Coloring Pack at Hubby Made Me

Rainbow Fruit Salad with Caramel Toffee Fruit Dip at The Baker Upstairs

No Sew Easter Baskets at Max & Me

Kentucky Derby Wreath at Cleverly Inspired

Adorable Easter Cupcakes at High Heels & Grills

Spring Pinwheel Wreath at The Cards We Drew

Easter Hors D'ouevres Party at Strawberry Mommycakes

White Chocolate M&M's Pudding Cookies at The Recipe Critic

Easter Bunny Glitter Jar DIY at A Bubbly Life

Chocolate Easter Bunny Cards at Bloom Designs

Paper Dahlia Wreath at Love, Pomegranate House

Robin's Egg Nests at Mama Miss

Berry Gift Basket at Sweet Rose Studio

Lemon Chess Bread Pudding at Something Swanky

Free Easter Printable Pack at Kiki & Company

So much amazing inspiration! I hope you all have a blessed Easter surrounded by people you love.

No Sew Easter Baskets

My lovely sister and I have quite a few family traditions that we enjoy doing together, and one of them is making handmade Easter baskets and bunnies each year.

The oldest three still love the baskets we made last year and they often get used in their imaginative play games. Lately Max's one has been used as a shopping basket, a catapult and as a means to carry the toys he likes to 'reclaim' from Lincoln's room...

This year I wanted to make something again that they could keep using year round, but this time I decided to go down the 'no sew' route. I absolutely love how they turned out!

These were so fun to make and nice and quick too. I did all four in a day (including working out how I wanted to make them).

Here's what you'll need to whip some up:

   - round kraft box with lid
   - fabric
   - batting
   - ribbon
   - fabric glue
   - hot glue
   - scissors
   - wool
   - scrap cardboard
   - paintbrush

Start out by smearing fabric glue around the outside of your box and then wrap the batting around it. Hold for a minute or so until dryish, then trim your batting down level with the top and bottom of the box.

Next up lay your fabric right side down on the table and measure off a section the same height as the sides of your box (mine was 7cm). Paint that section with fabric glue and then wrap around your batted box. You want the edge of the fabric to be even with the bottom of the box and all the excess to be up at the top of the box because the excess fabric will be folded in to cover the inside.

Once you've folded all that fabric in it's time to make the inside base (which will cover up all that extra folded fabric). Take your lid, cut the lip off of it and then trim it down so that it will fit snugly inside the box. Using your fabric glue again stick some more batting to the circle and trim it into shape. Then cover your circle in some more fabric (I used some cheap white poplin I had left over from making Max's headboard).

Leave it to dry from a couple of minutes before pushing the circle down into the inside of your basket.

To make the ribbon handle, attach some ribbon to the underside of your basket with hot glue and then secure the ribbon up the sides of the basket using some more fabric glue. Then glue a thick ribbon around the base of your basket.

Last but not least make a sweet little pom pom (tutorial here) for the bunny tail and hot glue it to the front of your basket.

 

 
Done! One very sweet little Easter basket (or in my case four of them!).

Jenny's working on some co-ordinating Easter bunnies to go in the baskets, I'll share them as soon as they're ready to go :).

Paint Dipped Vase

Back before Easter I jumped on the paint-dipped bandwagon and DIYed a vase. I am finally getting around to sharing it, better late than never right!?

You can see the vase here on my Easter decorated sideboard...

I started out with a vase that I picked up from Vinnies (local thrift shop), it was originally $5 but I got it for $2.50 in a half price sale. Bargain!!

It was black when I bought it and my only plan was to spray paint it white. Unfortunately though, my bad habit of buying cheap spray paint from the dollar store caught up with me. For whatever reason there was something wrong with the can of paint. When I sprayed the vase the paint came out all chunky and left a gritty residue all over the vase. I probably could have done something to remove the paint, but it felt so horrible when I touched it so I put it in my decorating closet and forgot about it.

You can't tell in this photo but the paint job is patchy and gritty.

When I was getting ready to decorate for Easter I went looking around the house for something that was about 2/3s the height of the bunny frame and found the vase.

Straight away, I knew that I wanted to wrap it in jute twine and then give it a paint dipped look.

I started out by wrapping the whole thing in twine. I started up at the top and using hot-glue I secured the twine as I went along.

I ran out of twine about 2/3s of the way down the vase and had to go and buy some more. The new twine was a bit different to the old stuff and didn't seem to be as thick. I didn't worry about it though seeing as that part of the twine would be painted over anyway.

When it came time to do the paint dipped part of the vase I cheated and used a paint-brush. It seemed really wasteful to pour out a big tub of paint. I think my way of doing it gave just as good a result.

I started out by roughly painting a line at the point that I wanted the paint to go to, and then painted up to that line.  I did three thick coats of paint, letting each coat touch dry first.

The end result looks really good. The paint is nice and thick, with really good coverage and it really does look as though it's been dipped in a tub of paint.

I think I am addicted to the paint dipped look now! I keep seeing things around the house that I want to paint. Wooden spoons, chair legs, baskets... nothing is safe!!

Handmade Easter Baskets

One of the little family traditions my sister and I have is creating handmade presents for Easter. I think it's important to remember that Easter is about so much more than chocolate. Sitting down with my sister and making gifts for our children and then giving them to them on Easter Sunday really helps us to stay focused on that.

Last year my sister, mum and I made each of the kids (Max and my sister's two girls Ava and Emily) a sweet little bunny softie. (We got the pattern from JDC).

This year we decided to make Easter baskets for our children (the ones I mentioned in my last post). I searched for Easter Baskets on pinterest and came across this tutorial. It was so easy to follow that even I understood it! The pictures are nice and crisp and Amy explains everything really well.

We wanted our baskets to be a little bigger, so we took all the measurements and multiplied them by 1.5. We also used stiffer interfacing than Amy did on her baskets, and if I was making them again I would actually use the stiffest interfacing I could find. I noticed that our bigger baskets were a little bit too 'droopy' when the kids carried them around.

Seeing as we were making three baskets and needed to cut multiple versions of the same shape, we started out by making ourselves a pattern. We then cut out soooooo much fabric.

The fabric we used for the main part of the baskets was the same stuff I used for my bunny silhouette (left-over from my no-sew Christmas tree skirt). Jen picked 30cm each of some pretty pink fabric for her girls' baskets and I used an old business shirt of Sean's that had a small rip in it for Max's basket.

Now, I have to admit that I did absolutely zero sewing for this project. My sister Jenny is an absolute whiz on the sewing machine so she did every single last bit of the sewing. I helped out by ironing, snipping, pinning and doing all the other easy jobs.

We worked through the toddlers naps and then did some more once they had gone to bed for the night. All up I would say it took us about four hours to make all three baskets.

They were a lot of fun to make, and I absolutely love how the turned out! But the absolute best part of the project was working together with my sister to start our own little family traditions.