easter bunny cakes

My mother used to make cakes like this. They stuck with me and I love making them. They were probably in the back of my mind when I made Oliver's Playsam cakes for his second birthday, as they are made the same way.

This couldn't be easier. 

Ingredients:

• (2) 8" cake rounds
• (2) tubs frosting (or your own frosting); I colored half of my frosting light brown with 4 drops each blue, yellow and red food coloring
• 14 oz. sweetened shredded coconut (toast half of it)
• jelly beans for nose and eyes
• card stock/chipboard for ears

I always make store-bought strawberry cake mix at Easter and many birthdays. Embarrassing!

Cut each cake round exactly in half.

Flip one half of each cake over and frost the flat bottom.

Attach the two halves back together as shown.

Now you've got two half-circles with frosting in the middle.

I lined two plates with parchment paper triangles to pull out after frosting the cakes and keep my plates pretty clean looking.

Put the cakes on the lined plates. Frost one bunny cake brown and one white.

Next, sprinkle and lightly pat the regular and toasted coconut onto the frosting. Use a light hand with the toasted coconut. It's not pliable like the regular coconut and doesn't look fluffy if you pat it into the sides too hard.

When you're done applying the coconut on the cakes, remove as much excess coconut as you can from the cakes themselves as well as the plates they are on, then gently slide the paper triangles out from underneath the cakes. Everything will look nice and clean.

Cut some nice long ears out of your card stock and chipboard. Color the middles of the ears pink if you want.

Stick the ears down into the cakes where you think ears should go.

This guy is an albino rabbit, so he got red jelly beans for eyes. 

This little guy got green eyes. Stella waited all morning to put these jelly beans on the bunnies. Sweetie.

That's it. Hardly worthy of a tutorial, they are so easy. I'm glad to pass this little idea down to Stella. I'm not letting anyone touch them until Sunday. We'll see how that goes!

Have a wonderful weekend and a happy Easter! xoxo

round up: out like a lamb

A good use for black foam core scraps.

Life is really good right now. I am in the trenches with the kids because it's spring break, and I am loving it. We're making no dates, locking it down and getting really close again. We have all these toys and games I've been too busy to play with and now Stella is on the cusp of being too old for some of them, so this week it's tea party central. I always feel lucky for the last few years of housewifery and motherhood, but during the moments when that is all I'm doing, it feels sublime. We've got five more days before school starts again, then the downhill slide to summer vacation. Cannot wait.

It's a beautiful thing to sleep in, and when I finally wake up, find these two up in Stella's loft bed reading.

It's a hilarious thing when they both dress up as some variation of King Triton.

Oliver acting the goat, giving the dolls "Frankenstein heads" with a pot.

Our school auction was a big success. Here are David and I having some fun. I had maybe four or five glasses of fun that night. Well deserved!

Here's what we scored at the auction, a beautiful and gigantic limited edition print by my friend Anna. She hand carved this entire design into one huge piece of linoleum. You can see the process here. Isn't it amazing? They are offered in red and black. We considered red, but we own so many pieces of red art and red and orange furniture, David thought we should change it up. I love it. 

I always do a "showtime" post after I perform. Unfortunately, the photographer from my March 1st show with Red Hots Burlesque lost her camera card and there is no audience photography allowed, so this is all I have from that night. Sad face. Two years later I'm starting to get that eyeliner down at least. I'm definitely starting to miss performing regularly. 

The weather has been nicer. To wit:

What a month of 4:00 a.m. bedtimes and three big projects at once can do to your supply closet:

I am a convert to the cat nap. They have saved my hide dozens of times over the past month. That jolt you get when you're woken up after ten minutes of sleep is so powerful! Here is Oliver while I'm trying to talk him into a cap nap, too.

A few days ago we attended our last music class. We've been lucky enough to be with the same teacher for three years. I have loved the ritual of taking this class every Monday morning all this time. I'll always remember it. Saying goodbye to it has triggered memories of when Stella was much smaller and we had Monday morning swim classes WAY up the hill from here. It would take most of our day just to walk there, take the class, take care of business and walk home. I miss those times and tiny Stella. I've been in tears a few times about these two growing up over the past few days. Once your child hits four or five, there is little trace of the toddler they once were, and that is sort of a loss. 

I bought these gorgeous vintage egg cartons but cannot for the life of me figure out how to pop them open correctly. Love those graphics.

And, speaking of eggs (when am I not?), here's what my egg piñatas look like hanging at Rare Device. The amazing ceramic crows and nests on the back wall behind the tree are by artist Jo Boyer. Also along that back wall is a row of dehumidifiers, due to an unfortunate hydrant incident right outside the front door!

I was pleasantly surprised to see the crows when I got there. Earthly, realistic ceramic birds and nests hanging out with colorful birds' eggs. I like it.

donut pan idea no. 44: coconut macaroons for easter + passover

This is one of the top three ideas suggested to me for the donut pan project, right after soap and candles. Coconut macaroons! They've been on our master list since last summer. These are easy and really delicious. You can serve them up plain or dipped in chocolate for Passover, or decorate them like little nests with candy for Easter.

Click on "read more" down below to read more!

how to make easter egg piñatas (a.k.a. have you seen my eggs?)

Last Friday I posted a tutorial on how to make my egg piñatas at a very pretty blog called A Subtle Revelry. Here is the link to my tutorial, for which I did all of the photography. Since last Friday, these eggs have gone super-viral (over 1,000 pins on Pinterest from A Subtle Revelry at this writing!) and are popping up linking back to A Subtle Revelry from several other blogs. It's pretty wild.

Since I'm not really in the equation on all these pins and posts, I'm wanting to try to keep track of where my eggs show up. Here is a partial list of where they have popped up in the last few days:

the red thread: FAVE EASTER CRAFT FINDS

this little street: HOP HOP HOP LITTLE BUNNY

the motherload: 21 FUN EASTER & SPRING PROJECTS

say yes to hoboken: WEEKEND ROUNDUP

fiesta facil: INSPIRATION FOR THE SPRING

mes petites mains magazine: PINATA DIY & SHOPPING

antsy hands: PRETTY EGGS
bonjour jacqueline: PRETTY PALETTE EGGSTRAVAGANZA

Here are a few places where they have been featured this past week where it's clear the eggs were made by me:

rare device blog: PINATA EGGS
Thanks, Giselle!

spotted sf:NOPA/RARE DEVICE
A neat surprise!

This next one is really awesome. Mega-talented and beautiful Heather from super-beautiful Poppy Haus wrote a blog post about the eggs, and about me, and it was just what I needed to feel a lot better. Poppy Haus has been in my regular rotation since I connected with Heather at ALT, and I consider her a close friend and confidant. If you haven't been reading Poppy Haus already, please check it out!

poppy haus: CORNER BLOG

Here's something else really cool. An Instagrammed photo from Meg of the gorgeous Anthology Magazine. She visited Rare Device yesterday and posted this photo (with 423 "hearts" at this writing-yay!).

If you happen see my egg piñatas anywhere else, I'd love to know. It's really interesting (and a little painful!) to watch them moving around the ether without anyone really knowing I made them. Such is the case when you're a contributor on someone else's blog. I learned this the hard way!

I'm still recuperating for all the things I did for our recent school auction (like this and these), as well as the egg installation, and am actually spending time with my family again. It feels like I just got home, like I've been away for a while but now I'm home and can sleep in my bed at a decent hour and play with the kids. Stella and I are having to work on getting acquainted again. She's flung herself so into reading that I'm actually putting limits on reading time until we can get closer. Spring break is next week, I hope that time will bring us back to where we were before. I can't wait!

So, that's it until next week. Have a great weekend, and thank you for reading! xoxo

donut pan idea no. 43: matzoh donut soup

I am really happy to have the time again to work on my donut pan project. It's been weeks since I made any donut-shaped goodies, and I've really missed them. I'm glad to be back at it!

Passover starts next week and I've yet to make a soup in this series, so how about matzoh donut soup? Sounds crazy, but it's crazy good! There's actually a practical element to using the donut pans with the matzoh. The pans eliminate the need for refrigerating the batter for two to four hours as recommended. Instead I briefly coddled the batter in the pans to get the shape before cooking in the soup. Serious time saver. And again, I don't eat many matzoh balls, but these donuts were really delicious.

I adapted (to put it lightly) this Martha Stewart recipe to yield a dozen matzoh donuts and about six bowls of soup.

You will need 6 large eggs, 6 tbsp. vegetable oil (or schmaltz), 1 c. water, 1 tbsp. salt, 2 cups matzoh meal, 12 cups chicken stock or broth, 3 carrots, 2 parsnips and fresh dill for garnish. You will also need a large roasting pan for the coddling, a good sized Dutch oven to cook the soup in, and extra vegetable oil for greasing the pans.

Click on "read more" down below to get the full tutorial!

oology

o•ol•o•gy

noun

The study or collecting of birds' eggs.