Happy Easter

Easter is finally here!  After a very long, cold and snowy winter, we are now looking forward to the awakening of spring bulbs and flowering trees.  In the Chicago area, the jonquils have broken through the frozen ground but not blooming yet.  Neither are the redbud or flowering crab.  Everything is later than normal.  Even Easter is late this year!  I love this time of the year and am looking forward to my son and his family coming for Easter dinner.  Because I have 2 little grandsons age 5 and 7,  I wanted to have things decorated to make the holiday as special for them as possible.  I have to tell ya that the one thing I got the most excited about this year -- Kool Aid dyed eggs!  Who knew?  One of our granddaughters told me about making hard boiled eggs in the oven using a muffin tin.  Now I have to admit that I thought she was a little nuts but decided to try it and it worked!  Place an egg in each muffin receptacle and cook at 325 degrees for 30 min.  They get some brown spots on them but when you place them in the dye those all disappear.  The colors are wonderful!  So, the table is decorated using my parents collection of Vintage Grape flatware, my grandfather's buttermilk glasses, a set of wine glasses from the 1880's that my dad purchased years ago, some of my white ironstone pieces and a ceramic rabbit that my mom made when I was a little kid.  Lots of memories for me and I hope new ones for my grandchildren.  One of my favorite memories of Easter was the year that my dad chewed up carrots and left a trail throughout the house for me to follow in order to find my basket!  I think I was 5 or 6 at the time.  Happy Easter everyone!

Show and Tell Fridays

Easter Santa

As a chid, I loved Easter!  The chocolate of course, the fun of dying the eggs and waiting for them to be hidden, and the new outfit to wear to church Easter morning.  Now, it's still the chocolate but I can appreciate the colors of Spring -- the many shades of green from new leaves starting to open, the flowering plants and bulbs that have broken through the ground after a long hard winter.  Oh yes, did I mention the chocolate?

Every month I have been showing you a Santa that I did in counted cross stitch on Aida cloth #14.  This one is so cute because Santa has on his bunny ears and is busy painting and decorating eggs.  A basket of completed eggs sits at his feet and a stuffed bunny watches from a shelf.  One of my favorite patterns in this 12 month set.  Happy Easter!

Chocolate!

Anyone who has known me for more than 10 minutes knows that I am in love with all things chocolate.  I even made a needlepoint pillow about it!  My very favorite is Fannie May dark chocolate butter creams.  YUM!  But it doesn't have to be "good" chocolate -- I am perfectly happy with a Hershey bar, even chocolate chips used for baking eaten right out of the bag.  Godiva is sort of wasted on me because the texture really isn't as creamy as I like.  And I'm sort of a purist -- I am happier if there isn't anything in it especially nuts.  I don't like nuts in fudge or chocolate chip cookies -- why ruin something that is perfect all by it's self?  Easter is a true test for my will-power (or in my case, won't power) -- "I won't have another chocolate covered marshmallow egg" or "I won't have that solid chocolate bunny").  By the way, do you eat the ears first and work down or the tail first and work up?  Just askin'.  One year when our kids were small and about a month or more before Easter, I went to the Fannie May shop and bought all the cute specialty items -- the chocolate nest of green coconut with little jelly beans in the center, the white and milk chocolate solid rabbits, the small chocolate eggs that were cream filled and decorated with flowers -- everything they had so that the Easter baskets would look really pretty.  Several weeks later I realized that the "stash" was completely gone!  My husband didn't care for chocolate, the kids didn't know where I had hidden it and there were no ghosts in the house so it must have been me!  I ate all of their treats!  What kind of mom does that?  Oh right, I'm the kind of mom that does that.  So, I went back and bought more even though the selection wasn't as good.  The real problem reared it's ugly head when I was putting their baskets together the night before "Bunny" day and discovered that there wasn't enough to fill even 1 basket much less 2!  So off I went to Walgreen's and bought whatever they had left on the shelf!  I desperately need to exercise some restraint.  Guess some real exercise wouldn't hurt either!

Tweak It Tuesday