Cascarones

Cascarones - As promised here are the simple instructions.

Next time you make scrambled eggs, use a tack to poke a hole in on end of your egg. Chip out a dime size hole. Rinse the egg shell.

Dry.

Decorate as you please. Dye, paint, glitter, stickers, drawings you've drawn etc.


Fill egg with a large pinch of confetti.

Cut about a foot of paper streamer and roll it into a flower. Twist the role together but leave large flower at the top.

Put white glue around the outside of the hole in the egg and secure the paper flower to cover the hole.


Ta da! Cascarone! Use for birthdays, Easter, any fiesta! Eggs are to broken above, not on (eggshells can be sharp, organic shells are quite hard) someones head and the contents sprinkled on them for good fortune!

April Project 1 complete and delivered to friends!

Easter Bread Καλό πάσχ!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! No way I am blogging on Easter, so in my very organized fashion, this is all set to go, sitting in draft awaiting the photos. And here they are!

Greek Easter Bread - Καλό πάσχ! - Happy Easter!

Χριστός ανέστη! Αληθώς ανέστη!

So The question is, Greek or Swiss? We traded a loaf of our traditional home baked Easter bread; Greek Tsoureki, for a loaf of our friends home braided Swiss Easter Bread. We are not Greek though my mom can double as Nana Mouskouri, we were raised on her music, my brother looks just like many fo the boys on Crete and I met my husband in Malia. Anyway I segway, we used the traditional onion skin dying method to dye the eggs red. Would the breads be the same? Different? They look the same, they taste different. Greek is sweet, Swiss is savory.. both delicious!

Swiss Easter Braid - Schöni Oschtere! - Happy Easter!

What's a Pysanka?

Ukrainian egg decorating. We are not Ukrainian as such, however our ancestors lived in the Ukraine after they left Germany, or was it Russia? They never considered themselves Ukrainian I know that - have to check the details!

Here is how we made Pysanka at home, however, as mentioned a fabulous source is www.babasbeeswax.com

Blow eggs and wash, leave to dry and plug holes with a wee bit of beeswax (either use a tiny whole at each end and carefully blow the egg out - i find it hurts my jaw these days so i bought an egg pump from the fore mentioned web site).

Outline your egg with a pencil on the egg itself (or not).


Use your kistka (egg writing tool - a tool that is used to apply the beeswax, again check out the website mentioned or others) to draw traditional or other designs on the egg.


Submerse egg in dye no 1. Colours should be used in order yellow, green (with a Q-tip or toothpick) orange, red, purple, blue, black. You don't need to use all colours, just in that order the ones you do use. We only use 1 dark colour, purple, blue or black to simplify. Not sure why the green is applied differently rather than egg submersion but it is so :-)

After dyeing, dry egg with paper towel.


Decorate another layer with beeswax using your kistka. The wax locks in the last colour you dies wherever you apply it. This is a resist. The wax, resists the dye.

Continue until you have used all the colours you want - this can be 1 or several. Dry egg with paper towel after each colour.

Use the heat of a blow dryer and a paper towel to remove wax. Be careful not to burn yourself with hot wax!

Ta da! Your first Pysanka!

April Project no 2!

April Goals and Rhythm

Easter! The children (and lucky parent volunteers) learned to paint Pysanka, Ukrainian Eggs. We had a fabulous workshop at school, run by Joan Brander of Baba's Beeswax, who managed to create success, step by step, for all ages gr K through 7!

If you have not followed this blog before these monthly planning pages lay out a general structure for the month, including a theme and seasonal table, a way to wake, a table candle blessing, a couple of projects and a verse for going to sleep. These are goals the follow up varies from great to imperfect but having the plan helps it to happen and helps bring rhythm to our days!

April Festival / Theme
Easter, Spring is in the air.

Seasonal Table
In our handy dandy spring storage case (see post September 29th, 2009) we have all the little Easter trinkets we have made, collected and been gifted over the years. Flower fairies, eggs, chicks, bunnies. Felted, paper, wooden, stitched. We keep palm crosses made for Palm Sunday each year - they dry nicely. We even have blown Easter Eggs made for the past decade; some are whole some are pieces. This year we add our Eggs!

Waking Song
"Little rabbit foo foo, hopping through the forest, picking up the field mice and bopping them on the head" (may not be politically correct but it sure is fun)!
Little Rabbit Foo Foo - from summer camp - an old favorite around here.. we just sing the first few lines then everyone joins in as they wake and goes where it goes.. :-)
Feel free to use comments to request words to look them up on Google.

Breakfast Verse
"Snowdrop snowdrop dressed in green and white, what do you do when teh cold winds blow?
Hide my little heard and say, Cold winds, cold winds, go away."
Seems appropriate as it is colder now in teh Northwest than its been all winter :-) we'll save the 2nd verse for next month and spring weather.

Bedtime Verse
"Star for you to wish on, sun so warm and bright
Moon for you to think on, pleasant dreams, a kiss goodnight."
Author unknown, a friend gave this to us - we draw the pictures, star, moon on the child's tummy as we tuck them in. Our children are getting older but tehy still love these familiar traditions!


April Project 1 - Cascarones
Easter cascarones - a new twist on an old Latin tradition. Little pinata eggs that can be broken for luck over a friends head and contents (confetti) sprinkled for fun - have a dust pan handy :-) For Easter we photocopy and shrink some of our art to glue onto the egg. Instructions will follow in a future post this month - watch for them!

April Project 2 - Ukrainian Eggs
The children did a Pysanka workshop at school and it was fabulous. Instructions will also follow on a future post!

April Project 3 - Easter Bread
We are ambitious this month (and all at the beginning as Easter is pretty quick); but Easter bread is a family tradition! Watch for it!