How to Blow Easter Eggs

Everyone I know hard boils their Easter eggs, but I like to blow them. To be perfectly plain we usually split our bounty in half and hard boil some and blow some because who doesn't like a good hardboiled egg, right? When I was a girl my mom taught us all how to blow an egg and it was part of our roster of special family traditions. Growing up I didn't know anyone who decorated hollow eggs and now, as an adult I have still, fantastically enough, never have knowingly met a single person who knew how to blow eggs much less anyone who really does it. Kind of fun to have a corner on something small.

I love the delicacy of the finished product:  such a feather light form of natural sculpture. I also love that you can keep the eggs out at room temperature. You can use them to decorate, keep them around for keepsakes or even give them as gifts because they are really art, not food; nature brought inside for appreciation....every bit as beautiful as driftwood sculpture or framed pressed flowers.

A finished, hollow egg.

I also love the niggly work of spearing the tiny blowing holes with our pearl-headed sewing pin (the pearl is key!). I think of how it must feel to be the tiny baby chick inside one of these shells, digging at it for your very life. Kind of a daunting task. It must be a major boost to see that first pin-prick of light shafting through the walls.

Here is how to blow your own hollow Easter eggs:

1. Stab a single tiny hole in one end of a raw egg.
2. Stab repeatedly at the other end in a circle about the size of the head of your pearl-headed pin.
3. Put the tiny hole to your lips and sealing tightly to the egg like a trumpet player, blow! (Be careful to hold your egg firmly but gently it is easy to get carried away with the exertion of blowing and crush the shell in your hands.)
4. The white will stream out first which is the hardest part to expell (Perservere! And occasionally shake the egg!) and then the yolk will come in golden rivulets, it's the easy part at the end.
5. Then rinse the eggs to remove all traces of yolk and white and leave to dry....then decorate away!

 

Ru was big enough to do one himself this year for the first time.

The "scrambled egg" leftovers we'll cook and eat on Easter morning.

Slightly over half a dozen, transluscent, hollow eggs. :)

Cozy, Little Rituals

Been thinking about the holidays and parenting and doing a little post-processing. I love family tradition so the holidays feel like they're all highlighted as "Best Time Of Year Ever" or at least that they ought to be. It's the time of year when we actually do special, little family traditions, right? Although that's true, I am starting to feel like the December mania is a little too panicky to be my favorite and it feels slightly absurd to press all our energy for family ritual and "specialness" into that one month.

Instead, I've started thinking about the ways that we have little rituals scattered through our whole year, or even every day. We don't just hang stockings, make wishlists and sing carols...we also:

• Make a traditional clown cake for childhood birthdays (if they want one). A special passed down tradition from A's mother who did it for her seven children.
• We Eskimo-kiss. This is a new one, I started nose rubbing with the boys as our own variety of a family secret handshake. 
• I pray the same blessing/prayer over the boys, every single night before they go to sleep which, my Mama did for me too. I remember finding that really comforting as a child.
• We tell old family stories in the car. Not every time we're driving, just when I or A can think of a good tale and we're in the mood to spin a good yarn. The boys love it and we've been able to enliven a lot of the family legends and past figures this way.
• I light a candle in the morning when I get up to do my yoga and I slowly wake up to candlelight.

What do you do? I'd love to hear what little family traditions or rituals you've woven into your life, little ways you have made familiar, sweet or silly moments for yourselves.