Laughing

When Theo came to play last week, he brought his ball and chain.



Enjoying a shared sense of humor, the girls and I couldn’t resist attaching it near his ankle and watching him toddle around…dragging it behing him.

Easter at Our House

We had a very blessed Easter Sunday praising God for his gift of salvation! We hope you did too!

Walter, Felicity, and Theo spent the day with Walter’s family. So it was a quiet afternoon at our home…quiet, but delicious! And I had a fun time setting and decorating the table.

I had seen an Easter centerpiece idea online, so I did my own take on it. I used a large, antique wash basin with a prickly wreath (symbolic of the crown of thorns), and in the center I placed yellow tulips (symbols of new life). Pretty, although it was difficult to see each other well.



I used my new linen, hem-stitched table runner…a true find at the thrift store…Williams-Sonoma tag still on it, but selling there for $3.99! Score! And did anyone else try those new coconut M&M’s this Easter? Yum!



This year we tried dyeing brown eggs from a local farm. (Their egg cartons have a tag attached that says, “From free-ranging, organically-fed, HAPPY chickens!”) We used food coloring to dye them, and got some really fabulous shades with the brown eggs.

A good day!



Easter

Glory to God! The morn appointed breaks,
And earth awakes from all the woeful past;
For, with the morn, the Lord of life awakes,
And sin and death into the grave are cast.

Glory to God! The cross, with all its shame,
Now sheds its glory o’er a ransomed world;
For He Who bore the burden of our blame,
With piercèd hands the foe to hell hath hurled.

Glory to God! Sing, ransomed souls again,
And let your songs our glorious Victor laud,
Who by His might hath snapped the tyrant’s chain,
And set us free to rise with Him to God.

Darkness and night, farewell! The morn is here;
Welcome! the light that ushers in the day;
Visions of joy before our sight appear,
And, like the clouds, our sorrows melt away.

Great Son of God, immortal and renowned!
Brighter than morn the glory on Thy brow;
Crowns must be won, and Thou are nobly crowned,
For death is dead, and sin is vanquished now.

-John Brownlie (1911)

A Birthday Celebration

This week we celebrated Felicity’s birthday! The birthday girl requested a salad bar dinner with: green salad with all the toppings, her mother-in-law’s orzo salad, my fruit salad, and Colette’s baguettes and chocolate cake.

Colette did a masterful job on the cake…oh my! It was slathered in ganache, which was allowed to set before another softer layer of ganache was pooled up on top, dribbling down the sides just a tad, and crowned with fresh raspberries. Yum!

There were pink tulips!

Colette set the table.



Deluxe fruit salad, as requested.

The happy birthday girl!

For the greens part of the salad bar, we had: mixed field greens, baby spinach, chopped romaine, cucumber, grilled chicken, red bell pepper, green onions, cheddar cheese, grape tomatoes, red onion, toasted pecans, dried cranberries, parmesan cheese, onion crisps, croutons, bacon bits, black pepper, ranch dressing, Italian dressing, ceasar dressing, and raspberry-walnut dressing.

"Happy Birthday to you..."



Timely Information: How To Hard Boil Eggs So They Peel Easily

This week, with Easter just around the corner, many of us will be hard boiling eggs. Here’s how to do it so that the shells peel off easily. I tried it today for the first time, and was thrilled with the results!

Put a saucepan full of water on the stove to boil.

Next, you want to use a push pin to poke a hole in the fat end of each egg. You don’t want to poke it all the way through the shell, just part way. (If you happen to poke it all the way through, some egg white will leak out as you boil your egg, and your egg will have a flat part on one end instead of being nicely oval.) I cushioned my egg carton by placing a thick kitchen towel between it and my countertop, so that it I felt a little more secure that I wasn’t going to break an egg doing this. Not sure if that helped or not, but it made me feel better.



Carefully lower the eggs into the boiling water.

Reduce to a simmer and simmer for 15 minutes.

Remove eggs from water and drain in a colander or seive.



Immediately plunge them into a bowl of ice water. Let sit in ice water for 16 minutes.

Peel eggs, rejoicing that this is so easy!

As an added bonus, when you use this method, you don’t get any strange gray-green color around your egg yolk…just nice yellow and white eggs.



Easy! Delicious!

For the source for how I learned to do this (with more detailed information) click here.