30 days of Ostara; Day 17

Make geode eggs

make crystal sugar sticks / rock candy

how to make sugar cubes and how to decorate them
The trick is to use only water and confectioner's sugar to make the icing, no egg whites or meringue powder.
(You can also form any figures out of the water-sugar icing, to be used as sugar cubes...)

Here's some Easter teas for you to enjoy and get inspired by:
corgyncombe courant and Tasha Tudor's Hot Cross Buns for Easter Tea
Marisa's Minis Easter Tea Party and
Jama Rattigan's Alphabet Soup of Bonnets and Bunnies, Carrots and Cake

I love these vignettes and displays :-) And I adore the Peter Rabbit carrot cake with marzipan vegetables... The garden looks very rich, moist and lovely :-D

In Sweden there was a tradition, that the night before "Waffle Day" (Our Lady's Day 25th of March) the children put out their shoes or socks so that Crane could fill them with candy and a little present. The present was of practical kind, usually a tool of some sort, or something from faraway countries, where the cranes spent their winters, as a souvenir. Sometimes the presents were in eggs, that the crane would have laid in the shoes or socks.
In some places the date wasn't set, but when the crane arrived to the area, he also visited the houses nearby, leaving presents to the children.
In some families there were also sooty foot prints from the hearth or fireplace leading to the shoes, showing where the crane had walked. Adults were having fun painting crane footprints everywhere, on the walls and ceilings as well. The children then followed the prints to their presents.
It was also a tradition to "run crane", barefeet run 7 or 9 times around the house, and young people ran to throw in letters (either with a joke or sort of Valentine written on) in to their friends' homes. As the fire was put down, the kids used to throw in these letters through the chimney. This naturally happened when the chimneys in houses were still open the whole way down to the fireplace. The youngsters could be dressed as cranes with bags on their feet so that one wouldn't guess who they were by footprints.

Cute candy decoration ideas from Good Housekeeping. I really like the tulips and the liquorice nests :-)

Crochet a Victorian straw basket. You can use anything in stead of straw, for example plastic bags cut into "plarn" or paper yarn, and use pastel colored yarn instead of the brown silk yarn in the pattern.