Happy Easter!

 

Christ is risen! Let's rejoice! 

Happy Easter everyone! Hope you are cosy at your homes, having a great family time, enjoying your chocolate eggs and bunnies and other Easter treats and looking forward to some warmer spring days :)

Time to sum up my Easter preparations. I planned Easter long ahead this year. Naturally, the Nordic Spring theme ruled. A sort of a follow up to the Nordic Christmas I had last year. First I set my mind on knitting a set of Nordic Eggs/ Balls (from Arne & Carlos book)

 

Done! Check!
In the meantine I made some Nordic style - jumper style stamped cards

Done, check!

On Easter Saturday I prepared this Easter basket for the blessing at church (Heather of Audrey Eclectic - especially for you, I thought you might find these photos interesting :))) ) We took it to a church in Wrexham where Easter baskets blessing are held each year. The church was an absolute choc-a-bloc! Just imagine! And that wonderful smell of foods in the basket displayed on the tables by the altar! 

I really missed celebrating this custom in the UK so it was my first time this year!

For those of you who do not know this Easter custom and on Easter days see families with children carrying a basket decorated with green branches of boxwood, ribbons and covered with a doily, here are a few words of explanation. Easter basket blessing (also called in Pl święconka - check the eng Wikipedia entry on this - click!) - this is an old early medieval Eastern European custom (supposedly with the pagan roots) in countries of Eastern Europe. Especially popular with the Polish people who love bringing those baskets to churches. Children are always taken to churches too - as it's fun - first decorating the eggs, then getting them blessed :)

On Saturday, the day before the proper Easter day, baskets are brought to churches (or sometimes if the weather is nice, the event takes place outside the church), displayed on provided tables and about 15 min service is conducted by a priest during which he blesses the types of foods, sprinkles them with the holy water and tells people what they symbolise.

A typical Pl Easter basket lined with a linen napkin or a doily usually contains: boiled eggs (shelled or not), pieces of sausages and cold meat, salt and pepper, bread, butter, grated horseradish, cottage cheese, pieces of baked cake as well as some decorations in a form of a lamb with a red flag (symbolizes God, The Lord, the winner of Death), decorated Easter eggs, branches of boxwood. Ribbons are often tied around the basket handles too. I love the churches smell on that day!

After the blessing, people take their baskets home and from then on they can start Easter feasting (often called the Easter Sunday breakfast) that is commenced by sharing the samples of the blessed foods between the members of a family. Easter wishes are exchanged then and everybody sits down at a table and eats, eats, eats.... :) Well, that's Easter Day no. 1 for you.

What do we do on the 2nd day of Easter- Monday? Apart from the church going and feasting throughout the 2nd day, we pour buckets of water on each other - yes, we really do! (Well, I spared myself this custom this year) The wetter, the better, they say. Seriously, this is a real folksy custom that came from a Pl countryside into towns - boys chase (unmarried) girls with buckets full of water and pour it on them. The more attractive and popular girl is, the more soaking she will be. In the past girls would also chase the boys and beat their bare legs with willow branches but this custom seems to be fading away slowly. Today mostly young people stick to this pouring water tradition and it works best when it's warm and sunny. The oldies tend to be rather elusive on this day :))). There's also a "posh" version of Śmigus-Dyngus (the pl name for this custom, for more info check the eng wiki click!) the older people would prefer to be sprinkled with a few drops of perfume and you would creep up behind your granny and grandad's back, lash them with some perfumes announcing loudly: Śmigus-Dyngus! and you ran away :) I used to do this joke to my grandparents when I was a kid :) Oh! By the way, this custom is performed only till 12.oo o'clock on Wet Monday. Dunno why but perhaps to give everybody a chance to dry up! :)

There can be even more said about the rich Easter traditions in Pl and other Eastern European countries and if you are interested in findning out more - refer to wikipedia and check on these topics:  Egg decorating in Slavic countries, pysanka, Polish pisanka, Polish Easter customs, Easter customs around the world.

Apart from preparing some of the traditional Easter foods, I also did some baking and biscuit decorating :)

Some Scandinavian heart shortbreads decorated with Easter colours...

 ... and Easter bunnies - and since the weather is cold at Easter this year - they are wearing their own Norwegian jumpers :)))

A cross cultural accent too -  a little mini bara brith also ended up in my Easter basket too! I have a tiny mini loaf tin and I thought it would make a perfect cake sample for my basket :)

It may look huge in the photo but in real it's not bigger than your palm.

All things nice and lovely but life is life and unfortunately the Easter Sunday morning wasn't very lucky for me - stepping backwards to make a way for my bf I miscounted the steps and fell down the stairs at home, bashed my ribs against the doorframe, got bruised and seriously strained my left knee joint :( Blessing in disguise: no limb broken - thank God! but my leg is very stiff and the joint is tense and its ligaments (tendons?) whatever is there - awfully sore. Each movement causes me pain. I'm hoping this week of break will let me recover a bit before I'm back to work. I'm trying to focus on the more positive things at the moment.

With all these Easter makes I'm joining tonight a great blog hop Hand-made Monday and I'm looking forward to a trip round some crafty blogs.
Also a great Easter Parade is taking place at Heather's blog - do join in and show off your Easter makes :)