Old Town Home Category: 'Easter'

Happy Easter from Old Town Home

2013-03-31T14:00:57.030-04:00

Here at Old Town Home, we'd like to take a moment to wish you all a very Happy Easter! We're having a bit of a low key day, enjoying some time together and even an Easter tradition or two.

Admittedly I'm a bit late to the party this year. Most of our annual decorations didn't make it out of the attic, including our egg wreath for the front door, blown glass eggs for the living room, and our green bunny plates. My only decorating effort was to set out my three new ceramic bunnies on a shelf in our kitchen. I picked these up last year in Sonoma on my birthday trip, and was happy to be able to finally display them.

In addition to the bunnies, I did try to get my act together at the last moment though with a little craft project, and tackled an egg coloring endeavor yesterday afternoon.

Using an eco-friendly kit that Alex's mom sent to us, I got to work with some trepidation. Having not planned for the event, I only had brown eggs on hand, and wasn't sure how they would turn out.

Despite not following the directions, the final result was quite lovely in my opinion. My guess is the brown base gave a more muted, aged look to the eggs. And I'm okay with that, in fact, I actually like this tone better than their brighter and intended counterparts.

I even made a special egg for Alex.

What are you up to today? Participating in any Easter egg hunts or enjoying a nice family dinner? We don't know about you, but we're officially ready for spring!

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Happy Easter from Old Town Home

2012-04-08T12:18:05.933-04:00

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy Easter if you're celebrating, and a wonderful Sunday if you're not. We hope your day is filled with fun, family, food, and anything you want to accomplish today.

We even ran into a few Easter Bunnies last weekend while out and about. I think they were getting ready for this weekend.

If you're looking for any last minute and fun Easter projects, check out our tutorial on doing marbleized dyed eggs.

We took advantage of yesterday's spring weather to be quite productive, and we'll fill you in on some of what we got done this coming week. But until then, leave us a comment and let us know what you took on and got crossed off of your to do list yesterday.

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Easter Decorations: Putting a Spring in Our Step

2012-04-05T11:49:38.517-04:00

We are well known by friends and neighbors for seizing almost any opportunity to decorate our house for whatever holiday may be afoot. I'm not sure if it's because of childhood memories and traditions, or simply because I like to embellish our home with little pops of color or festive decor, but I'm a sucker for holiday decorations, both large and small.

For me, each new holiday marks a milestone in the year that I have to look forward to. Whether it's a change in season, an opportunity to see family, or a great excuse to have a cookout and party with friends, I want to acknowledge the event or day in a way that brings a little bit of cheer to our home.

Though we don't go nearly as overboard for Easter/spring as we do for Halloween or Christmas, I like to put out a couple of small decorations here and there to let the Easter Bunny know that this house would like a little chocolate too...if he happens to hop by looking for a place to give some out.

We have a few small decorations placed around the inside of our house. Nothing too major, just some fun and interesting things I've picked up over the years and really like.

In the living room I put out a few crackled glass eggs in a bowl that was given to me by my grandmother. I'm not sure what it is about crackled glass, but I tend to like this look for just about any holiday. These offer just enough color to say, "Hey, it's spring! Get excited!"

In the dining room on our hulking buffet, I put out a couple of small plaster Easter Bunnies. I think they add just the right amount of kitsch to our home.

I mean, who doesn't like a little cute kitsch from time to time?

The main thing I like to put out for Easter and spring is a small wreath on our front door. It's a wreath made of glitter covered eggs that I bought several years ago. Honestly, it sounds so much more tacky than it actually is. But before we put it up this year, we had to protect our new front door from the scratchy back of the wreath. In previous years, I really didn't care how it affected the door. It's amazing what hundreds of hours of effort will make you think about.

To protect the door, we cut a few simple strips of adhesive backed felt. It's nothing special, just the stuff you put on furniture feet. Since our house has hardwood floor throughout, we have tons of this felt all over the place.

Once we had the felt in place, we just looped a little bit of wire over the door knocker and we were fully "Easter-fied."

Look at how great our new door color works with the happy spring palette! What a great match.

The final Easter item arrived by way of my in-laws. This delightful Harry & David care package contained . an adorable assortment of petit fours in fun spring colors.

Between those and the nearby deep fried Cadbury Creme Egg offering at Eamonn's and Society Fair, I'm not so sure I need the Easter Bunny to bring anything more than carrots and celery.

Are you doing anything fun to celebrate Easter or the arrival of spring? Any good decorations that you've put up around your house? Or perhaps you're just banking on a Sunday basket full of goodies from the Easter Bunny.

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An Eggcellent Day

2011-04-24T13:32:11.000-04:00

It was a gorgeous day here in Northern Virginia! Alex and I took a break from our ongoing indoor projects to make a little headway on a few outdoor to dos we had lined up. I'm happy to say that our outdoor furniture is up from the basement and assembled, the ivy is trimmed and our garden beds are the proud new owners of a few transplanted plants from Cleveland. (Thanks Mom and Dad!)

My brother is also in town this weekend, and in true corny fashion, I was hoping to relive a bit of our childhood together by having an Easter egg decorating competition. My brother showed his enthusiasm for the task by taking a nap, but with or without him, I was determined to adorn the dozen eggs I had in the frig.

I began the project by hard boiling the eggs. A simple task, if you know the correct steps:

Place eggs in saucepan.
Cover eggs with cold tap water, filling to 1" above the tops of the eggs.
Bring water to a rolling boil over high heat.
Once boiling, reduce heat to medium and cook for ten minutes.
Remove pan from heat and replace hot water with ice water in saucepan over eggs.
Chill until cooled completely.

Now that I had my hard boiled eggs, I was ready to get started using the Paas Marble Magic kit I picked up at Target last week for $1.99. I first started out by dyeing the eggs their base coat of pink, orange or green. Smooth sailing.

Next I made four additional batches of dye for the top coat. According to the directions, you should add three tablespoons of vegetable oil to each of the color baths, vigorously mix the oil and dye together, and immediately place the egg in the mixture, "rapidly turning with egg dipper" for about 30 seconds.. Hmm. Didn't sound too difficult, but as you can see from the short video, I wasn't "eggactly" pleased with the results.

Frustrated with the process, I decided to kick it old school and do a 2-tone egg by hand, as well as try a technique I remember using with my grandma, which involves wrapping the egg in a small piece of cloth, tying it off tight at the top with a rubber band, and then submersing the bandaged egg in the dye.

The results of the cloth-wrapped egg were subtle and interesting.

Feeling like I shouldn't completely abandon the Paas kit though, I hopped to it and gave the marbling another try, this time vigorously stirring and rotating the egg with a plastic fork, not the egg dipper. The results were much better!

My only complaint is that the vegetable oil in the egg bath left an oily film on the surface of the eggs, which after completely dry, I wiped off with a paper towel.

All in all, it was a fun project that took less than an hour, brought me back to my childhood, and is providing my lunch of egg salad for the week. Not too shabby.

Did anyone else dye eggs this year? Any interesting techniques to share? In the meantime, enjoy the rest of your weekend (and, if you celebrate it, happy Easter).

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