Easter was a little different this year in that we celebrated on two different days: One Sunday at Grandma and Grandpa’s house with family and one Sunday at our home.

We had a family meal and hunted for eggs on this glorious spring day.

It’s kind of tough to find eggs in Grandma’s big backyard. Sometimes little guys need some help. Thanks, Daddy!

Big guys can take this sort of thing pretty seriously. If they do, they find the lion’s share.

It was a gorgeous day and my children enjoyed themselves. The older cousins seem to be doing well and that’s a pleasure to see. It was especially fun having three dogs there. Grandma and Grandpa have a dog, Tolly, and Ian’s sister and her husband have a dog name George. We brought Solstice along, too. This makes for a Big Dog Party.

A week later, on Easter morning, we enjoyed our own peaceful family ritual. As usual, the kids were up bright and early.

The Easter Bunny brought traditional goodies: fruits, flowers, eggs to find, and Easter baskets.

There was much cavorting, despite Asher being ill with flu. There are some things a boy simply must do, no matter how he feels, and hunting for goodies at 7 a.m. on Easter morning is one of them.

But this sort of thing isn’t just for little boys. No. Bigger boys still love it, too.

(Our Easter basket grasses were just grown in enough.)

Easter Bunny brought a book for each of my sons,

a sweet bunny (matchy-matchy rainbow bunnies!), and a special new hat.

The boys were also given gorgeous new painting boards and painting jar holders for their watercolors. These are going to come in handy, I tell you!

There’s nothing quite like early morning chocolate and strawberries to make for a special day.

And, while we probably shouldn’t have risked it, we hosted my parents and brother for a little Easter luncheon outside. (They were brave to come.) We enjoyed simple croissant sandwiches, fruit salad, and pie. Ian and Asher were really not feeling well, so we kept it short. Thank goodness none of our guests fell ill afterward. All things considered, it was pretty ideal to host since we got to have a low-key celebration and didn’t have to miss out on a party happening elsewhere. That would have been so disappointing.

I mentioned before that this flu ultimately wiped us all out for more than a week. Ian is finally back to work today, thanks to the antibiotics he’s taking to treat a bronchial infection. I’ve limped through a rush editing job all week with flu. Things got a little grim around here, but I think we’re on the mend. I’m glad I’m finally able to share our Easter.  I think I had to slog through the muck before I could think happy thoughts again.

Well, it’s Friday evening. Good Friday, in fact. It has been a good Friday, if I look at it from the right sort of angle. Life doesn’t always (read: almost never) follow according to plan, you see. So when it doesn’t go just how I expect and I manage to roll with it, I consider that a win.

We had some dear friends over for a sleepover. Alas, poor Asher fell ill right at dinnertime. The party went on around him, and he tried his best to stay cheerful throughout. A touchy tummy and a mild fever can weigh a boy down, though.

And while I don’t like exposing other people’s children to our germs, and tend toward feeling really guilty about this sort of thing when it happens, their sweet mama said, “I’m not worried. It’s too late to save them from germs, so they might as well have some fun.” So, although Asher had a couched and run-down kind of day today, Lucas was able to carry on playing and enjoying himself and his friends.

We visited and made some Easter cookies—at least, we got some baked before our friends had to go home. The boys and Ian and I carried on decorating them ourselves. As you can see, we pulled out all the stops.

We have plans for the holiday weekend, but we’ll just have to see what happens. Poor Asher has just been sick all over.

We have been reading Eggs for the Hunting, by Reg Down, which we got from A Toy Garden. I was inspired by Reg’s drawings in the book and I wondered if I could emulate them on some wooden eggs (also from A Toy Garden) to make my own story eggs. I had seen story eggs made by Mama West Wind who writes at Chocolate Eyes, and they were so beautiful I had to try to make some myself. (You can find a full tutorial by Chris Willow how to do this here at Rhythm of the Home.)

This seemed the perfect time to try the wood-burner for the first time. Plus, I had this nifty, super-dandy lathe thingy that Ian bought me for Christmas to try out, so a little project was born.

My first wood-burning attempt. I dig it! I used the pointiest tip and was pleased with the results.

I painted the flowers with some watercolor paints. I liked being able to see the wooden egg, so I left the natural wood.

Emboldened by my first success, I tried one of Reg’s designs on this large wooden egg.  This was trickier. It felt important not to mess it up. I just worked slowly and took lots of deep breaths while using the wood-burner.

Then I painted it with Stockmar watercolors. The illustration I was emulating is in black and white, so the colors here are my interpretation.

I finished it with a nice coat of beeswax furniture polish.

My Tiptoes Lightly isn’t perfect, but I think she’s a fine first attempt. I hope to make more of these story eggs before Easter comes. My kids haven’t seen this egg yet and I’d love to have two finished for their Easter baskets.

Since we had some smaller wooden eggs, too, I let the boys paint them.

What fun things are you doing to enjoy Easter?

     —Tasha Tudor

We have a wide library of Easter and Ostara-themed children’s books around here. It might be because the Easter Bunny usually brings one for my boys. These are our favorites. We go for the non-religious, nature-oriented titles, so if you’re looking for the resurrection story, you’ll need to find a different list. The age recommendations listed here are my own suggestions.

Our newest favorite is Eggs for the Hunting, by Reg Down. We have several of Down’s books and their familiar woodland characters and sweet simplicity make them so charming. Comforting, everyday rhythms of nature and the seasons are mixed in with just the right amount of magic and wonder of the spirit in all things. Featuring darling Tiptoes Lightly (a fairy) and two plucky gnomes (Pine Cone and Pepper Pot), these books never fail to leave us giggling. Eggs for the Hunting is what we’re reading at bedtime now, and even my almost-10-year-old is captivated by it.

The Golden Egg Book is a classic that every kid should get to read at least once. The simple story is by Margaret Wise Brown and the luscious illustrations are by Leondard Weisgard. It was originally published in 1947. This book is wonderful for the 0 to 6 set.

The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by Du Bose Heyward (pictures by Margorie Flack) is widely considered to be one of the first feminist children’s books. It was published in 1939. I had this book as a child and I loved it. (The picture below was captivating to small me.) The little brown girl bunny wants to grow up to be an Easter Bunny, but before long she’s a mother. They say a mommy bunny can’t possibly do the job of the Easter Bunny, but in fact, she is amply qualified: for she is kind, clever, wise, swift—she has to be to raise her 21 bunny children! (I would say ages 4 to 10; this one is fairly long.)

The Bunny Who Found Easter is by Charlotte Zolotow and was originally published in 1959. In this story, a bunny wants to be with other bunnies. An owl tells him that there are always lots of rabbits at Easter, so the bunny goes looking for Easter. He searches through summer, fall, and winter without finding any other bunnies. But in spring, he finds a sweet friend and he’s so happy to know her, he forgets about Easter. Soon enough, by Easter, there are lots of rabbits! He learns that Easter is not a place after all, but a time when everything lovely begins once again. (Ages 0 to 6.)

The Egg Tree (Katherine Milhous, 1950) is a story about a family celebrating Easter with an egg hunt. In the attic, a girl finds a box with gorgeous decorated eggs inside. Grandma had forgotten they were there. They are eggs she decorated when she was a girl and she shows the grandchildren how to decorated them in traditional designs. Then she introduces them to the Egg Tree, which is trimmed with beautifully decorated eggs and so lovely that people come from far and wide to see it. It becomes their Easter tradition. (Ages 4 to 8.)

The Easter Egg by Jan Brett is the newest title on my list of rather classic Easter stories. Brett’s illustrations never fail to amaze. They are complex, intricate, and beautiful. There is a competition among the rabbits to create the most beautiful Easter egg. The winner of the competition has the honor of helping the Easter Rabbit hide the eggs for the children. Little Hoppi is participating in the competition for the first time. He finds deciding how to decorate his egg is harder than he thought. When Mother Robin’s egg accidentally falls from the nest, Hoppi takes care of it until it hatches. (Ages 4 to 8.)

A Tale for Easter by Tasha Tudor was published in 1941 and begins, “You can never tell what might happen on Easter.” It describes how you know that Easter is coming: a new dress from mama and hot cross buns on Good Friday. Then you ask the chickens to lay lots of eggs. The night before Easter, good children will dream the loveliest dreams, such as riding on the back of a fawn who gallops through the woodlands and shows you rabbits, lambs, and Easter ducklings swimming among the lily pads. Tudor’s illustrations are endlessly charming and this is the perfect Easter book for very young children.

By Sybille Olfers, The Story of the Root Children (1906) is a favorite. Gentle watercolor paintings grace this sweet tale of how Mother Earth must wake the Root Children so they may perform their care-taking duties, such as washing the beetles and bumble bees. Then they can dress in fine clothes and go to the surface, to play in the woods and meadows until autumn comes again. (Ages 0 to 6.)

While the spring equinox was last month, this book, The Spring Equinox: Celebrating the Greening of the Earth by Ellen Jackson, is worth a look. It tells of spring celebrations in many cultures and throughout history, reminding us that the many symbols and traditions we still follow have roots in the past. The book ends with a retelling of the myth of the goddess Ostara and how the Easter hare came to be associated with eggs. (Ages 4 to 10.)

And here are two others that we’ve checked out from our library, but don’t own. I fully recommend these as well.

Rachenka’s Eggs is the story of old Babushka who saves a goose and nurses her back to health. The goose accidentally knocks over the old woman’s paint pots, which she uses to create beautiful Ukrainian Easter eggs. The eggs throughout Patricia Paola’s book are gorgeous and feature traditional designs. The goose begins to lay beautiful, decorated eggs, and eventually returns to the wild, but not before leaving behind an egg that hatches into a gosling to be Babushka’s companion. (Ages 4 to 10.)

The Birds’ Gift: A Ukrainian Easter Story is another delight. This folktale retold by Eric Kimmel is lovely. A young girl inspires a whole village to save a flock of golden birds trapped by a sudden, fierce snowstorm. The birds shelter in the church over the winter and are released in the spring, even though the villagers have come to love them dearly. At Easter time, the birds return, leaving hundreds of gloriously decorated Easter eggs in the grasses. This book features pysanky-inspired illustrations by Katya Krenina. (Ages 4 to 10.)

Easter is a holiday that fills me with hope and appreciation for the new life being born and blooming all around me. It is the premier Christian holiday, which recalls the suffering and dying of Jesus Christ on the cross, and his resurrection. It is celebrated the world over by Christians everywhere.

Easter is also a springtime celebration in nature religions, and is considered by scholars to be about three thousand years old. Closely associated with the spring equinox, the goddess Ostara (or Eostar or Eostre) was worshipped by Germanic peoples long before the religion of Jesus swept Europe. The symbols in Christian Easter celebrations are very similar to those symbols of the fertile spring goddesses, who can be found in many ancient cultures. For me, this synchronicity of symbolism among multiple faiths resonates. To me, it highlights the similarities among people everywhere and our universal admiration for the earth and its cycles.

Whatever your religious (or nonreligious) take on this springtime festival, you can create a nature table that calls to mind the bounty of the earth and celebrates abundance, new beginnings, and growth.

My spring maiden graces this spring nature table. Her companions are rabbits and lambs, both symbols of spring’s bounty in the birth of new animals. Rabbits are prolific breeders, so they have long served as a symbol of fertility and abundance, as well as the bringers of colored eggs at Easter. A beautiful meadow, painted by my son in second grade, serves as a backdrop. A green crystal frog at the far end holds a tea light for a nighttime glow. A needle-felted bird sits on a nest in a branch (not pictured).

I love blooming branches, but as I don’t wish to cut any off my trees, I crafted these blooms by hot-gluing white tissue paper blossoms onto bare branches we gathered from the ground. The card showing dancing children is a drawing by my god-daughter. It reminds me of how happy we are to be outdoors again in spring.

Here is a nature table created on our fireplace mantle. We displayed our many needle-felted eggs on upside-down cups and the tops of candle sticks. I framed a print of Persephone, the Greek goddess of the spring and added it. A plant of bleeding hearts provides a living symbol of life, flowers, and freshness. From a long, finger-knitted yarn rope (made by Lucas) and felt egg decorations we made, we created a simple garland. The felt eggs aren’t fancy: They are two-dimensional and made with “craft” acrylic felt and white glue.

Simple and charming. I use these year after year.

A friend of mine found a gnarled piece of wood one day and picked it up. It has the shape of a pregnant woman, with bulbous belly and breasts. My friend gave it to me when I was pregnant and I have kept it as a special object of love and fertility ever since. Perhaps you have some totem that represents the time when you were carrying your babies inside your body, or the time you were waiting eagerly for their arrival in your family. The spring nature table is a perfect place to put such honored objects.

We added some small wooden toys, too: frolicking rabbits and stately geese. These are for curious little hands to touch and enjoy.

For your own nature table, decorate and display Easter eggs of any kind. Blow eggs and hang them from branches to make an Easter tree. Or gather them together in an attractive bowl. Balance colored eggs atop tall candle holders so they may be seen from a distance.

Materials

You most likely won’t have to buy much to create your Easter nature table. Here are some items you probably already have:

• pretty cloth in a spring color
• flowers or grasses from your garden
• fruits or seeds
• decorated eggs (blown eggs will last longer)
• candles or figurines
• watercolor paintings (used as backgrounds or cut into Easter shapes: bunnies, eggs, birds, chicks, flowers)
• any items that symbolize for you fertility, renewal, awakening, abundance, birth, and beauty
• religious items that speak to your family’s traditions or faith
• boxes or bowls

Tutorial

First, clean your nature table. Give the wood a nice polish, if appropriate.  Enlist the aid of your children. Be sure to listen to their suggestions about what to add. Now is a great time to sing springtime songs and recite a poem or two. Lay down your cloth on the table and set up any background cloth, picture, or painting you wish to include. This works well for a table that is backed by a wall, but it’s not necessary. I find it’s nice to have several levels if I have space. This can be achieved by using boxes or upside-down bowls underneath your cloth to make hills. Items place on high spots will draw people’s focus. Now arrange your special items however you like. Candlestick holders without candles are a great way to display beautifully decorated Easter eggs. Leave space for additions such as picked flowers that your little ones might contribute throughout the season.

If you have included fresh flowers or fruits or real eggs on your nature table, be sure to check them often and remove and replace them when they wilt or get too old. Your nature table will inspire you if it looks fresh—which is the whole nature of springtime. When it starts to feel old or boring to you, either rearrange it or choose new symbols to display. Keeping your nature table neat and seasonal is a fun, rhythmic way of helping children celebrate festivals and mark the passage of time.

Finally, I wanted to share our family’s Easter tradition. We create an altar outside the night before Easter on a large rock in our backyard. We leave out carrots for the Easter bunny, who personifies for us an Earth spirit, Ostara, or goddess of the spring. In the morning, early on Easter Sunday, we return to our outdoor altar to find the carrots nibbled and fruits and flowers left in their place for us. A basket of small gifts is found there for each of our sons and colored eggs are hidden throughout our yard. As the sun rises over the trees, we greet the new day, hunt for eggs in the dewy grass, and give thanks for the bounty of spring.

* Portions of this article were originally published in the Little Acorn Learning April Enrichment Guide.

No words are needed, I think.

It’s done now, this spectacular display that happens in view of my front door every March. I look forward to this performance every year.

The petals have mostly succumbed to time and the rains. They’ve fallen to the ground.

But while they were here, they were admired.

Now the magnolia leaves are coming out, fresh and green, promising.

Yet lovely as they are, they do not hold a candle to these flowers

with this sky.

This last is the subject of my next painting. Wish me luck!

Last year, while we were dyeing Easter eggs, we also dyed some plain white wool batting. I am so pleased with the results. In the photo above are a wool colors from both natural and artificial dyes. I’ve saved this wool all year and now I’m making goodies for my boys’ Easter baskets out of it. I doubt that they’ll appreciate the cyclical nature of this, but I do. And don’t forget, this is science! So by all means, get the kids involved.

Materials

• natural dye ingredients (such as turmeric, boiled yellow onion skins, boiled red cabbage, boiled beets, etc.)
• or food dyes from the supermarket
• or Easter egg kit dyes (capsules or powders)
• white wool batting or roving (or get fancy and dye silk cloths to make your own play silks?)
• distilled white vinegar
• mugs or drinking glassware
• spoons

Tutorial

Really, this is totally simple. While you’re dyeing your eggs, add in a good handful or two of wool. We found this was easy to do with the natural dyes as we had a big bowl full of each color, rather than a mere mug full of color.

Onion skins turn wool a pale, golden yellow.

This is the red cabbage dye. It will turn both eggs and wool bluish.

This is beets. It turns the wool a warm light brown. The eggs and wool at first are a beautiful mauve color, but I think they then oxidize and end up brown.

If you are using kit dye or food coloring to dye eggs, you probably have your dyes in mugs or glasses. (Right? That’s the way we always do it.) So you can just keep the dyes for a day or so after dyeing eggs and dye wool in the mugs. You can do handful after handful if you like. We used about a 1/4 cup of distilled white vinegar in each cup, added the dye, and then added water.

Our yellow dye bath was completely exhausted by the wool. None of the color was left when we pulled the wool out. It makes me wonder if the other colors might have done that if we had left the wool in longer.

I suggest keeping your wool in the dye for about 24 hours. When your wool is the color you like, squeeze out the extra dye into the cup, then rinse it in cool running water until the water runs clear.  Set it on a wire rack or pin it to a clothesline outside to dry.

Here are the wool colors we got. I’ll name the colors of food dye baths starting with 12 o’clock: purple, dark red, pinkish brown, blue, yellow, dark green, blue green, and yellow green. It seems to me like the blue should be darker and brighter. It may be that my sons sneacked extra green drops into the blue? In any case, I consider this experiment to be a success because it means any frugal crafter or artist can get a wide range of beautiful, bright colors without breaking the bank, using standard McCormick brand food dyes. I love buying new colors of wool to use in projects, but this is a simple way to get many colors cheaply!

Wool batting doesn’t spin into yarn all that well because the fibers tend to be short. It works very well for needle-felting or wet-felting, however. Wool roving, however, is great to spin or felt.

I’m thinking that a rainbow of simple wee bunnies made from wool we dyed ourselves might be just the thing for Easter baskets this year. What would you make with Easter wool?

It is spring, and this makes me very, very happy. (This post was started yesterday and not finished in time. And that’s OK.)

This is my first lilac flower of the season. My lilac bush doesn’t have many flowers on it this spring. I don’t know why.

Sing, World, Sing!

Now in chilly places
Where the snow had been,
Wood and field and hollow,
Easter flowers begin.

Now a bud is opened,
Now a leaf uncurled;
Spring is in the sweet wind
Walking down the world.

Snowdrops in the garden,
Violets on the hills,
Cowslips in the meadow,
Dancing daffodils

Seem to lift their faces,
Softly whispering,
“Easter’s nearly here, now—
Sing, world, sing!”

These are our 12-day-old chicks. We have yet to decide on names for them. Ian, Lucas, and Asher all insist that they have the right set of names. (I happen to like Asher’s names best.) They just insist on using their own names for the girls.

New leaves are unfurling all around us. This is my beautiful Chinese Elm tree. Right now its leaves are the most gorgeous new green.

Here is the neighbor’s yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis europaea). This stuff glows! The kids eat it and call it sour grass.

This is my own sorrel (Oxalis articulata), AKA shamrock, sleeping beauty, sour trefoil. The shamrock I bought at the nursery for St. Patrick’s Day is also an Oxalis with white flowers. So all these years that I’ve been refering to this plant as our “shamrocks,” I was right!

My irises have increased!

This lovely azalea won’t be pretty for long. So I make sure to admire it every day that it blooms.

In honor of the equinox, I refreshed our nature table. With Easter just a couple of weeks away, I pulled out our bunnies and eggs.

I hung our blown eggs and egg ornaments on a huge branch that fell in a windstorm. This huge branch is frequently in Ian’s way. I feel he would like you to know that, and that he is patient with my weird hanging artworks all over our home.

Lucas dyed this handkerchief—at school? at camp? I don’t remember. I didn’t realize how lovely it was until yesterday. The spring maiden was a gift made by my friend Parnassus.

This is a mosaic Ian made: perfect balance between night and day, dark and light. I love it.

To me, our nature table conjures plenty, delight, joy, and light. It reminds me of carefree days and celebration. The spirit of the season of Ostara is enormous potential, growth, striving, peace, and fullness. I’m ready for it all.

I heard Asher singing a song: “It’s almost Easter. It’s almost Easter.” So I guess the nature table has done the trick. I think it’s lacking some spring tulips, though. I’d better get some.

It was a big time, of course. St. Patrick’s Day was fun for all of us, I think. We crafted. We decorated.

In between epic puddle splashing and a during jolly good time in the heavy rain, we set up a Leprechaun party complete with shamrocks in a vase of water, table with acorn cap cups, hyacinth flowers and bird berries.

The path we lined with white stones was very inviting to the wee folk.

I had made some secret presents: wooden clothespin Leprechauns. A boy and girl for each of my sons.

Even though we made that lovely party space and put out brownie treats for them, the Leprechauns couldn’t help themselves. They pulled a small trick on us anyway and piled all of our shoes in the entry, blocking the front door. It’s in their nature, you know. They’re tricky!

They did, however, leave the boys some treasures. A set of rainbow gems for each and a note.

“Thanks for the goodies, and thanks for the laughs!

On your way outside today, did you trip over our gaffes?

We’ve enjoyed your hospitality, and so we’d like to say,

We’ve left a little gift or two to brighten up your day!

We know you like bright jewels, so shiny and so fine,

Nearly as much as we do. So, we’ll share a few this time:

A rainbow for your pockets, to keep and hold and share.

Our gold we’ll keep for now! Try to catch us if you dare!”

Apparently, Leprechauns think they are very clever.

I didn’t snap any photos of our green shamrock pancakes or piles of golden eggs. I was too busy tucking in with and enjoying my fellas. It turns out that clothespin Leprechauns are great for homemade zip-lines. Then we readied our home for a  fun party with our friends. We enjoyed a yummy lamb stew, kale salad, and soda bread (from a mix). Today, Asher is talking about his Leprechaun friends.

Hope you had a festive holiday, too!