We have always made an Easter Tree - a branch of forsythia (which is usually in bloom by then) with decorated eggs hanging from it.
The eggs (which have been added to by children and grandchildren over the decades) are stored in egg boxes in the bottom of the grandmother clock along with the Easter string (more on that later!).
We decorate the eggs in various ways after blowing them:
- painting
- soaking in paint
- wetting pieces of coloured tissue and sticking them (no glue needed) to the egg shells, then peeling it off when it is dry - this gives lovely gentle pastel shades that flow into one another like a Monet.
- placing a leaf on the egg, and then tying it in place by putting the egg in the cut off toe of an old pair of tights - you then boil it up in a pan and the colour leeches from the tights and leaves a brown egg with a leaf pattern on it.
- plonking on finger paint, then swirling it around into lovely abstract patterns.
Fixing the string to the egg is done by making a hole in the top of the egg with a darning needle, then rogering it about until you have a hole about third of an inch in diameter - you then tie half a matchstick to the end of some cotton thread and drop the stick onto the hole, then pull the string and jiggle it around until the matchstick is horizontal and blocks the hole.
Easter string has been made from decades of children's colourful French knitting wound around a rolling pin. The string is laid the night before and the rolling pin placed by the children's beds - they then get up in the morning and roll up the string to find their Easter eggs - most fun if it goes around the garden and in and out of the house. I have photos of my children following the string in their nighties in the SNOW!!!
