I love it when the Fourth is on the weekend because it means we get a long weekend and can head out of town or just lounge around town relaxing for an extra day. Here are some things to do with your family to help get in the spirit of the holiday.

• Make a patriotic paper airplane with this free Americana-inspired printable.
• You have to make one of those flag cakes. Here’s a quick flag cake tutorial.
• Make some colorful “red, white and blue sparkle marshmallows” on a stick. Cute and easy.
• A little piece of history here … Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the only two who signed the Declaration of Independence to become President of the United States, both died on July 4, 1826 — within hours of each other. It was the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration. (Video.)
• That said, about Jefferson and Adams, go ahead and do you and your family a favor and order the HBO mini-series, “John Adams” right now. It’s so well done and really brings America’s history to life. I wish this series was around when I was in high school. Would have made those lectures from teachers bearable.
• If you’re not watching fireworks live, be sure to catch what I think are the best fireworks display — right over our nation’s capitol, “A Capitol Fourth.” 2010 is the 30th anniversary of the special. Airtime is 8:00 p.m. EST.
• Most importantly, be careful if you are using fireworks — even sparklers. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has a short quiz you should take (pay attention to number 5) to see if you know know about the dangers of fireworks.

Have a fun and safe holiday weekend!

Easter is upon us. My son can hardly contain himself, and I’m not sure he even understands why he’s so excited. He just knows that his paper chain is down to the last two links and we’re headed to the Grandparents house.

I’ve pulled together a few links to help get in the mood of the upcoming weekend.

• Creative ways to teach your kid’s about the real meaning of Easter: “How To Make Easter Real For  Your Kids.“
• Ideas of items to include in your child’s Easter basket
• SimpleMom.net has a great list for Easter: “Simple Ways To Celebrate Easter“
• Make a cute bunny from your baby’s old socks. It’s super cute and looks quick and easy.
• Balancing Motherhood’s Easy Easter bunny cake tutorial
• Easter photo frame download (PhotoShop file) — insert your own photo into this frame and print out for family.

 Photo credit: thea0211

You too can make this cute Easter bunny cake. My mother has been making this cake for years. It’s so simple and even though it’s not the fanciest cake, it is always a winner with kids. I have fond memories from childhood holding up this cake at Easter to have our photo taken with it.

There’s no special equipment needed for this cake — just two round cake pans.

Materials and ingredients:

• Two round cake pans (I use 9 inch)
• White icing (you can make your own or use store bought)
• Coconut, one bag
• Food coloring (pink for the ears and paws and a color for the bow tie)
• Candy for eyes, nose and buttons
• Licorice for whiskers (we didn’t have any so I used spaghetti on this bunny)

How-to make and decorate the cake:

First, bake a cake using two, 9-inch round cake pans. If you are using a box mix, one box is enough — just split the batter between both pans.

After the cakes have cooled, you’ll need to cut them into the correct shapes and place them on a flat surface. No fancy materials required. Next time I make this, I’m going to attempt a better background than a regular sheet pan covered in foil, but that’s all I had at the time I was baking. The beauty of this cake is that it really doesn’t take much to put a smile on a kid’s face.

Here’s my crude drawing, but you’ll get the picture with it.

1. Take one of the round cakes and cut a circle out of the middle of the cake. That will be the head. That’s A.
2. With the remaining, outer circle, cut that into 5 pieces. Or, four if you don’t want a tail.
3. With the second cake, cut four rounded semicircles from the sides of the cake. These will be used for ears. You’ll be left with B, the body.
4. Put A on your board where you want the head.
5. Put B below A, for the body.
6. Take two pieces (6 and 7) and put them for one ear. Take the two other large pieces (8 and 9) for the other ear.
7. Then, you’re left with pieces 1-5. Put these on the sides of the body for the paws.

Once the pieces are on the pan in the right locations, all you do is frost like a regular cake. Put frosting between sections 6 and 7 and 8 and 9 of the ears so they stick together. Also put frosting between the body (section B) and each of the paws (sections 1,2,3,4). The frosting doesn’t have to be smooth since it will be covered with coconut.

Next, sprinkle coconut over the entire cake. I usually pat it down a tiny bit so that it stays on the cake and we don’t have any fly-away pieces, but I don’t think it’s necessary.

Next, color the coconut. It’s easy: grab a zip top bag, toss in a handful of coconut, add a few drops of food coloring, zip the bag and shake, shake shake.

Decorate away!

I like to use pink for the ears and paws.

For the bow tie — I did this free hand. Just put down the blue coconut in the shape of a tie and gave it a  pat to stay in place.

I used large M&Ms for the face and some jelly beans for his mouth and for the yellow buttons.

Usually, I use skinny licorice for whiskers, but we were out so my mother suggested the spaghetti, which worked out great.

Don’t let this one get away from you. It’s super easy, doesn’t take long, and your kids will remember it when they are grown.

Related:

• I like this version of the Easter bunny cake that stacks the paws up for a dimensional look.
• Another popular version of this easy Easter bunny cake uses just the head of the bunny with a big bow tie. Very cute.
• All of my cakes (Mickey Mouse cake, duck cake, fondant cakes and a rocket ship cake to name a few.)

This was originally published in 2009, but I have updated the download image for 2010! 

Since Easter is almost here I created another photo frame (like I did for St. Patty’s Day) for you to download and put your own photo in. You can save the file, open in PhotoShop, resave with the photo of your child and send to friends and family.

Enjoy!

How to:

1. Open easterwrap.psd in PhotoShop.
2. Click (highlight) on the “Insert your photo here” layer.
3. In a new window, Open your photo.
4. Size your photo to 375 x 500 (width x height). (Go to the Image menu, choose Image size, type in your dimensions and click OK.)
5. Drag your photo to the open easterwrap.psd file. Since the Insert your photo here layer is highlighted it should show up behind the blue border.
6. Save the file as a JPG. (File Menu, Save as.)

DOWNLOAD THE FILE NOW.

Now you can post it on your blog or sent to your family and friends via email. Leave a comment below if you enjoy this and I’ll try to make more for other holidays.
Enjoy!

Baby photo courtesy stock.xchng.

My son knows that Easter is coming and that we will be traveling to MomMom and PopPop’s house this year. He is so excited and keeps asking, every single day, “how many days until Easter?”

I got tired of saying, “it’s a lot of days.” Or, “it’s a long time away.” At Christmas, we use an advent calendar and that really helped him understand how long away it was. We try so hard to get our kids excited, but if you tell them about special days too soon, it’s something you might regret.

A couple of nights ago we created a paper chain to use as an advent calendar of sorts. Each paper link on the chain represents one day. Each morning my son can rip a chain off the link. As the link gets smaller, he’ll know that Easter is getting closer. I think he was surprised how many links we needed — 32 days is a lot of links. Since we made the chain, he hasn’t once asked how many days until Easter? Mission accomplished.

How to make a paper chain:

• Cut paper into about 1 inch wide strips. No ruler needed. We used a paper cutter and just eye-balled the measurement. I even used scrap paper. It would certainly look more festive with construction paper or scrap booking paper, but I used what we had available.
• Form a circle with paper strip and glue or staple ends together. We opted for the stapler because my son loves using it and we didn’t have to wait for the glue to dry.
• Intersect second strip into first circle. Staple/glue second strip together to form circle.
• Intersect third strip into second circle. Staple/glue third strip together to form circle.
• Continue intersecting, stapling until chain is complete.

I added numbers to each circle so that I would know how many days are left without having to count the chain the next time I get asked the how many days question.

Just so you know … there are 30 days until Easter.