Hopfaldera

Easter ideas

Okay, easter is coming... Time to decorate the house with flowers and color!

Damaris and Emil have already worked on colorful decorations.

Some easter ideas for myself (and you, lovely reader):

Egg cozies from a pattern on Yvestown
Stuffed fabric eggs on Olive Juice and co
Easter bread (I usually make a bread with raisins and cardamom, but this WHO bread on Soulemama might also be a good idea)

Last year I embroidered napkins with easter drawing by the kids More on Flickr

Looking at that photo of last year's Easter Breakfast Table (with capitals) makes me happy. It gives me the feeling that we will be able to cheer up in time before easter if we surround ourselves with color and flowers.
We have felt very sad this week because the little daughter of friends died after only 17 weeks of life. This weekend we'll say goodbye to her.

Happy New Year!

It's Chinese New Year! We wish our family in Shanghai a very happy Year of the Rat! We say: Gelukkig nieuwjaar and Emil (who is studying Chinese) says: Xin nian hao!

We are planning to visit China in this ratty year. In May we will go to Shanghai to see how big Constantine and Amanda have become and to see how Piter and Dan are doing.
We are also planning to see some new places: Beijing and Xian. Now I hope they didn't send all their Terracotta warriors to Assen, here in the Netherlands, because we would like to see some of them there.

Mmm... judging from this picture, I'm sure it'll be fine!

( I borrowed both pictures in this post from Wikipedia)

 

Epiphany

Yesterday, when my kids were a little bored I asked them: ‘It’s the 6^th of January, right?’. ‘Yeah’, they said. ‘Then it is Driekoningen (Epiphany or Three Kings’ Day) today’, I told them.

This inspired a lot of activity: Damaris made a cake by crushing Lange Vinger cookies, mixing the crumbs with melted butter and shaping a cake out of the mixture on a gold paper plate. Before we ate the cake (I only did some digging to be honest), she put on whipped cream. Before thinking up the recipe for this desert Damaris said she wanted to make something that grown-ups would think was ridiculous but that children would love. I think she succeeded very well and the effect was great!

Of course she hid some beans for us to find in the cake to determine who would be the Kings, except we didn’t have any beans. Emil came up with the solution: 3 Lego blocks in the same colors as the paper crowns he was making for the lucky Kings. I made a drawing of the three kings in the traditional colors as well. At school Damaris and Emil learned that the first king (Melchior) is red, the second one (Balthazar) is blue and the last one (Caspar) is green (and also black). When they see the three kings portrayed somewhere with different colors, they say it is completely wrong and crazy. They are funny that way!

O yeah, who got the beans? Frederik found the red one, Emil blue, and Damaris got the green Lego block. I got a yellow king that Emil made to comfort the one person that wouldn’t find anything. And I didn’t have to finish my plate said Damaris. They are sweet that way too!