This year we tried the Martha Stewart Bunny Napkin Fold for our Easter table. It was quite easy. Ari picked it up very quickly. The other girls did not try it. I would add two tips. The first is to use a napkin which has a thin or small hem. The second is that at the second fold uing a square napkin, the original first fold should be at the back, and the hemmed portion of the napkin should be on the top facing you. That way the fold will be on the outside of the finished napkin, not the hem. It just looks better.
We also tried the shaving cream method for dying eggs. We wre really disappointed. The only color that seemed to adhere to the eggs was pink. I told the girls that if they ever need a science experiment for school, they could test this method using a few variations that I have seen on other blogs, such as leaving the eggs in the shaving cream overnight, or soaking the eggs in vinegar before putting them in the shaving cream. My other tip would be to use an unfragranced shaving cream. We used the last of Grandpa's can of sensetive skin Barbasol which was very perfumed. It was more than I cared to smell. (Grandpa asked if it turned me on. Certainly not in that dose!)
We also tried making bird nests using this recipe. I had to put them in the refrigerator to get them to set. Of course our kitchen temperature was up to 77 degrees because the oven was on all afternoon. But still if I remember other recipes used a little bit of wax to set the candy, making it much easier to eat.
Yesterday's snow covered up my blooming squills and crocus. They say one is supposed to wait for a week of temperatures before cleaning off flower beds in order to protect the bees. The leaves were still plastered to the ground in the flowers because of all of the rain, so as much as I like to get them cleaned off, I was not even tempted to do it last week until they dried up more.
A highlight for me this Easter was the arrival of my new, large Rubbermaid dish drainer and drain board. I guess I am a classic at heart. When Arthur dropped a dish out of the cupboard a couple of weeks ago it broke the utensil caddy in the dish drainer. That meant a search for a new drainer and a couple of weeks of washing very small loads of dishes, then stopping to dry them before I could do more.. At first I thought of just replacing the caddy, but the dish drainer was getting a little rusty and I really did not like it because it did not keep the plates and glasses out of the drain water. Yuck. Nothing more gross than having your clean dishes hit the disgusting stuff on the drain board. I think I had gotten this last one at a garage sale. When I looked on Amazon I was shocked at the high cost of my old Rubbermaid favorite. More than double the price of yesteryear, and of course the drain board came separately, doubling the price again. But I am glad I have it. Holds so much more, keeps clean dishes out of the drain water, as I menioned, and I can use the glass holders once again. Wahoo!
