Easter Outfits

The pic is from Holy Saturday. This is what my daughter and I wore to our church for the food blessing. The weather was lovely. Quite cold, but sunny. No snow, at long last, yay!

My daughter was carrying a basket of her own with goodies for herself and her brother - a tin of Easter eggs and some Easter chocolates! My round shopper was ideal for the Simnel Cake. Yummy! Everything else (the ham, the bread, the remaining Easter eggs, horseradish...) was kindly carried in a large basket by the men in our family - sorry, no pic!

On my little girl:
Mary Janes - Naturino
leggings & tights - can't remember
coat - Marks&Spencer
cardi - H&M
hat - made by my Mum, embellished by me
corsage - made by me

On me:
boots - Bata
tights - Polzela (local brand)
coat - Boden
scarf - Etsy (AliceCaroline)
leather bag - Laura Ashley
shopper - little gift shop in Ljubljana

Alas, most of the yummy food has already been eaten (I say alas because there was lots of it - we're off on a detox now...)!

Yummy Simnel Cake

Hope you all had a lovely Easter weekend. Ours was great, as usual - we followed our tradition, spent a lot of time in church (even the kids this year, and they enjoyed it!), and consumed not very healthy amounts of traditional Easter food. In Slovenia, this means Easter bread, Easter ham (baked in bread), lots of colourful Easter eggs (the most basic colour being red, representing Christ's blood), horseradish (representing the nails on the cross) and Easter sweets.

In this last category I don't follow Slovenian tradition but rather opt for the British one. Traditional Easter sweet in Slovenia is called 'potica' - it's a yeast cake roll with (most often) walnut filling, but as it is not the easiest thing to make I'm not very keen on spending hours and hours in the kitchen sweating over it. That's why I was over the moon when I learnt about traditional British Simnel Cake - when I saw it in a magazine (I think it was 'She' magazine) I decided then and there that I was going to introduce a new Easter tradition in my home.

Voila! This is the result! I've made it for the second time this year and we all love it (by all I mean all adults, my husband & I, my parents, my in-laws, but not my children... they prefer chocolate eggs anyway!). It's much easier to make than 'potica' and I like it better as well. Plus my Mum and my Mum-in-law make excellent 'potica' and we always get a slice or two so... why bother?

The other 'non-traditional' Slovenian Easter sweet I make is Hot Cross Buns. I've been making them for years and they're well-loved by all the consumers... even the young ones! I posted a pic of my Hot Cross Buns in my previous post.

What are your family's Easter traditions?

Easter Blessings

Have a very happy Easter, dear friends!

Enjoy your Easter treats, ...

... count all your blessings...

... and live your life in colour!

Hosanna In The Highest!

Our family greenery from Palm Sunday. The two bunches in the crystal vase were made by my Mum. She loves flower (and greenery...) arranging. And she's really good at it. The one with pink heather was made for me and the one without the pinks was my husband's.

These two 'butaras' were bought at the market in our capital. They're made with coloured shavings of wood. The red one for my little girl and the one in the colours of our national flag for my boy.

I'm making Simnel Cake and Hot Cross Buns tomorrow! Very much looking forward to it! And promise to blog about it...

Sweet Ladybird

At long last! Here are the pics of my Harris Tweed ladybird softie I crafted last Friday! My card reader still doesn't work but I have been enlightened by my husband that I can download pics from my camera directly... Go figure! And it's so much easier than the whole procedure with the card reader... I'm not the technical type, as you might have noticed!

With the ladybird, I followed Alison's instructions but I made one small change - I wanted the spots slightly smaller so I cut them off around the edges. I thought they fit better onto the small body of my sweet little softie...

I'm really pleased with the result. For the pics, I asked my new friend to pose with my Lulu Guinness poppy clasp purse - they go really well together, don't you think? For the background, I used my tweedie bag that I'm rather fond of as well - it adds the refreshing green to the scene...

Anyway, my nearly nine-year-old boy is madly in love with my ladybird... He got one of Alison's dinosaurs last Christmas but he wasn't remotely as impressed with it as he was with the ladybird. And I thought I knew what he fancied!

Calling Joanna!

Hi, my dear blogging friends. I'm sorry for the lack of posts recently (well, to be honest, one post). I meant to blog last Friday, as I finally got round to crafting my sweet Harris Tweed ladybird but I couldn't download the pics from my camera. There must be something wrong with my card reader. My husband was out of town for the weekend so there was no one around to help me! As soon as I sort that out I promise to post about my lovely new Tweedie Softie. It was pure joy to craft it, exactly what I needed on Friday evening!

We celebrated Palm Sunday yesterday. We traditionally bring bunches of spring flowers and pussy willow and ivy and olive tree branches to church for the blessing - I'll post about those as well once I can download the pics. For now, here's a picture of a traditional Slovenian 'butara' - shavings of wood are coloured and tied around thick branches, and it is lovely to see bursts of colour at the Palm Sunday mass!

Now let me get to the main point of today's post: I'm looking for Joanna! She was the only blogger who commented on 100th post, which makes her the absolute winner and of course the recipient of one of my bracelets. So, please, Joanna, do get in touch. Could you please post your address to my e-mail: mojca_stefanic@yahoo.com? As you do that, please state which of the two bracelets you prefer - the blue one or the blue-cream-pink one. As soon as I get your address I'll put your presie in the post!

Have a lovely week, everyone!

Annunciation

We're celebrating the Feast of Annunciation today. I'm also celebrating the feast of my patron saint - my name, Mojca, is a form of 'Mary' in Slovenian.

Leonardo da Vinci

The Annunciation is the celebration of the announcement by the angel Gabriel to virgin Mary that she would become the Mother of God. It is celebrated nine months before Christmas.

Andrea della Robbia

The Annunciation has been one of the main topics in Christian art, particularly during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. These are my favourite depictions of the event.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.