Bring on Easter!

Happy April, it's again been a long time between posts for me, something about being busy :)

With one week until my parents arrive, I have been busy cleaning and decorating the house for their visit, and since it is almost Easter, the house is full of eggs and bunnies! I'm leaving the Easter egg painting until my parents are here as we have always traditionally done this together, so I will post about that later. For now I thought I would share how I have decorated our apartment, and where I got all of my decoration pieces.

I was super excited when I opened my Easter decorating box and found my Robins Eggs, they came from Pottery Barn (click here for link). I adore these, and saw that Pottery Barn has them again this year, probably because they are so pretty.

On our door we have a green wreath that hangs there all year round and is decorated for every season and holiday (I have an obsession with wreaths). This past year I was super excited when my mum sent me an awesome egg-string garland (thanks mum). I simply tied it in front of the wreath (which came from Pottery Barn).

Going to Pottery Barn is always dangerous for our bank account, I adore that store! I went in a month ago and could not resist this set of Easter eggs that spell out "Happy Easter" Click here for link. I guess you should put them all in a row, but I split up my "Happy" and "Easter" so I could have them in different parts of our apartment.

I think they look great hanging on the "Pussy Willow" branches. I always have these branches in my vases at home, they are much more appropriate at Easter time of course, when I dress them up with hanging Easter eggs.

The sequined bunnies on the shelf make up what I call my "Disco Easter" corner. They are from another favourite store of ours, West Elm (click here for link). When I saw them earlier this they were on sale, that's why we have five :)

West Elm also had a set of Easter plates with great Easter designs on them, I am not sure if they still have these, as I got these earlier in the year!

The dining table in our apartment always gets a whole bunch of stuff I love placed on it, so we always have trouble finding room for plates...my poor husband! Well, this year is no different, here's what I created:

The bunnies under the glass domes I bought online from Lillian Vernon (click here for link). I am not sure where I bought the domes, but many home decor stores have them.

Recently I have also become very obsessed with mint julep cups, not for drinking, but for decoration. If you want a recipe for mint julep, Martha has one that looks great, click here for the link. The cups are simply beautiful, so I had to have some, and found these great cups on Beau Coup (click here for link). I also got some wooden eggs on ETSY, and painted them green, then put it all together with white shredded paper for a cute table decoration.

That's pretty much it, except one thing...our wall decorations are not immune from my egg decorating either!

Hope you got some inspiration for your decorating! I have to say that for our house, Easter just isn't Easter without chocolate bunnies and eggs (and these adorable carrots from Lindt Chocolates)...yum! These are available at most large chain grocery stores if you want some :)

Happy Easter decorating!!

Hot Cross Buns for Good Friday

I am yet to see these in the stores here in Florida, but if I was back in Australia I would see them in every supermarket and bakery, the traditional "Hot Cross Buns" for Good Friday. I miss this tradition and because we're going out of town this Easter I may need to make these ahead of time.

Ok, so the hot cross bun, or cross-bun is a type of sweet spiced bun made with currants or raisins and leavened with yeast. It has a cross marked on the top which might be effected in one of a variety of ways including: pastry, flour and water mixture, rice paper, icing, or intersecting cuts. In many historically Christian countries, buns are traditionally eaten on Good Friday, with the cross standing as a symbol of the crucifixion.

According to Wikipedia :) English folklore includes many superstitions surrounding hot cross buns. One of them says that buns baked and served on Good Friday will not spoil or become mouldy during the subsequent year....hmmm, year-old buns sound delicious :)

Enough of my hoo-ha, let's get to the recipe :)

Ingredients

* 1 envelope (1/4-ounce) dry yeast

* 3/4 cup sugar

* 1 1/2 cups warm milk (about 110 degrees F.)

* 1 stick of butter, melted

* 1 egg

* 1/2 cup of raisins

* 1 teaspoon salt

* 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom

* 3 1/2 cups bleached all-purpose flour

* 1 teaspoon vegetable oil

* 1 large egg, beaten

* 1 cup powdered sugar

* 3 tablespoons milk

Directions

Combine the yeast, sugar and milk in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook. Beat on low speed for 1 minute. Add the butter, egg and raisins. Mix for 1 minute. Add the salt, cardamom and flour. Beat on low speed until all of the flour is incorporated, about 1 minute. Then, beat at medium speed until the mixture forms a ball, leaves the sides of the bowl, and climbs up the dough hook. Remove the dough from the bowl. Using your hands, form the dough into a smooth ball. Lightly oil a large bowl. Place the dough in the bowl and turn it to oil all sides. Cover with plastic wrap and set-aside in a warm, draft-free place until it doubles in size, about 1 hour. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove the dough from the bowl and invert it onto a lightly floured surface. Pat the dough into a rectangle about 3/4-inch thick. Roll up the dough, beginning with the long side and stopping after each full turn to press the edge of the roll firmly into the flat sheet of the dough to seal. Press with your fingertips. Tuck and roll so that any seams disappear into the dough. Cut the dough into 1-inch pieces. Roll each piece of dough into a smooth, round ball. Line a baking sheet with parchment or waxed paper. Place the rolls on the baking sheet, 1/2-inch apart. With a pastry brush, brush the beaten egg evenly over the bread. Cover with plastic wrap and set-aside in a warm, draft-free place until it doubles in size, about 1 hour. Bake until lightly brown, 30 to 35 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool slightly on a rack. In a mixing bowl, combine the powdered sugar and milk. Mix until smooth. Ice each bun with the frosting in the shape of a cross. Serve warm.

Enjoy!

Update on Onion Skin Dyeing

This past Sunday our friends Karla and Ryan came over to paint eggs for Easter and as they arrived I realized that I had not bought the cheesecloth for the onion dyeing! I thought that perhaps I could use rubber bands to secure the onion skins to the eggs, and surprisingly it worked out well! This image is a little blurry, but this is what the eggs looked like in the pot. As you see I also left the remaining onion skins in the whole mix (boil for 20 minutes).

And when they come out, remove the the rubber bands and onion skins, pat dry and rub the outside with vegetable oil to give them a shiny look.

We also did a little experiment to see what would happen if you boiled the eggs in the onion skins without wrapping them, and not surprisingly they simply took on a deep brown color, in the next image you'll see the difference where the eggs in the top row were wrapped and those in the bottom row were simply boiled in the onion skin mixture.

Thanks to Ryan for the great blue color also (must be because you're an optical engineer!)
Happy Egg decorating!

Bring on Natural Egg Dyeing!

My family is European and Easter is a huge celebration, with Easter egg decorating taking up a whole day and kitchen! My dad and I used to sit at our kitchen table and paint eggs while my mum made cakes and other yummy things for Easter. One of the things we would always do was to dye eggs using onion skins, I thought I would post the instructions for you all to try at home. For those of you who are coming to my place this Sunday, we'll be doing this, bring as many onion skins as you can!

What you will need:

Vinegar
Raw eggs
Cloth squares (8 inches)
Rubber Bands
Pot of boiling water
Salt

and Onion skins of course....

1. Wet the onion skins and cloth squares, onion skins are fragile when dry so be careeful to keep the pieces as large as possible.

2. Wrap onion skins around the raw eggs covering the entire egg. Wrap the covered egg with the cloth tightly, then secure with the rubber band.

2. Lower the wrapped egg into a boiling mixture of 1 quart water and 2 tablespoons of vinegar and salt. Boil for 20 minutes.

3. Remove eggs and let cool (you can run cold water over them to cool them down). Unwrap cloth and onion skins. Oil the eggs to give them a shiny finish.

Alternatives include Tumeric dyeing, coffee and Red Cabbage dyeing, check them out HERE!

Happy Easter Egg decorating!

Bring on Easter

You may think this is a little early considering that Easter is one month away, but I have already started decorating and wanted to share my excitement with you all :)

Pottery Barn has the most beautiful decorations for Easter, and I fell in love with the Robin's eggs that they had for sale and bought some a couple of weeks ago. They had almost sold out so in my desire to get more (to put into the apothecary jar I had bought and filled with Spanish moss), I searched the web and found some more HERE


This set comes with 6 of the blue eggs I love, and 6 slightly greenish eggs that I think I will also like, potentially the green will break up the "blueness" of the display. I plan to take a picture of my jar and post it here soon, but in the meantime I am posting this one from the Pottery Barn website so you get an idea (make sure you check out all their wonderful items for Easter):


Ok, so on the blue Robin theme I have also found these gorgeous soaps for the bathroom this Easter

And of course no table can be complete without matching blue Robin's nest plates


Bring on Easter...I cannot wait!!