Easter 2016

Christ is Risen...

 Happy Easter!!!

From my family to yours!

Natural Dyed Eggs 2015

If you've never tried natural dyed eggs and don't know where to start, red cabbage, yellow onion skins and turmeric are a good place to start. I almost always boil my eggs in the dye bath and then leave them in their dye baths overnight. But I have also taken white hardboiled eggs and dropped them into cold dye baths. It doesn't seem to make much of a difference, as long as you soak them for a long time, preferably overnight.

~Red Cabbage~

Shred the outer half of a head of red cabbage and boil in just enough water to cover to eggs and cabbage. Boil eggs in cabbage and then drain and pour dye into mason jars. Add eggs. Refrigerate overnight once the dye has cooled.

{From left to right: dye bath with vinegar, nothing, & baking soda}

 To vary the color and intensity, add 1 Tbl. of vinegar or 1 tsp. baking soda to the cup of dye and allow eggs to sit overnight. As we discovered the last time we tried the red cabbage experiment, too much baking soda will not produce the desired teal color. (I forgot this year and used 1 Tbl. instead of a teaspoon and that was too much for the small jar of dye.)

 ~Yellow Onions Skins & Turmeric~

 I used about 1 gallon bag worth of onion skins for a medium sized pot (4 qt.) that held 9 eggs. Shred yellow onion skins in food processor to help collapse them down and place in pot (optional). Cover eggs and skins with water. Boil for 12 minutes. Drain and pour dye into mason jars. Add eggs.

For turmeric dye, boil eggs in a small pot (1qt.) with 3 Tablespoons of turmeric. I have to admit with the turmeric, leaving them in the dye bath overnight didn't really seem to affect the color or intensity.

{Both of these were only boiled in their dyes, not dyed overnight.}

The two on the left were boiled in an onion skin dye and then dyed overnight too. The one on the right was a white egg boiled in plain water that sat in cold onion skin dye overnight (but was not boiled in it).

More onion skin dyed egg that sat overnight in their dye. This is the first time I've gotten eggs this red. Oiling them with olive oil helped bring out the bright red color.

Easter is a season… it's not too late to try natural dyed eggs!

Easter 2015

The first year I made one of these little countdown Lenten lambs for BigBoy, I thought I had made a praying lamb, you know… with eyes closed in quiet contemplation and meditation. BigBoy dubbed it a "sleeping lamb". So, that's how our little lamb became a sleeping lamb for all of Lent...

 who then wakes up for Easter!

After morning mass at the monastery!

Our crimson red natural dyed eggs this year. I'm going to post more about them later.

Easter basket hunting time...

Miss Cupcake really wanted an Easter cake with flowers on it. I only had a bag of M&M's in the house so Sunshine made this for her...

She was delighted!

Happy Easter from our family to yours!

Natural Dyed Egg Roundup

Naturally dyed Easter eggs from 2010

For those of you looking, you can find a round-up off all of my posts on dyeing Easter eggs with natural dyes (veggies, tea, coffee, etc...) by clicking here. Happy Holy Saturday!

Easter Scenes 2014

~ Preparation ~

 I painted new Alleluia letters early on Holy Saturday morning. Our old letters were missing an "L". The girls helped decorate some egg shaped cakes. I made this adorable Fake Peep Cake that Cupcake was thoroughly enamored with. 

 My Easter Pashka had a bit of a muffin top look going on. I think I unmolded it too soon in an attempt to decorate it and get the rest of our table set for our guests (some very hungry college boys) without too much fuss. 

~ Easter Morning ~

Not on the side of the highway!

Morning Mass as the Abbey with a quick romp through their bluebonnet patches! 

The flowers in the Mary Garden were in full bloom and even though the priests were drowsy from their Easter Vigil activities (and certainly all had "NAP" scheduled somewhere on their to do list yesterday) they were so joyful and thrilled to see everyone. It used to be that the Vigil Mass was packed to overflowing while the morning Mass was quiet and peaceful. Now it's the reverse. Hmmmmm… maybe next year we'll try the Vigil.

~ Home from Church ~

A whole lotta silliness going on! 

Happy Easter!!!

P.S. You will notice a complete lack of decorated eggs. Turns out, this year, I didn't have any fridge space to make our natural dyed eggs (did you see the part about the hungry college boys coming?). But Easter is a Season, you know… there is still plenty of time!

Veggie Dyed Eggs 2013

This year's Easter eggs were, as usual, part decoration and part science experiment. Last year we experimented with our red cabbage eggs, this year it was the yellow onions skins. We tested a couple of different methods. A friend on FB pointed me towards this blog and a method that produces crimson colored eggs. We've done onion skin eggs for years and have never had the luck to produce crimson colored eggs; ours turn out more reddish orange. I hope the owner of this blog will give us some more information on how she got the crimson color. Maybe it was the kind of onions she used. Anyway, as I said, we tested a couple of different methods.

On the left, boiled in the onion skins (following the directions on the Nourishing Minimalism blog), on the right, pre-boiled in plain water but soaked in onion skin juice for about 4-5 hours.

On the left, also boiled in the onion skins but left to soak overnight. On the right, pre-boiled in plain water and soaked in onion skin juice overnight. We really couldn't tell much of a difference between the 5 hours soakers and the overnight soakers.

We tried some baking soda to see if it would effect the color the way it does for cabbage eggs. We did both the in-skin boiling and the pre-boiling but added baking soda to them as they soaked. There did seem to be a change to the pre-boiled one on the right, but the one on the left that was boiled directly in the onion skins looks like the other two. Maybe with a few more lighter flecks.

 This one was just for fun. We let a pre-boiled egg sit overnight with the leftover onion skins piled all over it.

 This one was the same as above but with cabbage leaves. 

 If you have any questions about how we dye our eggs, I'd love to help. Remember... Easter is a season! Keep celebrating!

 

*These photos have not been edited in any way. 

Naturally Dyed Easter Egg Roundup

Naturally dyed Easter eggs from 2010

For those of you looking, you can find a round-up off all of my posts on dyeing Easter eggs with natural dyes (veggies, tea, coffee, etc...) by clicking here. We are on Spring Break this week and are going to be tackling some spring cleaning, preparing our house and our hearts for the celebration of the Triduum. I will be popping in to post some pictures. Have a blessed Holy Week!

Good Shepherd's Garden Party ~ Week Seven and Pentecost!

After two birthdays back-to-back on Thursday and Friday, my husband said "no" when I mentioned celebrating our last Garden Party on Saturday. He played the obedience card! He's such a good man. Saturday was a day of rest. We had a visitor on Sunday who helped us celebrate Pentecost with a 12 Fruits of the Holy Spirit Salad and a Pentecost cheesecake (white with 7 strawberries which I forgot to take a picture of) and other food too. So our final Garden Party was rescheduled for today. Here's how it went:

~ The Heavenly Zoo ~

The Beehive

Stole Jessica's idea for beehive buns. The little almond bees were so cute!

The Deer

The Professor was so excited! He loves deer sausage.

The Pelican

Gone Fishin' Pelican Trail Mix... Jessica was right. This was a hit!

The Lion

This lion pizza looks kind of creepy to me but BigBoy thought it was cool.

The Phoenix

 Fiery phoenix chips and salsa

The Peacock

We had enough treats in the house and didn't want to add any more so I just set out my sweet peacock mug and added some leftover Mother's Day flowers. Can you believe these are from Mother's Day?

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter Season!

 

Good Shepherd's Garden Party ~ Week Six and May Crowning

Jessica mentioned to me this week how perfect it would be to tie in a May Crowning with the Garden Party. All of the symbols for Week Six could so easily remind us of the Blessed Virgin... bride of the Holy Spirit, Temple of Virtue, crowned Queen of Peace, Gate of Heaven. So we decided that forgoing our usual May Crowning menu and combining it with this week's party was the way to go.

Oh! What a Beautiful City!

Chicken Salad Crowns ~ my kids thought the grapes and celery looked like jewels

Gate of Heaven Angel Food Cake

(Bride and Groom) Spouse of the Holy Spirit Strawberries

My white chocolate seized up and wouldn't drizzle so the strawberries turned out very messy this year. Think of them as abstract brides and grooms, OK?

(Shirley) Temples of Virtue

We listened to Alleluia music and enthroned Mary as Queen of our hearts and home.

~May Crowning~

Speaking of Mary... I had the chance to listen to part of a Life on the Rock episode the other day in the car and I liked what I heard so much that I came home and found the whole episode here. I really loved Fr. Richards' understanding of Mary's fiat. Listen to the whole show if you get a chance or just grab a few minutes starting around the 29:00 minute mark.