A late easter note.

Like every holiday Easter has come and gone in what seemed the blink of an eye. I’ve been quite busy the week before easter, baking cupcakes and cakes, tinkering on surprise eggs for my oldest nephew and making bread to be consecrated at the Easter service. My absolute favourite this Easter were those cute little bunny cupcakes you see above. I came across the idea at Created by Diane and I couldn’t stop thinking about them. Finally I chose this really yummy vanilla cupcake recipe and topped them with mascarpone mixed with vanilla and sugar. They tasted really excellent and everybody loved those cheeky little bunny bums .

Another thing I really couldn’t wait to make this Easter was a traditional paschal lamb cake, or in this case paschal rabbit. In Austria these soft, white, sugary cakes are baked especially for the days around easter. In my family they usally just were topped with some icing sugar and mostly ate for breakfast. Since this tradition had stopped now for some years I was eager to revive it. I found this quite lovely recipe on the web and coated the bunnies with a mixture of egg whites and icing sugar. Topped with some sugar flowers they really looked lovely I think. And they also tasted really good.

Last but not least I made this easter surprise eggs for my oldest nephew. As I mentioned in one of my last posts, I really fell in love with the idea by not martha to disguise easter eggs as chocolate filled surprise eggs. You sould really take some time to make those, keeping in mind, that they need some time to harden at each step. But just stick to the instructions over at not martha’s and you’ll be really fine!

 

Doctor stitching who?

Some presents need somewhat longer in the making than others… and some really need too long. I started this Doctor Who crossstitch cussion for my dear sweetheart last fall, determined to finish it till Christmas. Sadly I couldn’t achieve that goal and had to give him a half finished David Tennant Doctor as well as missing nineth and tenth Doctor under the Christmas tree. And it took me, including some procrastinating I have to admit, until today to finish it. But here it finally is and I think it’s awesome!

I’m quite hooked on crossstitching, admiring the neat projects that you can find around the web for some time now. With some patience patterns can be found everywhere on the web, but I collected some of my favourites over at pinterest. And if you don’t want to get stuck in a project like this for over half a year like me – there are some people out there who really know about cool crossstitching and might serve to some of your handmade needs: Check out lovely Mrs. x&x facebook page – I saw many of her designs now and she’s a real cross-pro!

Easter egg picks.

I’m working on some things at the moment, but none of them is ready to be shown on this blog yet. So, in the meantime and to break my resent silence and just because there is so much lovely stuff all over the net right now: My favourite DIY easter egg picks.

Message in a egg – I found the first one some while ago and I think it’s the perfect combination of the always beloved fortune cookies and easter eggs. Write your secret easter message on a small piece of paper and hide it inside a beautiful coloured egg for your loved ones. Find a deatailed how-to on oh! craft.

Chocolate easter surprise eggs – This is my absolute favourite! The idea is just too awesome and I really can’t wait to make some chocolate surprise eggs of my own soon! I always loved, and honestly still do, chocolate surprise eggs but I never could think of any easy way to make them at home. So check out this neat instructions over at not martha and surprise your folks big time!

Silhouette easter eggs – They are around the web for some time and I remember wanting to make some of those last year. I hope to find the time this year because, honestly, they just look adorable, don’t they? Find instructions at Le Papier Studio.

Tattoo easter eggs – Temporary tattoo easter eggs were always the high achievers goal in my family. After we had dyed lots and lots of beautiful colourful eggs my father used to dig out all the leftover easter egg tattoos and the most talented and trustworthy easter egg dyer was appointed to carefully put this fragile pictures on the eggs. It always was a nerve-racking task for the chosen one as well as for the rest of the family who was carefully watching the procedure and giving lots of good advice. As you might imagine, this mostly ended in a minor controversy, leaving the tattoo delegate offended in his skills and the rest of us with the silent plan to get nominated next year and to show everybody how it’s really done! This is always one of my brightest memories when I think back on my childhood days and easter and so temporary tattoos for easter eggs always hold some kind of fascination for me. The one on the picture above are really beautiful as well and a clear improvement to the very infantil designs of the 80’s and 90’s. So maybe I will choose myself this year trustworthy and show everybody how to make real lovely tattoo easter eggs!

For more crafty ideas go over to my pinterest board.

“Play & Grimm” and more News…

For my sisters birthday I invented a game called “Play & Grimm”, consisting of a board and question cards. Her biggest dream is to buy the “Grimmsche Wörterbuch” – so for each right answered question she could win money! It was real fun and we had a great time…
And there are more news: Check out www.manuela-heidenreich.com for my illustration projects! Have fun! C U!

Spring paper door wreath

A short update from my side of the moon: Spring is still all around and seeming to stay for a little longer! Easter has past, quite successfully with lots of chocolate eggs, bunnies and some stomache aches… I put all my easter eggs away in boxes for next year and needed a replacement and most of all something new for our front door, which is horrible empty since Christmas. So I made a wreath out of paper flowers, but just take a look:

That’s that for now – XX Mardou

Spring’s here!

And this really should be the biggest announcement of this blog post today! Spring is here – finally! I nearly can’t believe it but it’s true and it feels great!

Nadja once again thank you for your great last blog post! I read it at work and couldn’t stop laughing during my lunchtime in front of the pc! Throwing bricks is quiete fun I think! And I love the two of us as M&N’s characters – even Nadja seems a little greenish in the face!

But last week another brick hit us – but I don’t want to tell to much yet…

Oh – Nadja I still didn’t responed to your comment on my fish-post: The graphics are made from photographs I’ve taken with my digital camera and a watercolour texture that I multiplied on them in Photoshop (and some other minor image editing). But I too like the effect very much and I really think, that one should put things together that go together!

An announcement: There will be a new category called Tinkering were we can put all our handmade projects! I got into this stuff quiet serious recently and can’t wait to put some pictures on the blog – starting now:

Scribble Cookies

I made Easter Scribble Cookies for my nephews! I found the idea on Kelly Wilkinsons great blog Make Grow Gather which I’m reading and enjoying almost everyday now – so have a look!

Kelly Wilkinsons recipe:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius
2. Break crayons into small pieces
3. Arrange in small cookie mold
4. Bake for 5 minutes until crayons melt, and remove while colors are still distinct (if you leave in the oven too long, it will get too melty and the colors will run into each other)
5. Let cool and pop out of molds.

I loved the idea and bought some small muffin molds and put my old crayons in it and this is what they turned out:

I made two small boxes out of paper (printed the first letters of my nephews names on it with white colour and curled carton) to keep the scribble cookies in. I can’t wait until easter’s here and I can give them to my two sweet nephews! I think they’ll like them!

Easter Eggs

The big ones already got some presents this weekend: I made easter eggs for my two sisters and our mum! It was quiete a thing to make 18 of them, but I think they really looked lovely in the end! I also pasted colored fancy paper onto some old cat-food-boxes, put read tissue paper that was left from St. Nicholas into it and the eggs. Then I wraped them up with some plastic wrap and put this lovely red and white cord around them. But look for yourself:

And, because he doesn’t mind easter eggs and other things like that too much, some selfmade chocolates for my dad:

They are really delicious and quite easy to make (because I made the recipe up on the way):

Little brown ones – recipe

– mix marzipan with Amaretto and almond slivers
– form little balls
– roll the balls in more almonds slivers
– melt milk chocolate and dip the balls in it
– let them dry

Little white ones – recipe

– mix marzipan with Cointreau and poppy seeds
– form balls and roll them in cornflakes
– melt white chocolate and dip the balls in it
– let them dry  and put some stripes with the milk chocolate on them

Little cornflake heaps – recipe

– mix almond slivers with cornflakes and poppy seeds
– melt white chocolate
– mix everything up with the chocolate
– make small heaps and sprinkle some more poppy seeds on them
– let them dry

So that’s all from me today – I’m off for a cosy remain-Sunday on the couch! Bye!

XX Mardou