Christmas vs. Easter

While waiting for spring and summer, I already search for Easter decoration. I have at least 3 boxes of Christmas decoration standing in the attic, but almost no Easter decoration at all. As I was in Bali last year during Easter, I would really like to invite my entire family to an Easter brunch to our home this year, with tasty dishes and Easter egg hunt for everyone. The first thing which I like and which is on my "maybe" list for the future Easter Box is the table runner to the left with the rabbits:

Photo: impressionen

Photo: impressionen

It's a very very sweet image, which I wouldn't choose for normal decoration but I think it's very nice for Easter.

Kram

Isabell

Glad Påsk, Frohe Ostern and Happy Easter

Happy Easter to all of you!

Photo: smalandbilder.se/Jenny Lindberg

I wish you all a Happy Easter together with your family and friends!

Kram Isabell

♥

DIY Easter Decoration

I just found some very nice last minute decoration for Easter, which you can easily prepare before your guests are coming, all you need are some branches and different papers with different colours:

Photo:livingathome

or the other decoration I like a lot is this one:

Photo:schoener-wohnen

Egg and Bunny ornaments made from Newspapers:

Photo: impressionen

As I won't have an Easter brunch this year, I hope you will have an Easter brunch together with your friends and families! Of course I'm looking forward to our vacation, but I would have liked to have my family around during Easter.

Kram,

Isabell

Lindt Easter Bunny

It is an old German tradition that the children look for Easter eggs that the "Easter Bunny" has hidden. When I woke up on Easter Sunday there was always a basket filled with green grass and a Lindt Easter Bunny. Then my brother and I had to look for the chocolate eggs that were hidden in the garden when it was warm outside or inside the house when it was cold outside.

It wasn't only a few times that we found some of the eggs that we hadn't found during Easter, during Christmas when my Dad took out the Swedish cookbook from the bookshelf. What a sweet surprise :)

Kram,

Isabell

Braided Easter bun

A typical Easter tradition in Germany is the braided Easter bun. Many families have a Easter brunch on Easter Sunday and this is something that is a must:

Photo: ichkoche.at

This is what you need:

400 g flour
160 ml lukewarm milk
40 g fresh yeast
60 g butter
2 eggs (only the egg yolks)
60 g sugar
1 sachet of vanilla sugar
1 pinch of salt
1 table spoon citron zest

1 egg
decorating sugar


Melt the butter and add the milk. Pour mixture into mixing bowl and allow to cool until “finger-warm” (still quite warm, but just cool enough to touch). Stir in yeast and let sit for 10 minutes. Add sugar, vanilla sugar, salt and citron zest and raisins if you like raisins.

Mix the flour into liquid and then the egg. Add enough flour to form a soft dough (just until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Don't add too much flour as the dough gets dry). Put the dough to a large bowl and cover it with a clean towel and allow to rise until doubled, approx. 30 minutes.

Cover the dough and let rise for 45 minutes. Divide the dough in 3 equal pieces and roll into ropes. Loosely braid the ropes and put on a greased baking tray. Let rise for another 30 minutes until braid is plump and doubled in size. Brush with beaten egg and add the decorating sugar, bake for about 30 minutes at 190C/347F

Easter decoration

We've just come home from an Easter market here in Munich. It was really nice, the sun was shining for the first time since weeks and there were little vending tables with homemade jam, braided buns with raisins, pottery and painted Easter eggs. I've bought some Easter eggs which I've hung in our green bamboo at the entrance:

During Christmas I decorate the entire apartment but during Easter I only decorate a few places like the entrance. Of course you can also paint the eggs yourself in the colour you like and then speckle the egg
by using a toothbrush. Dip the toothbrush into the paint and lightly splatter and dab around the egg and let it dry.

Have a nice sunday!

Isabell

Easter eggs - sunny side up

I found a nice recipe in a German magazine for Easter cookies, that look like eggs or fried eggs sunny side up. Why not baking cookies for Easter as well? And it's a good present if you're invited somewhere for Easter. I will bake them as soon as the fasting is over, because this is too seductive otherwise :), but I think they will be perfect for my Easter brunch.

Here is what you need:

300 g flour
100 g powdered sugar
1 pinch of salt
1 sachet vanilla sugar
200 g cold butter in pieces
1 egg
5 drops of rum essence
1 ecologic orange
150 g mango jam or apricot jam


Mix the flour, powdered sugar, 1 pinch of salt  and 1 sachet of vanilla sugar in a bowl. Add the butter in pieces, the egg and 5 drops  rum essence and the orange zest of the ecological orange and kneed until smooth. Wrap with plastic wrap and put it into the fridge for 1 hour. Roll out the dough and cut out cookies that have the shape of an egg.

Cut a circle out of half of the cookies to make a window for the jam filling. Use baking paper for your baking pan and place the cut out cookies on it. Put the baking pan with the cookies in the fridge and preheat the oven to 160°C (approx. 320° F) bake the cookies for approx. 15 minutes and let them cool.

Boil the mango or apricot jam (you can vary the filling, if you like the colour to be red: red currant, raspberry and cherry. for two minutes. Cool to lukewarm. Turn the cookies that do not have holes over so you have the bottom up. Spoon 1/2 teaspoon jam on each cookie. Top with a cookie that has a hole and put powdered sugar on top.

I'll definitely try that recipe.

Have a nice evening!

Isabell

Die Häschenschule

One of my favourite books when I was a child was "die Häschenschule" from Albert Sixtus which is a very cute book, that has been written in rhymes and has these beautiful pictures from illustrator Fritz Koch-Gotha . The book cover shows a rabbit named Fritz, who is in trouble with the school master, because he was pulling a classmate's ears during music class.

Picture: amazon

The book tells the story of two young rabbits as they go to their Rabbit School. Here they learn everything a good rabbit must know: which vegetables and plants are best, how to paint Easter eggs  and to run fast to escape from the dangerous red fox.

Picture: amazon

The book also shows a lot of silhouette pictures, like the one shown above, I copied them on coloured paper and used them last year to decorate white Easter eggs. Looks really nice!

Kram,

Isabell

Easter Bunny - DIY

Today when I came home I had a good mind to do crafts and I need some decoration, as I'm planning to invite my family to an Easter brunch. So better start early... I found these nice Easter Bunnies on the internet :

Picture: fotolia

and used them as a model for my own template:

I use a thicker white drawing paper and copy the Easter bunnies, but you can of course also print them and use these as a template.

Then I choose a wrapping paper which I like and fold it

so that I can cut out 2 mirror inverted bunnies at once:

After that I use a glue to glue the 2 pieces together and put a toothpick in the center:

Now I can use them to decorate the food for the buffet, or of course you can also tie a bow under it and write the names of the guests on it. Or use different animals, egg-shaped patterns with one colour or multi-coloured... 

Hope you like it!

Isabell