Happy Easter!

Dyeing eggs on Saturday.

Easter basket and hidden eggs.

I made Princess Sparkley's skirt Saturday.  The wind is blowing it weird in this picture.  Pattern from here.

Egg War 2011

 Egg Wars.

Easter

Easter Prep: 

Saturday our cousins stopped by.  We fed them homemade pizza and dyed Easter eggs together.

Matchy Easter:

I sewed Princess Sparkley 's skirt following this pattern and Little Guy's tie following this pattern.

Princess Sparkley asked why B and I never try to match the kids, so this year we did.

Easter Bunny:

Egg Hunt:

Easter Bunnies

For our Family Night treat the other night, Buddy and I made these:

here

They were pretty good, best with the glaze.

Easter Egg Sugar Cookies

To practice "cake" decorating, which was what we were supposed to be doing for homeschool art a couple weeks ago, we decorated sugar cookie eggs tonight.  Little Guy is missing from the pictures because he was refusing to eat dinner and spent the entire time messing with ketchup (but not using it to dip his chicken in) while we frosted cookies.

Recipe from here

Baklava

B's mom makes Baklava each Easter as part of her Greek heritage (her maternal grandpa was Greek). She is kind enough to mail it to each of her kids since they've all moved away from home. I've been thinking for awhile I should learn how to make it someday for our family, and also so that when another church activity comes up asking people to bring food from their heritage, I have something to bring.* I saw and saved this recipe** (with lots of step by step pictures) for baklava several years ago and last night, with cutting help from B, I made it.


B cutting nice diagonal lines for me after I layered 8 billion layers of Fillo dough and butter.


Baked, but with no syrup poured on yet.


After pouring the honey/sugar/syrup on top, waiting to set.




Yum.

*Two years ago in Lawrence I just took Snickerdoodles to a ward activity figuring they were yummy, sounded German, and B has German ancestors. Last month, I took aebleskivers to a Relief Society activity, but I'm not an expert aebleskiver maker, they are hard to make in bulk, and they don't taste good not right out of the pan warm.

**I used pecans instead of almonds because I don't like almonds.

Orange Rolls

In college I started the tradition of making cinnamon rolls for General Conference. My dad has since changed our aebleskiver tradition to be Christmas and New Year's mornings, as well as General Conference. I haven't jumped on that boat yet, but we do sometimes make aebleskivers as part of our "breakfast for dinner." This year, with General Conference falling on Easter Sunday, I made Orange Rolls instead since they are also an Easter tradition my brother-in-law started. Yum!!



Ingredients:

1 square butter
1 cup milk (scalded)
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 pkg. dry yeast
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 cup warm water
3 eggs (beaten)
5 cups flour

Directions:

Mix together butter, milk, salt and sugar. Cool.

Separately, mix together yeast, sugar and warm water.

Let stand.

Add yeast mixture and eggs to first mixture. Then add flour gradually and beat well. (Mixture will be slightly sticky).

Let rise until almost doubled in bulk. Punch down and separate into two equal portions. Using a bread board that is heavily floured roll out one portion at a time to about a 12x18 rectangle.

Orange Filling : Mix together ½ cup butter (melted), ½ cup sugar, grated rind of one orange.

Spread on the orange filling with a knife and beginning at the long side roll up, as for a cinnamon roll. Slice off with dental floss/thread in about 1 inch pieces and place in well greased muffin tins. Let rise until light. Bake 375 for 10 to 12 minutes, or until lightly browned.
Ice with powdered sugar mixed with orange juice to separate consistency.

Makes 2 dozen.
*My recipe says, "easily doubled," except for the 10 cups of flour... yikes. My mixer can't handle that. Darn.

Egg Wars

B's family tradition at Easter time is Egg Wars

You get one of your eggs, and you challenge someone close by to an egg war. You each hold one egg and smack them together, end to end. Whoever is holding the unbroken egg, wins and goes on to challenge someone else. The loser get a second change with the other side of their egg. You keep going till only one person is left with an unbroken egg, and they are the winner.

(description borrowed from here)

Pajama Easter

This year, Easter and General Conference are happening on the same day. I'm a little sad that I didn't get to get the kids all dressed up cute and sort of matching for Easter, but if you look here and here and here, maybe I should be grateful not to have to get them all cute and smiley and looking at the camera all at the same time.

Yesterday we dyed eggs.

Buddy coloring on his egg (pre-afternoon haircut).


Princess Sparkley decorating eggs.


Baby X enjoyed coloring on his egg with crayon too.


Dying eggs.

PS wrote the Easter Bunny a letter.


The Easter Bunny wrote back:




Being Easter Bunnies.





Buddy woke up at 7:15 (which is ridiculously early for our family) chanting "Easter bunny. Easter bunny."


Baby X got two motorcycles in his basket.


Buddy got a Zhu Zhu pet.


Hunting for eggs.


Baby X got the hang of it this year.




Is that an orange, or an orange egg?

Now I'm off to bake orange rolls and later, ham, cheesey potato casserole, etc. Yum.

Easter Dessert

These were our Easter desserts. I got the idea from here. We were going to do cupcakes and ribbons, but this is what we ended up with. Actually, we stacked a cookie on top of a brownie but I forgot to take pictures. PS drew the bunny faces and insisted on the bunnies for the girl's desserts had flowers on their one ear.

More Easter shots of Baby X

Baby X eating his first Easter Peep (a blue one).
Cutie.
Desperate for cookies he knows are cooling on the counter.
Cutie again.
Pointing at me.
Hunting for Easter eggs... he really got into it after awhile.
Finally eating the cookie he wanted.
A funny shot of him... if you enlarge it, you can see his tongue is out.
Gathering eggs.




He SOOO wants those cookies. :)
I posted Easter pictures last week while Baby X was taking his afternoon nap. Here are some fun shots from the rest of the night...

Easter Baskets