Easter Monday Greetings

Did everyone have a lovely Easter and/or weekend?

I have to admit, I'm in the midst of a particularly murky Monday. May be a bit hungover from copious amounts of jellybeans and chocolate consumed over the weekend. (Good-bye Lent, hullllloooooo chocolate!)

On a side note, if you almost single-handedly consume an entire bag of Starburst jellybeans in a single day, you will have some pretty strange dreams that night. (Think, like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" sort of dreams.) Not that I know from experience or anything. *cough* Anyone else indulge just a little too much in  the Easter sweets this weekend?

Once again, the Easter bunny was exceedingly good to me. Not only did he deliver a ton of chocolate, the flowers pictured above, and a beautiful apron (which I could have used when I splatter melted chocolate and butter all over my cashmere sweater while making a flourless chocolate cake on Saturday), he also brought a little companion (picture below on the right) for one of last year's Easter surprises.

For the holiday, my parents came up on Saturday afternoon and spent the night. We enjoyed the beautiful balmy weather on Saturday (50+ degrees! Sunshine! Mud!) by punting around the neighborhood and sitting on  the deck sans jackets. Yesterday morning, the weather had shifted a bit and it was cool enough for a two mile hike up to a nearby scenic overlook (where it was very, very breezy at the top) without spending the whole hike punching through melting snow. We came back for a midday meal of lamb tagine over couscous, a big salad, and chocolate cake. T'was another lovely Easter for the record books, but I have to admit that a 6+ day workweek followed by a holiday weekend was enough to take the wind right out of my sails. After my parents took off, I promptly fell asleep for over an hour. Hosting is hard work. ;)

I did rally to get the first of my seeds started. More on that later this week.

Say, wanna to win these mittens?

I'm giving away a pair on the Handmade MN blog. Click here to learn how to enter. Hint: if you follow this blog, or me on Twitter and Facebook, you've already earned yourself a few giveaway entries. I'd love to ship these off to a loyal blog reader, so don't be shy - step right up and enter!

Happy  Easter Monday and April Fools Day! May your pranks today be good-hearted and tricks pulled on you truly amusing! Side note: I really hate April Fools Day. As someone whose humor is heavily grounded in sarcasm, I've never found April Fools Day antics very funny, since they tend to hinge on ignorance. And I think we can all agree, ignorance is no laughing matter!

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A Visit from the Easter Bunny

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter/Passover holiday this weekend. I spent all weekend worrying about meringue and as a result, I'm having some difficulty adjusting to the real-world projects, concerns, and tasks that come with Mondays. (Sadly, I have yet to make a living wage worrying about if the relative humidity will be too high for meringue to set properly.) 

For the record, the lemon meringue pie was a success and didn't warrant all the worry I threw at it. My meringue had a teensy bit of shrinkage and just a touch of weeping on the top. If you're ever wanting to tackle a lemon meringue pie, there's a fantastic tutorial over at the Not So Humble Pie blog that's definitely worth checking out.

Other than (literally) whipping up the pie, I spent the Easter holiday going for a long walk with my parents at the nearby nature center, then sitting down to a delicious Easter feast prepared by my mom, Andy's mom and yours truly. Because I'm a bad blogger, I didn't take any pictures and since everything was devoured with great enthusiasm, there weren't even leftovers to photograph. (Well, there were, but I ate them.) It was a lovely day. 

The Easter bunny made a surprise visit at the cabin.  This picture doesn't do it justice, but my Easter "basket" is made out of recycled candy wrappers. Not sure if it's an Ecoist, Nahui Ollin or what, kind of bag - the Easter bunny snipped off its tag -- but I'm pretty pumped about it since my current tote bag's handles are turning into a frayed mess.

The bag was filled with all sorts of good stuff: a spring-y scarf, lovely soap, chocolate, and this little lady to join my springtime decorations:

The Easter bunny also brought a TracPhone which will be put to good use during my upcoming travels since I've been without a cell phone contract for nearly a year now.  Don't worry friends, I'm back in the 21st century now . . . sort of.

I woke up to find a dusting of snow on the ground. I thought for sure it would be gone by this afternoon, but it's still coming down. I'm so . . . enthused.

These guys don't seem to be minding the snowfall.I have peppers, tomatoes, cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi and an assortment of flowers all poking up now. I'll do a second planting at the end of the week.

I'm trying to focus this week and get some extra work done, since the traditional "end of the winter" travels are nigh. I had a mini freak-out this morning when I realized I'm just over a month away from going back to work full time again. On the bright side, that means the Ireland trip is just a year away.  Time to get a fare alert set up on Kayak. . . .

Hope you're having a happy Easter Monday. How did you celebrate this weekend? Who has spring travel plans?

 

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Saturday Outtakes (Easter edition)

Yes, a Beanie Baby. From a Happy Meal. (No, not my Happy Meal.)

 

Happy Easter everyone! Despite having a bucket load of St. Paddy's Day decorations, I realized last week that I have a total of three (count 'em) Easter decorations. There's the two in the picture above, and then there's this gal:

Yes, she does totally lay bubble gum eggs. Apparently this plastic wind-up hen is as close as I'm going to come to real actual chicken ownerships, although I do have some plans to domesticate the neighborhood grouse this summer . . . . Just kidding. . . . Kind of . . . .

The bubble gum eggs will also be the closest we get to dyed eggs this year. Every year I think I'll dye some eggs (of course using some of those cool techniques that have been popping up on Pinterest lately), but then I remember that I'm not actually the biggest fan of dying eggs. It can be tedious and I'm just not artistic enough to create spectacular colored eggs. I'm sure we'd dye eggs if there were some littles around, but since there aren't, any eggs that will be consumed tomorrow will be fried.

I'm amused by this picture. I think I'll sell it to the MN tourism agency . . .

Andy's mom is up for the weekend to celebrate the holiday and last night we went over to the nearby campground for a picnic to soak up the beautiful spring weather we've been experiencing this week.

Today, I'm keeping busy in the kitchen, getting set for tomorrow's Easter dinner. So far, I have my pie shell baked and there's bread dough raising in a warm corner. This evening I'll mix up a batch of hot cross buns.  My parents are coming up tomorrow for dinner, so we're having a big ol' holiday celebration at the cabin this year.

2011's hot cross buns

Here's our Easter menu:

• Hot Cross Buns 
• Greek Salad
• Lamb and Green Beans (Arni me fasolakia)
• Yet-to-be-determined rice dish
• Lemon Meringue Pie 

Currently, Andy and his mom are out fixing up our two new raised bed gardens. There's something about Easter weekend that makes me want to shove my hands in the dirt in get gardening. Must be all the talk about renewal and rebirth associated with Easter.

However you celebrate the weekend, I hope you have a lovely one filled with the promise of spring. 
 

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Easter Recap

Easter's meant to be a time when we take time to focus on rebirth and miracles. But growing up northern Minnesota, my memories of Easter aren't of sunny Easter egg hunts out on the rolling green hills, but of running through the sleet and snow out to the car and spending the ride to church shivering in a breezy spring dress.

This year's late Easter actually gave us Northerners a chance to get in on the whole spring nature of the holiday. Sure, the lake ice is still lingering on, but the ice is growing darker every day; open water must be close at hand. And although it did snow (AGAIN) on Saturday, yesterday dawned sunny and warm so Andy and I spent much his extra day off out in the yard, cleaning out the perennial beds, working the compost, and building cold frames for the deck. 

For whatever reason, I am quite frequently out of town for the Easter holiday. This year marked the first Easter Andy and I have celebrated together at home. Being home for the holiday afforded me a chance to make a batch of homemade hot cross buns. Mmmm, one of my favorites.

I also tried my hand at roasting a leg of lamb for yesterday evening's celebratory dinner. It tasted delicious, but I'm not ready to put "professional lamb roaster" on my resume just yet. It was  . . . very chewy.

We've taken advantage of the sunshine to poke around in the woods a bit lately.  There are lots of signs of new life out there:

Red pine cones

Loons are back!

Some travel plans that were up in the air have been confirmed and that means I need to get my rear in gear to get all my ducks in a row this week. Come on motivation!

I hope you all had lovely Easters/weekends (if you don't celebrate). What did you get up to?

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Happy Easter!

I’m happy to report that the Sea/Tac airport is in no need for baggage retrieval reform. After our plane landed (it was slightly ahead of schedule) we made our way to the baggage retrieval in the main terminal where we waited approximately two minutes before my bag came spewing out onto the baggage carousel. Since they’ve started requiring a payment for checked bags, I’ve tried my hardest to avoid having to check any bags. Although I’ve flown into Seattle before, I’ve never had to retrieve a bag. But like everything in this trip so far, checking a bag proved delightfully straight forward.

I suspect Andy and I are kind of like what hobbits would be like if they went on vacation, as long as they weren’t bothered by any of that nasty ring business. “Oh look, food!” they would exclaim. “Oh look! Nice things to drink!” Because we come from such a rural area where options for food and drink are limited, eating out tends to be a big focus of our travels. Last night we had a lovely meal at the Coastal Kitchen. Tonight we found a little gastropub just a few blocks south of where we’re staying. Some clam chowder and plenty of microbrews have also been consumed.

It’s so nice to be where everything is green and flowering.

It seems most Minnesotans like to “make a break for it” come April when their home state is reduced to nothing but rotting dead grass and mud. Here the trees are flowering, along with violets and primroses. The weather has been fine: a little chilly with some spitting rain.

We had a day of wandering today. We’re about a 25 minute walk from downtown. We wandered through Pike’s Place Market and spent a good long time in the Seattle Aquarium where I tested out the “aquarium” setting on my new camera extensively.

We headed up to the Seattle Center where we went through the Experience Music Project and the Science Fiction Museum. (Admission to the SFM is free with admission to EMP – I’m not sure how many people would head through the SFM if admissions were separate!) Since we won’t rent a car until Tuesday, we walked everywhere today. Now we’re both nursing sore feet.

Not sure what tomorrow brings: more exploring of some sort. Right now Andy's trying to set up the mini DVD/TV in our room and has succeeded only in dropping it on my leg. Here's to hoping he's slightly more successful in his endeavors.

Hope everyone’s had a lovely Easter! It's been a low-key one here, but nevertheless, a good one.

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