Our Easter was full and festive! And we hope yours' was too. There is a little summer house near us that the girls all refer to as Hansel and Gretel's house that is tucked into the woods right on the little lake near the house. We pass it often on our walks and it is usually locked up so I let the girls play around it. We have noticed though that under the porch there was tucked some blankets and personal items- so we had all wondered who they might belong to.
Well, the day before Easter I was on my walk early in the morning (alone!) and saw a man sleeping on the porch. I mentioned to the girls that I saw who the bed clothes belonged to and they immediately said they wanted to make him an Easter basket. It ended up looking like this.
There are a few things that both crack me up and warm my heart about this selection. Of course there are the Easter bunnies, and although hard to decipher in the photo- there is a good chunk of pink Himalayan rock salt. There is a little hand embroidered hanky with 3 Euro inside collected among themselves- but wrapped with the right side on the inside. There is a handmade card saying, "Frohe Ostern." There's fish, salami, bread and even good ol' Trader Joe's almonds. They actually did quite a good job of selecting a rather balanced variety. Oh, ya and a can of prunes! I'm not sure a man without a toilet will appreciate that, but then again he may be in use of a little movement, shall we say- who knows? They also included a hand knit blanket that was nice and fresh since his sleeping bag is quite dirty and has lots of little micey nibbles in it. So, we all headed out right at dusk and snuck the basket under the porch next to his bedroll and then snuck away again. In the morning we snuck past and saw that the basket had been emptied of some of its items- so all were happy.
The rest of our day was filled with lots of German goodies and sunshine- the best gift of all!
We didn't actually dye the bulk of our eggs until Easter day since we have a little shortage of refrigeration issue here. We tried the Martha Stewart wrap the egg in lace technique with little success- just like all the comments said on her site. But leave it to us to not believe 20 people saying, "This does not work!" and try it ourselves anyway. On my vintage linens finds we also picked up quite a few lace doilies for mere pennies so we were bent on giving it a try. In the end we really just ended up with dyed doilies-but I have to say I much prefer them to the dingy white! So a successful project in its own right.
And the best part of the day was enforcing our holiday rule of 'no work.' No computers are allowed to be turned on- not even to check happy Easter greetings. (Thanks to all who sent them!) If this were my place I would've surely furnished this balcony first and then worried about things like beds and dining tables, but alas, that is not the case. Since not a single outdoor chair is to be found here I simply swiped a mattress off one of the kid's beds and made myself a perfect little reading spot for a little literary trash! heavenly. It's the Russian Concubine- and loads of fun. I was able to keep an eye on the kids from above while removing myself to a place far far away. A true holiday.
