Easter. Felt it was really early this year as I am not sure it's quite spring yet
for real, at least not in the kind of way you'd dare to be sure about This year I learned how the dates are set, how it goes related to the first full moon after spring solstice. Aaaahaaa.
Dag bought home easter-grass they'd grown in his kids' club plus a black witch's cat he'd made. Milk cartons and toilet paper rolls, forever strong in the kids' crafting departement. I've made a ton of these as a kid myself; there would be some Christmas elves and angels and Easter witches and bunnies in every corner at every holiday of the year in our home when I was young. I was too small to remember what I thought of my creations myself, but when my sisters started bringing them home some years later I remember thinking they were ugly and started dreading the day my own offspring would clog the surfaces of my future lovely home with their cardboard-glue-and felt pieces. And then BOOM that day comes and you go
aaaaaw and think everything is just adorable. Meow!
(Even though that cat obviously is a little drunk. )
On Friday I drove into town for a late night gogo-dance-and-eat-whipped-cream-on-stage gig (in other words nothing different from the usual) in the same time stressing for the following day's Easter-treat collecting that the children do on Easter Saturday, which I had not had the time to prepare properly. Or, I had kind of prepared it already as I had indeed stuffed some material in a plastic bag at the same time I packed my gogo gear at home in the city the day before, but not put into realisation.
(Backstage photo by Antti Vuorenmaa.)So the next day I had a super-domestic-day and got up early to sew Dag a bunny costume. Well, a bunny hood, not top-to-toe (phew!); he wanted to be a Easter bunny this year. This time I had also remembered to bring the face paint ton the right house (one of the things I stuffed in that bag)-
last year I had to improvise with whatever I had in my make up bag - and Dag turned into a little bunny boy.
His older brother had misplaced his bunny costume I'd made him some years before and after some panicked searching we got a little creative and he became a cartoon mushroom instead. Because why not!
Dag's oldest brother is 15 already so he has skipped out on this for some years now already.
And then those damn pussy willow branches. The ones the kids hand out so they get candy. Let's just face it, I'll probably never manage to have them done well in time. (Challenge for next year: do it! Well in time might mean I could get the kids to actually work on them themselves too). Usually they are decorated with feathers and crepe paper. But you take what you have and what time you have - I added
gift ribbons like last year and turned a couple of A4's into quick decorations and they did turn out rather decent.
And then the boys were ready to join up with a gang of some small yellow baby chickens, an Easter egg and some witches to go collect sweets. It's a mix of eastern (Orthodox) and western pagan-meets-Christianity-traditions to go around houses, either on Palm Sunday (east) or Easter Saturday (west), and wish the people well for the coming year. And get lots of candy.
Meanwhile it was time for some (very quick and easy) baking as we had people coming over. Woom woom super Saturday.
Later I turned into the actual big B and hid some eggs around the house for the kids to search for the next morning.
It's always fun! Although one may bump into the ones that were the most well hidden later during the year...
The kids' sugar-rush stash.
Well, it's only once a year...
