Make this, naturally: blue & botanical Easter Eggs

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Here's a lovely, last-minute tutorial for dying Easter eggs a stunning blue, and creating pretty, stencilled patterns out of leaves and flowers. Do you want to give it a go? There's still time!

The idea for this project came from my friend Pascale, who does it every year with her children. When they were little, she said, they would gasp with wonder at the patterns created on the eggs. Even now, as almost-grown-up teenagers, they still ask to make these decorative eggs every Easter, hunting through the garden for the "perfect" flower or leaf to create their stencil.

Pascale told me she would use egg dye to create a rainbow array of stenciled eggs, but I couldn't find any in our local shops and from past experience I hadn't had a lot of luck using food dyes. Instead, I found a tutorial for making a brilliant blue dye out of red cabbage, and it turned out to be incredibly easy.

What you'll need:

* Hard-boiled eggs * 1/2 red cabbage * White vinegar * Table salt * An old pair of pantyhose

This project works best on white eggs. If you can't find any, here is a super easy tutorial for whitening eggs, using only white vinegar. If you're going to do this (I did and it worked really well), make sure you hard-boil the eggs before whitening them - it will make them a lot less delicate when you come to rub the colour off.

Step 1: Make your dye

1. Roughly chop up half a red cabbage into pieces about the size of your fist. Toss them into a large saucepan, then pour in two litres of water, and bring it to the boil. Reduce to a simmer, and let it bubble away for half an hour.

2. Strain the now-purple water into a heat-proof bowl, and discard the cabbage. To the water, add four tablespoons of salt and four tablespoons of white vinegar, then stir it around until the salt dissolves.

Step 2: Prepare your eggs

1. While you're making your dye, hard-boil your eggs (and whiten them as per above, if needed)

2. Take a walk around your garden, or along your street. Look for small leaves and flowers in pretty patterns that catch your eye, and gather a little collection to take back inside

3. Cut off pieces of the old pantyhose, about 10 centimetres long each. Tie a knot in one end.

4. Now take one of your leaves or flowers and press them against one of the eggs. Put the egg and plant into the piece of pantyhose, and pull it tight before tying a knot at the other end (see below). Repeat this step for as many stenciled eggs as you hope to make

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Step 3: Wait for the magic to happen

1. Gently submerge your pantyhose-egg in the bowl of dye. You might want to mix things up by submerging some non-stenciled eggs, too, so you have a variety of plain and patterned eggs when you're done

(Pro tip: if your eggs are bit old and you find they're floating, pour the dye into a taller, more narrow vessel - I used a large vase - then once the eggs are all in the dye, lower a piece of cloth over the top. I used a Chux wipe. As the cloth soaks up the dye, it submerges, pushing the eggs down with it without marking or scratching them the way a more solid weight would do)

2. Leave the eggs in the dye for as long as you like. About an hour will give you a lovely, pale, blue. Several hours or overnight will turn them indigo

3. When you take the eggs out, gently cut them out of the pantyhose, and lift away the plant. It should reveal a beautiful, stenciled pattern

4. Place the eggs on a wire cake-rack to dry completely, before using them for your Easter decorations

Two final words of advice:

1. After about 24 hours, the dyed eggs turn from blue to more of a turquoise or aqua. They're still beautiful, but bear this in mind if you're being all strategic with your colour scheme

2. Ideally you'll want to do this project on a warm day with the windows open: our house really stank of cabbage!

Happy Easter dear friends, if this is something you celebrate. What are your plans? We're off to visit family in Bendigo, then helping to host an Easter egg hunt in our local park, followed by a roast lunch for 13 friends in our home, and then a day off on Monday to recover. See you on Tuesday!

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My people

On the weekend as I walked home with Mr B, pushing the double pram with two tired but happy children whose bellies were full of yum cha and ice cream, we got chatting about “tribes."

That morning I’d spent two hours at the Melbourne Museum in the company of a lovely bunch of women, some of whom I’d met before and others who were relative strangers, although we’d been in touch on Facebook and on blogs and, in most cases, by snail mail.

We were all part of an alumni group of folks who had participated in "Blog With Pip," a month-long online course that helps beginner bloggers get started, and helps more seasoned bloggers shake things up and improve them a bit.

It wasn't the first online course I’d ever done, nor the first group of alumni or otherwise that I’d been part of, but never before, not once since the Internet, had I experienced any genuine desire to “meet up” with members of an online group. But these people I did want to meet. I looked forward to it, and I loved every minute of it. I’ve met up with members of this group before, and I hope I’ll join them at other events in the future.

So as Mr B and I walked home that day, we got to thinking about what made me feel like these were “my people,” and why it was so easy for me to enjoy their company.

In the end, we figured the answer was as simple as “like attracts like.”

I chose to do the Blog With Pip course in the first place, over all the other blogging courses and lessons I could have pursued, because I admired the teacher Pip Lincolne. Her blog Meet Me At Mikes was one of the first blogs I'd ever read (I came across it when she hosted a sail mail project, of all things, in 2010); she is a talented and prolific author; we share similar interests (craft, creativity, colour); and she has a kindness and a sense of ethics and justice that I deeply admire.

I’m assuming a number of other people chose Pip’s course over all the others for much the same reasons, so right there we already had a lot of interests AND life views in common. Easy friendship! Lots to talk about!

It’s nice when you find your people, isn’t it. How do you find YOUR tribe?

Onwards to the pictures.

↑↑ Scout decided at the last minute that she wanted to join me “with the ladies” but then when she got there she was shy. And then she wasn’t.

↑↑ What's going on here is that I’m taking a picture of Pip taking a picture of Carly’s boots. Because, THOSE BOOTS.

↑↑ As we wandered through the indoor/outdoor rainforest, everyone pulled out their cameras to start taking photographs, and I gave Scout my phone so she could take photos too. Here she is taking a groundbreaking close-up of... a pole. She also took this picture of a waterfall using "Mummy's big camera."

↑↑ There is a weird taxidermy room at the Melbourne Museum, which is creepy and educational in equal measure (not pictured here but I'm just saying). I never can quite decide how I feel about it. Also a cluster of indoor windmills. A real Egyptian mummy (so cool!). And this truly bizarre human-map of… um, I can’t remember. Arteries, I think?

↑↑ It’s almost ANZAC Day. A few of us sat down to write remembrance / thank-you notes to men and women who have served in a protective capacity. I wrote a thank-you to my brother-in-law, who sacrificed and lost more than anyone should have to to keep the people of Timor safe.

Meanwhile, the photo at the top of this post is a not-so-shy-anymore Scout, getting a cuddle from Michelle while they looked at butterflies.

ps. Here's a roll-call of who was there, if you want to visit their blogs and say hi. Props to Jacquie from Bird and Fox who created this list - I have shamelessly copied it. You can read her impressions of our outing, and see her lovely photographs, here.

Jacquie - bird and fox Yvette - bear loves dove Emily - squiggleandswirl Carly - Tune Into Radio Carly Pip - Meet Me At Mike's Kate - One Small Life Michelle - Girl Gone Home Also Catherine, who has a blog yet to come (we can't wait!)

30 letters in 30 days

I've just signed up to join Write_On, a fun challenge to write 30 letters in 30 days, during the month of April. Already I'm making a list in my head of the people I want to write to. There's you guys, of course. My parents. My best friend from high school. My children - I think they would love getting special letters in the mail.

Maybe I'll write a fan letter or two, to someone I admire. I've never written a fan letter before. Not one! Who else? Who would YOU write to? There's still time to join Write_On if you want to take part.

The organisers have compiled a list of "30 reasons to write." Here are some of my favourite "reasons" from last year's campaign:

+ To send a re-thank you for a gift you received, have already thanked for but use so much you want to thank again.

+ To send a cheer up message– a note to a friend who has had a tough go of it lately.

+ To send a note to a business where you recently received great service.

+ To send a letter to your roommate, partner, or spouse – someone who lives in the same house as you.

+ To write a nice note to teachers of all kinds: your kids teachers, your yoga teacher, an old boss who taught you something.

+ To write a letter to your future self.

+ To write a letter to a neighbor telling them how much you enjoy their tree, garden, house.

What do you say? Are you with me? If you need more reasons to write, go here. If you want to join the Write_On campaign to write 30 letters in 30 days (and you'll get some free snail-mail swag), go here.

Image credit: photograph of Edward VII postbox by "Lincolnian (Brian)" on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons

The poppies

Last week at the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show I stopped by a stunning garden of trees set around a lake like an oasis, with drifts of brilliant, crimson, crocheted poppies in clusters around it. Looking through the foliage and across the lake, the poppies continued all the way down, into some sort of field. When we stopped to admire them, Scout asked me to help her onto a rock and would I please take her photograph. This is quite rare. She patiently allows me to point a camera at her all day long but rarely requests it, and never before has she deliberately set herself up to pose with a backdrop in mind. As I was helping her onto the rock and pulling out the camera, a man lightly touched my shoulder and said “That is perfect. That garden was made for her. I made it for her.” I smiled and thanked him as he walked away, but was distracted moments later as Ralph started crying and the crowds were growing thick and we’d managed to lose both grandparents and when I turned back to Scout, she had decided to lie down on the rock and was pretending to snore. It was only later that I realised I’d bumped into the creative director of this whole amazing oasis, award-winning landscaper Phillip Johnson, and it made me so happy to think that he’d enjoyed seeing my daughter interact with his garden (which, incidentally, was an ANZAC tribute garden, making beautiful use of the handmade poppies contributed by volunteer-crafters from across Australia for the 5000 Poppies project).

So, belatedly, thank you for your kind words Phillip. We loved what you created and why you did it!

Melbourne dispatch - Flower & Garden Show

Yesterday was all about gardens and grandparents at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show.

We peered through the windows of cubby houses bigger than most apartments I've lived in, and up at bird houses not much smaller. We explored water gardens, cottage gardens, Australian gardens, edible gardens, gardens for birds, gardens for bees, gardens for native creatures, gardens for walls.

Crimson, crocheted poppies lay in stunning swathes on the banks of an entirely new lake. Under a shady avenue of trees, a grassy path meandered through waist-high fields of cornflowers that, last week, didn't exist at all.

Mannequins loomed tall inside the historic Exhibition Buildings hall, clad in foliage finery. "I like this one Mummy, it is lubly!" breathed an excited Scout, about a Druid-like hooded cape made almost entirely out of bark.

Her Nanna bought her a little terrarium to keep in her room and, out of an entire stall of adorable little mini plant-worlds, Scout managed to choose the only ugly plant. "I love this because it is pink," she explained.

Ralph pulled faces from his pram and played peek-a-boo ("peep-bo!") from underneath the hood. He crawled around the grass and tried to charm random strangers into sharing their picnics with him. He sat back down with us and ate three-quarters of a croissant, a banana, half a chocolate muffin, half a bucket of hot chips, several handfuls of blueberries, a piece of fish and half of another banana, and then looked at my coffee and my measly few crackers with cheese and said, "More?"

Beautiful

Every day I tell Scout she is beautiful. I tell Ralph he is beautiful, too. I don’t mean beautiful on the outside, although through my mother-eyes, I happen to think they are exceptionally good looking kids. I mean they are beautiful souls.

“Beautiful" in our house is an all-encompassing word that means kind, buoyant, loving, affectionate, funny, clever, quirky, creative and, most of all, bringer-of-joy.

“You are so beautiful,” I tell Scout, when she tenderly rocks her baby-doll to sleep saying “shh shh shhhhh, shh shh shhhh," or announces that she is going to twirl for the entertainment of the (blind) dog. “You are so beautiful,” I tell Ralph, when he scrunches up his nose with immeasurable glee because he has climbed onto a chair all by himself, or begs me to dance, or crawls over to the giant teddy and cuddles it with an audible “ahhhh.”

I text Mr B a picture of the children standing side by side at their little blackboard, drawing a duet masterpiece in chalk. “They are so beautiful,” he texts back. And later, on FaceTime, “Scout! Ralph! You are beautiful! When I get home I am going to kiss you and tickle you!”

But lately I’ve been second-guessing myself and my vocabulary. I am bringing up my children in a world that places a premium on physical beauty, and the having or the lack of said beauty is tied to everything from self esteem to bullying to professional success to relationships to personal finances to mental health.

Is it dangerous, I began to ask myself, to raise my children to feel worth from their parents in a loaded word like “beauty?”

“You are so beautiful,” I whispered to Scout last week, as I carried her up the stairs to bed. What I truly meant was, “Your soul shines like a beacon of good in my dark and confused world.” But as I walked back down the stairs alone, I started to panic. What if all she had taken from my words was “You have lovely eyes and your hair is shiny?”

Ultimately, though I think that this is where the combination of language and parenting can be a powerful thing.

Because I have decided that it is OK to tell my children they are beautiful. Often and with punctuation. In fact, I have decided that it is important for me to do this.

For many years to come, my children will learn - from peers, from strangers, from media, from pretty much everywhere - that physical beauty is something to be arduously sought. They will learn this whether I want them to or not, because we do not live in a cave.

But my children are learning their language by immersion, not from a text book. So far, nowhere have they read or been told “The word ‘beauty’ only means ‘looking good’.” So in these first, formative years of their life and language, their experience of the word “beautiful” is teaching them that “beauty,” first and foremost, means “goodness.”

Sometimes Scout pushes my hair out of my eyes and says “Mummy you are so booful,” and I know her words have nothing to do with how I look. She also tells the dog, the cat, her baby dolls, her baby brother and her friend Bella that they are “booful,” again with zero reference to their looks.

While I can’t protect either of my children from what others will tell them in the future, I am laying a linguistic foundation today that I hope will equip them to understand the aesthetic of beauty to be rich and complex and multi-layered.

And soul-deep.

So I will continue to tell my children they are beautiful. Because I want them to feel beautiful, in the full meaning that I have chosen to give that word, and because I want them to learn how to look for the true beauty of people they meet as they go through life.

And when the world starts to load "skinny" or "pouty" or "even-featured" onto their experience of that word, it will already hold, in their minds and hearts, something infinitely more... beautiful.

Image credit: Volkan Olmez, licensed under Creative Commons

What to say when you're writing a letter

Actually don't ask me, ask American teens Wally and Nora, direct from a kitchen table in 1950. This movie is SO BAD but actually quite helpful, with simple tips like:

* Write conversationally, as though you're talking to the person * Illustrate what you're saying with stories and anecdotes and other bits and pieces to bring the words to life * Imagine how the recipient might be reacting to your letter, how it will make them feel (* Think how you WANT them to feel, and write to create that feeling in them) * Make your letter look nice (!)

Ok let's meet Wally and Nora:

Yours sincerely, Naomi xo

ps. I first discovered this video via Post Whistle blog

Oh hello famous person, what do you think about snail-mail?

"Two of the cruelest, most primitive punishments our town deals out to those who fall from favor are the empty mailbox and the silent telephone." Hedda Hopper (actor, gossip columnist)

“If it takes the entire army and navy to deliver a postal card in Chicago, that card will be delivered.” Grover Cleveland (22nd & 24th President of the United States)

"I love the rebelliousness of snail mail, and I love anything that can arrive with a postage stamp. There's something about that person's breath and hands on the letter." Diane Lane (actor)

"This is the Night Mail crossing the Border, Bringing the cheque and the postal order, Letters for the rich, letters for the poor, The shop at the corner, the girl next door." W.H. Auden (poet)

“To write is human, to receive a letter: Devine!” Susan Lendroth (children's book author)

"There is a huge pleasure in writing a letter, putting it in an envelope and sticking the stamp on it. And huge pleasure in receiving real letters, too." Tom Hodgkinson (writer, editor, socialist)

"When I was a kid, the high point of the day was to go to the mailbox and see if any mail came for me, and I'm still stuck in that mode." Jim Beaver (actor)

"I get mail; therefore I am." Scott Adams (cartoonist)

ps. Envelope pictures are of some of my latest outgoing letters. But you already knew that.

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ps. have you heard about my new letter-writing and mail-art e-course? 

Over four weeks, I will guide you through multiple methods of making beautiful mail-art and creative, handmade stationery; teach you the art of writing and storytelling; help you forge personal connections in your letters and find pen-pals if you want them; and share time-management tips so even the busiest people can enjoy sending and receiving letters. Register your place or find out more information right here. 

Hunting for highlights

So gastro? Turns out it's not so much fun. All my plans for the weekend were washed away in a rather miserable and sorry-for-myself 48 hours of lying in bed and moaning and intermittently rushing to the bathroom to do unthinkable things.

The highlights?

* Venturing downstairs on Day 2 for half an hour and telling the kids I couldn't kiss them because I didn't want to make them sick, so Scout cuddled my ankles

* When I peered over the top of the stairs at one point to ask Mr B a question, Ralph looked up and yelled "Mummy!" with the biggest smile

* Hearing the children squealing with happiness downstairs, playing with their father. Actually that was bitter-sweet because I was SO jealous not to be involved

* Ralph yesterday morning calling "Mummy! Mamma!" from his cot, and hearing Scout explain, "Don't call Mummy, you have to call Daddy because Mummy is sick"

* Getting up this morning feeling about 60 percent, and discovering the house NOT trashed and most of the washing-up done and the clothes washed and the toys picked up. Mr B is the BEST

* Keeping down a cup of tea

I spent the two hours this morning between getting up and the kids waking up, putting my little kingdom to rights. Packing things away, and finishing the washing-up, and refrigerating the HUGE bounty of fresh, organic fruit and veg a friend had brought over the day before, and looking up recipes for ways to use said bounty before it all goes off, and packing the kids' bags for daycare, and giving the dog his eye-drops, and sorting the papers on my office ready to go back to work today.

It felt good to be back in charge of my tiny world again. I couldn't face the thought of breakfast, but that cup of tea was GOOD. Now the kids are singing in their beds, wanting to get up. I'm so relieved! I spent last night listening to their every cough, wondering if it was in fact vomit. Hopefully my miserable, lonely quarantine has saved them. All fingers and toes crossed!

So... how was YOUR weekend?

Image credit: Morgan Sessions, licensed under Creative Commons

Weekend links

Do you have plans for the weekend? We are going to a black tie thingy on Saturday night and I need to buy a dress and buying a dress is no fun at ALL when you are a) on a budget and b) under significant time pressure. Am I right?

#firstworldproblems

Right now I'm looking down the barrel of a fairly good weekend-balance between being social and enjoying some family down-time. I hope. We are notorious for over-committing around here, but maybe just maybe this weekend we'll get it right.

What I WANT to do is to spend time doing the everything and nothing that so often make up the best of family time: playing exploring cuddling baking dancing tickling painting eating reading laughing gardening kissing. You know, just... stuff.

What are your plans? I've collected these links for your weekend reading/viewing pleasure:

Before there was Google, this is what people searched for (and how they did it)

These indoor clouds are breathtakingly beautiful

(Dear Santa) I am in love with pretty much everything in this store

How to stop yourself from crying, on any occasion. Have you tried this?

Turn your smartphone into a polariod camera

Can I live in this home please?

This is for all the photographers: magic hour

You've heard of street art. This is forest art

Charts outlining how we live and think, before 30 and after 30. Hilarious!

Molly Yeh is my new blog crush. The photo at the top of this post? Those are her edible gingerbread terrariums

A whole day for free flowers in the city

I love this art on the wall of a building. It's like we all have x-ray vision