With Easter falling so early, I felt that I had not quite had the build up and excitement to the season this year.  Easter is one of my favourite times of the year, I find it a very spiritual time and to me the religious celebration is at the heart of our Easter.  Easter is a time of homemaking, a spring clean, followed by decorating the house and a time to enjoy new recipes and menus.  It has less of the pressure of Christmas and the lighter days and glimpses of spring make it a more inspiring holiday.

 I have only bought a few new Easter decorations this year as I’ve not really had the time to shop for Easter as I normally do.  I did discover HomeSense and am so pleased with the wreath, bunny plate and basket I purchased there, I also got a new Happy Easter garland in Waitrose.  The wreath and garland are hung in my kitchen feature window and of all my Easter decorations this window is my favourite.

This year we have followed our family traditions, the Easter bonnet parade at school (recycled bonnets from last year, Easter simply arrived too early for inspiring craft times!) hot cross buns bought on Good Friday from our local baker and our Easter egg hunt with a hand drawn clue sheet by me.  I’m a rubbish artist but I love doing this, I look back on every year’s sheet and am proud of the care and effort I made with each one.   We’ve also tried new things this year.  This morning, we rolled eggs at the Downs.  I had experimented with the nail varnish marbled eggs flooding Pinterest boards, but they were a disaster and Little Miss and I still have the stains on our hands.  We ended up decorating our eggs with Sharpies and they looked just fine.  The fun of the activity was in the egg rolling, it was simple good fun and the children loved it, definitely one to do again nest year.  I sent my mum a short video and she was reminded of her childhood Easters too.  The other new activity was an Easter piñata.  We do have the most amazing neighbours so this morning we discovered a bunny piñata hanging in our garden, a present from them.  When we told Little Man there was a rabbit in the garden he wouldn’t believe us, thinking it was an April fools.  Our neighbours came over this afternoon to see the piñata being bashed, it was so funny and again one to enjoy again.

I wanted to create a fresh, spring menu our Easter lunch.  I will often make a nut roast, or pastry main course for special menus however Mr S asked for a simple Quorn roast.  Initially I was a bit hesitant as it seemed a bit like cheating but it meant that I spent more time focusing on the flavours of the vegetables and a special pudding.  The honey and nutmeg glazed baby carrots were stunning whilst fresh, perfectly cooked asparagus is always tasty and a star of any meal.

Little Miss and I set ourselves the little challenge of making a meringue dessert from scratch.  Little Miss really enjoys cooking with me and we do like to try more demanding recipes; we got the meringue recipe from the Good Food website and it was a 5 star recipe rating from us.  I am really proud how much of the recipe Little Miss was able to do independently, she is a great little sous chef and its lovely to be in the kitchen working together.

With Easter starting our holidays, we now have a fortnight to enjoy some spring sunshine and inspired activities.  We’re off to see Peter Rabbit at the cinema this week and some local attractions have Easter themed trails for us to enjoy too.  I’ve checked the calendar for next year and its a much later Easter in 2019, so we will have the time to prepare and be inspired by Easter.

Happy Easter x