Easter Treats – Make and Melt Chocolate Egg Heads

Making and baking is one of my most favourite things to do with my son. Over the half term we went away with some friends, and with three children to entertain I thought I’d take along some simple crafts and kitchen makes to do with them. This was a brilliant idea, the kids loved our daily craft sessions and I got bonus points from the other adults for keeping them entertained. One of the things I packed was a Make and Melt Chocolate Egg Heads kit from choconchoc.

Easter Treats - Make and Melt Chocolate Egg Heads

This self-contained kit was brilliant to take away with us and had pretty much everything we needed. The Make and Melt Chocolate Egg Heads kit from choconchoc costs £12 and includes a large bag of milk chocolate buttons, a paper chef’s hat, a bag of sweets to decorate with and the moulds for the chocolate eggs. The kit is suitable for ages 6+ with adult supervision.

I have tried to make chocolate eggs before, with little success. I liked the simplicity of this kit and I had high hopes that it would be both easy and successful. Or at least more successful, which it was!

Easter Treats - Make and Melt Chocolate Egg Heads

To make, you carefully melt the chocolate. I did this in a glass bowl over a pan of water. I stirred it and stirred it until it was melted, then called the children over. After liberally greasing the moulds as instructed, I got the children to dollop the chocolate in the moulds and spread the chocolate about a bit. So far, so good. I left the eggs to set for a few hours and then went back to them.

For the life of me I couldn’t remove the egg from the moulds, so I scraped the chocolate out, re-melted it and greased the moulds very thoroughly. Again the eggs wouldn’t come out. I must have been doing something wrong, I’m not sure what.

Easter Treats - Make and Melt Chocolate Egg Heads

In the end I lined the moulds with cling film and tried again. This worked really well but didn’t produce a smooth egg. The egg was wrinkled which I actually quite liked. I stuck the two halves of the egg together with some melted chocolate and once that had set we stuck the sweets on with more melted chocolate.

The children were absolutely thrilled with the egg. It looked a bit rustic, but they’d made their very own chocolate egg and it tasted fantastic too. The quality of the Belgian chocolate in these kits is fantastic, it’s really creamy and rich and makes excellent eggs. Or should that be eggcellent eggs?

Easter Treats - Make and Melt Chocolate Egg Heads

Despite my failings as a chocolatier, I would absolutely get this or similar choconchoc chocolate kits again. The kids had a brilliant time making and eating them and I really liked how easy it was to make.

This self-contained kit was brilliant to take away with us and had pretty much everything we needed. The Make and Melt Chocolate Egg Head kit would be a excellent thing to do with the kids over the Easter break.

For more information about the Make and Melt Chocolate Egg Head from choconchoc, visit their website. You can also find choconchoc in John Lewis, Booths and Waitrose.

Easter Treats - Make and Melt Chocolate Egg Heads

We were sent this chocolate egg kit from choconchoc for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

Easter Crafts: Make Colourful Easter Egg Suncatchers

This month Craft Merrily have set the Bostik Bloggers the task of creating a craft for Easter. I’ve been looking at suncatchers for a while and I thought they’d be just the thing for those bright late winter days we’ve been having lately. Easter lends itself to glorious splashes of colour, so we made some colouful Easter Egg Suncatchers to cast some jewel coloured sunbeams across our home.

I printed a couple of Easter egg shapes out on acetate and cut them out. You can draw your own, but I’ve made my template available for you to download, which might make things easier for you. Here’s how we made our Easter Egg Suncatchers.

Crafts: Make Colourful Easter Egg Suncatchers

How to make Easter Egg Suncatchers

You will need:
An Easter egg shape cut out of acetate or clear plastic
Selection of craft jewels or acrylic gems
Bostik White Glu
A piece of ribbon for hanging

Method:
Cut out your Easter Egg shapes and using a hole punch make a hole at the top. Thread a length of ribbon through the hole and tie a knot in it.

Crafts: Make Colourful Easter Egg Suncatchers

You can have a design in your head, a pattern or colour-scheme that you like, or you can glue the gems on randomly, whichever you prefer. Glue them onto the Easter Egg shape using a dab of glue on the back of each one.

Crafts: Make Colourful Easter Egg Suncatchers

Once you’re happy with your design, leave your Easter eggs to dry for a couple of hours. Once they’re dry, hang up at a window and prepare to be dazzled when the sun shines through your window.

These suncatchers are such a lovely simple craft, they’re perfect for tots and right up to bigger boys and girls. My 7 year old really enjoyed decorating his. We were both thrilled when the sun came out and shone through our suncatchers, casting a wonderful dazzle pattern on the wall.

Check out my other craft tutorials here!

Easter Crafts: Make Colourful Easter Egg Suncatchers

I am a Bostik Craft Blogger and I was sent the materials to create this craft from Craft Merrily.

Craft Tutorial: Pom Pom Bird in a brown paper nest

This month I’ve been tinkering about with Easter crafts. I loved making my Easter Bunny Bunting, but after consulting with my son, he suggested making a birds nest with some birds in it. He loves topping up the bird feeders and watching the birds in the garden, so making a little next for him to enjoy indoors seemed a nice idea.

I explored a few different options for making the nest, but eventually decided on making one out of brown paper. Like all of my crafts, this is really easy and I think it looks pretty cute. My son is pretty happy with the result too.

Craft Tutorial: Pom Pom Bird in a brown paper nest

Making a brown paper nest

You will need:
An empty takeaway soup container or similar
Brown paper
A stapler
Bostik Glu Dots
Scissors Craft Tutorial: Pom Pom Bird in a brown paper nest

Method:
Take your takeaway soup container and cut it down to a height you like, mine was about 4cm deep.

Take the brown paper (my brown paper was leftover packing from a parcel I’d received) and fold it roughly over the container and staple into place. It doesn’t matter if it’s not neat as you want it to look a bit rough, like a birds nest.

With another piece of brown paper, cut it into a circle which is approx 10cm wider than your container. Using the Bostik Glu Dots, stick the paper inside the container, pressing it into the inside edges and over the side. Cut a fringe into the overlapping paper so it looks like twigs sticking out from the nest.

Shred with some scissors some more brown paper to make a comfy nest base for your birds.

Craft Tutorial: Pom Pom Bird in a brown paper nest

Making a Pom Pom Bird

You will need:
Wool
A pom pom maker, or your own homemade cardboard pom pom maker
Googly eyes
Orange paper for the beak
Scissors
Some felt for the wings
Bostik Glu Dots

Craft Tutorial: Pom Pom Bird in a brown paper nest

Method:
Make your pom pom bird as big or as small as you want (if you’re not sure how to make pom poms, there’s a video you can watch here).

Using the Bostik Glu Dots, glue a pair of googly eyes on your bird. Cut out a small beak shape of your orange or yellow card and glue the beak on too.

Cut out two wing shapes out of your felt material. I cut two curvy triangular shapes and stuck those to the side of the pom pom bird to give it its wings.

Once you’re happy with your pom pom bird, pop it in the nest and you’ve finished. I added a few mini eggs to keep it company, but I doubt they’ll last for long.

Craft Tutorial: Pom Pom Bird in a brown paper nest

Note: I am a Bostik craft blogger and I was sent the materials to create this craft from Craft Merrily.

Review: Sambro Paw Patrol Craft Egg

When you think of Easter, one of your first thoughts is probably about chocolate eggs. In recent years there have been a few changes to the eggs kids might find left by the Easter bunny, and not all of them are now made of chocolate.

It’s also nice to be able to give something that won’t be gobbled up in five minutes, especially as my son usually gets given a lot of chocolate eggs. We’ve been gifting a combination of chocolate eggs and play eggs for the last few years, much to the delight of my son. This week we received the Paw Patrol Craft Egg from Sambro to put to the test.

Review: Paw Patrol Craft Egg

The Paw Patrol Craft Egg is ideal for little artists who enjoy being creative and who like to have fun creating, painting and drawing. The Craft Egg is a great way to encourage and develop their creativity and imagination. Plus it will also keep your little ones busily entertained for a while.

Review: Paw Patrol Craft Egg

He was incredibly excited when he saw the Paw Patrol Craft Egg sat waiting for him on the table. I helped him peel the wrapper off (which is tricky and will probably need a grown-up and a pair of sharp scissors) and then he opened up the egg.

The Paw Patrol Craft Egg contains:

4 Marker Pens
4 Crayons
2 Ink Pads
2 Stampers
2 Finger Paint Pots
10 Paw Patrol Colouring Sheets

Review: Paw Patrol Craft Egg

He was absolutely delighted with his Paw Patrol Craft Egg. Once we’d unpacked it and looked at everything inside, he diligently sat colouring the pictures in and stamping them with his new Paw Patrol ink stamps. He happily crafted and coloured away for over an hour.

I think he will come back to his craft egg several times over the next few days. He has already coloured in the ten pictures which were included, but with the paint, felt tips, crayons and ink pads included, I am sure he will create a number of artworks over the Easter break.

The Paw Patrol Craft Egg from Sambro costs £5.99 and is a good alternative to the traditional chocolate egg. There are a number of different craft eggs to choose from which include Minions, My Little Pony, Shimmer & Shine and Disney Princesses. The Paw Patrol egg is available in pink or blue. They are available from a range of retailers, but I’ve seen them online in both Amazon and Ocado.

Check out our giveaways over on our competitions page.

Review: Paw Patrol Craft Egg PLUS Win a Minions Craft Egg

How to organise your own Easter Egg Hunt

One of my favourite things to do on Easter Sunday is to set up an Easter egg hunt for my son. He’s 6 now, but he still believes in the Easter bunny and I have no wish at all to shatter his illusions. Easter egg hunts are pretty easy to put together and lots of fun to take part in.

Easter Traditions: Cadbury Easter Eggs and tall tales

Here are my top tips for setting up an Easter egg hunt.

Step 1:
Buy some Easter eggs. I like to get a selection of sizes and colours to hide in the garden. Make sure you buy enough to share fairly equally between the Easter egg hunters. I tend to get a couple of medium sized eggs and then some smaller ones for the hunters to seek out. You don’t have to stick to Easter eggs, you can also mix things up and add some Easter sweets too.

Step 2:
Count the eggs and sweets before you hide them and try to make a mental note of where you’ve hidden them.

Step 3:
On Easter Sunday I am usually tasked with distracting the boy whilst my other half scurries around the garden hiding the eggs in obvious and not so obvious places. If you can do this just before the hunt without anyone noticing you’ve got a better chance of finding everything and it’s less likely that the local wildlife will find your goodies and eat them for you.

Step 4:
Don’t forget your bucket or basket to put your Easter bounty in.

Step 5:
Go hunting! Have fun, don’t forget to take some photographs. See if you can find an egg and get away with keeping it all to yourself.

Since last Easter we’ve got a new puppy and she is into absolutely everything. If you’ve got a new puppy, or an older dog it’s worth remembering that chocolate is very bad for them. So sadly our puppy, Penny will not be able to join in with the Easter egg hunt. She will have to stay on her lead just to make sure she doesn’t snaffle any goodies she shouldn’t have.

Will you have Easter egg hunt at home? What are your top tips for a successful hunt?

How to organise your own Easter Egg Hunt

If you enjoyed this, you might like to try painting your own Easter eggs.

Craft Tutorial: How to make Easter Bunny Bunting

This month I’ve been thinking about Easter crafts. Now that Lent is in full swing, a few Easter craft items have started to steadily make their way home from school. We’re not adverse to a bit of egg painting ourselves, but when my box of Bostik Bloggers Easter craft goodies arrived from Craft Merrily, I took one look and decided to make some Easter Bunny Bunting.

Easter Craft – Easy Easter Bunny Bunting

To make the bunting you will need:

A length of pretty ribbon
Some patterned craft paper
A piece of cardboard to make the stencil
A Bostik fine & wide glu pen
Some little paper flowers or small buttons
Scissors