Happy Holiday Weekend

Have a wonderful holiday weekend, whatever you celebrate. If it's spring, that's good enough for us. We dye eggs, light candles, make a more elaborate recipe than usual (often baking, not our strongest suit), walk through blooming DC, watch movies. Who knows? Maybe this year we'll add burning sage & chants to the list in the interest of inter-religious pluralism. Have fun!

ciao-meow/GG Holiday Central

(The charming Sir Hopsalot available from Forest Blue)

Easter Eggs, Naturally

Poke around the fridge & pantry before you replenish egg dyes this year. You just might have everything you need on hand or you can add items to this week's market list.

Here at GG, we're going to try some new-to-us natural dyes. We do use beets & onion skins but Two Men and a Little Farm have inspired us with their terrific chart of multiple possibilities. (TheKitchn also has a good post with concise instructions & photographs.)

It's always fun to hop over to Martha Stewart's site; no one else has such a round-up for holidays & Easter is no exception, including last-minute ideas.

ciao-meow/GGCM

(photograph via Two Men and a Little Farm)

Hatch Hope for Spring

The Easter & Passover holidays will be here before you know it. In fact, they're earlier this year than we thought. This is quite possibly because we forgot to buy 2012 wall calenders & are making do with Sharpie-scrawling over last year's. Oops.

For alternative gifts & cute free Easter cards, visit Heifer International's Hatch Hope campaign. We include Passover, not only in the spirit of inclusion but because eggs are a significant part of the Passover seder plate, too.

No one's saying not to buy chocolate & other gifts for baskets (well, we're not!), but for a little bit extra (or buying a bit less) you can make the gift of a lifetime for a family.

ciao-meow/GG's editor

(vintage illustration via Agence Eureka)

Easter Monday Carousels

A little trip to France for some merry-go-round photographs. Also, two coloring pages of a carousel horse & a merry-go-round. In Italy, our friends are so lucky to celebrate Pasquetta. Picnics & pastiera rule. And with that, we're off!

ciao-meow/GG Easter Central

(Paris carousel by KarmenRose; Strasbourg carousel by penwren; carousel on the Côte d'Azur by Angelica Ardasheva)

Happy Easter!

GG & her editor wish a Happy Easter to all who celebrate. If you're reading this on Easter, go outside! Sorry. We'll lower our royal we voice. Go outside & play. Loll around in the sun. No sun? Devoted to the computer? OK, visit Peter Rabbit & help him find his lost Easter eggs. Beatrix Potter World is very sweet, is in a few other languages & has some resources for parents & teachers, too. More on this another time but thanks to Content in a Cottage for the head's up.

ciao-hop-meow/GG Easter Central

(image courtesy of wpclipart)

Easter Eggs 101

GG's editor just read (on Facebook) & heard (on the phone) a bit of last-minute Easter egg panic from some family & friends. So here are a few easy links. Martha Stewart, of course, can help you out of a jam. Also some last-minute decorating ideas with things around the house. (Another tip: Don't buy that awful fake grass. Just shred some colored paper that you can recycle later.) For fool-proof hard-cooked eggs, immediately go to Egg Watchers. It works & it's very funny too.

ciao-eggy-meow/GG Easter Central

(no-nonsense Easter Granny Rabbit via Vintage Holiday Crafts)

Peep Culture

To prove that we can make anything (anything!) about Italy, here's a GG Custom Peep in Venice via the Marshmallow Peeps website. Click here & make your own peep-avatar (& let the children have a go at it, will ya:). Giulia will have to count as a kid this a.m. The second photograph is the winner of the Washington Post Fifth Annual Peeps Show.

We are determined at GG Central to enter the contest next year. If you read the Post's story, you'll see that it's a group thing. But every time we get set to do this, someone (are you reading this a certain sister?) drops out. Visit the site for all things peep. And just try to stop twisting words around to include "peep" or "eep."

ciao-meow/GG Silly Central

( "Chilean CoPeepapo Mine Rescue" by Deb Lindsey for the Washington Post)

Buona Pasqua from GG - Week's End

GG & her editor wish everyone who celebrates the holiday, a peaceful & lamb-like Easter. (Or happy spring, you get the idea.) We've asked GG to behave in polite company this weekend. We live in hope.

ciao-baa-meow/The Management

[adorable lambs via {this is is glamorous}]

Aussie Easter Bunny

Hello friends in Australia. This early bun's for you! [photograph by the dashing Sam Hood, 1945 for Smith's Weekly. Via State Library NSW]

ciao-meow/GG's spring holiday coordinator

Pasquetta in Italia

It's Pasquetta in Italy. Easter Monday is lots of fun. It's traditional to have a picnic or otherwise run around al fresco. People often say: "Natale con i tuoi, Pasqua con chi vuoi." or "Christmas with your family, Easter with the family and friends of your choice." Yay! Sadly, we are not in Italy today. But GG & her editor count as Pasquetta pals. Hope you had fun yesterday. Read Bleeding Espresso's Still Celebrating (Pasquetta) from last year. We were going to include a good recipe for pastiera but can't find the one we used in years past & those popping up in a search are just plain weird. There aren't people around this year to dig in, so we'll not make it. It's full of flavors , such as orange-blossom water, that remind us of Greece & the eastern Mediterranean, reflecting the region's heritage. GG's editor has photographs of still-standing date palm gardens, intarsia boxes, & other mementos that remind us of the area's ever-present history. Now, ciao-meow, because we have eggs to dye. xoxo

(via scan/ Gourmet magazine/April 2006/by John Kernick)

Easter Flowers

Greek Easter Eggs - Week's End

Even though Orthodox Easter isn't until 19 April, we could not resist showing these photos today. Here is the link for information & photographers credits. (They entered a contest!) If you don't know about Greek (& to be fair, one entrant is from Bulgaria) egg dyes... natural materials play a big part, especially red onion skins. We did this last year & it was fun...but we've no camera & these look better than ours, for sure.

ciao-eggy-meow/GG/mgmt

Royal Easter Show, 1935

...in New South Wales, Australia. Love this photograph of the lady & her big cat. What were they doing, we wonder? A cat exhibit? Flower show? An Easter stroll? Don't know yet. We just like it. (photograph by Sam Hood, NSW archives.) GG wants a cat-hat (it would seem) because she's sitting underneath a big straw hat , her long legs are sticking out. Never a dull moment. xo