Here are some pics from our Easter time. I obviously spend most of my time at work this Easter but had some time for making Easter decorations and such...

Let's start with Palm Sunday. In Finland we have this tradition where little Easter wiches go door to door wishing good fortune with decorated willow branches. The one getting the "blessing" is supposed to give chocolate eggs, candy or money in return. It's sort of a Finnish equivalent for trick-or-treating as we don't celebrate Halloween. You don't get to put on just any costume though, traditionally you're supposed to dress up as a wich ("trulli") although I went as an Easter bunny in my youth... I have some really embarrassing pictures of that somewhere but I'd rather show the ones of Ebba as a trulli.

She really put a lot of effort to the branches. She didn't get very many done though because perfecting them took her that long. But you can see, she's put a lot of thought in the decorations:

It was also difficult to find branches with catkins in them because the springs so late this year and it's been really snowy and cold.

I made little bags of chocolate for the witches but none came to our door so Janne had to eat the eggs. It didn't seem to bother him though.

I finally managed to learn how to empty a real egg without totally destroying it. So I made 15 eggs covered in newspaper, some of them have even pictures of roosters from napkins. I couldn't find decent decoupage varnish here in Kotka so I was left with some really weird varnish from Tiimari. So the finishing on the eggs isn't all that beautiful :/ You can see the eggs in the buckets of barley. Easter grass is probably the more traditional choice but I like the look of barley better...

And finally some flowers...

I got the daffodils from an elementary school where I held a few classes for the kids in the Easter week. (It's the same school I went to as a kid, there are actually two of the same teachers that used to teach me still working there...) I didn't have a pot for the daffodils except a purple class dish. It's a bit small for them though, so I had to improvise and stick some willow branches there too to keep the daffodils from falling of the pot. The grape hyacinths (Muscari Botryoides) I bought from my former kindergarten teacher who's turned florist. I just love them! And the bouquet is from the same source. I had my birthday on Easter Saturday so I thought I'd indulge myself with my favourite flowers Persian Buttercups (Ranunculus Asiaticus). I love the soft pink! This kind of took me by surprise because I thought I wasn't the romantic type of person to really care for pink... proves me wrong, these are gorgeous!!! I used some old theological books as decorations and the silver cross is from the female priest's dress. The card I got from my friend Hessu. Isn't it cute? Janne says the magazine with Audrey Hepburn cover doesn't quite match my arrangement of the flowers but I disagree: she's the prettiest thing ever to have walked this earth, she belongs there with the other beautiful things... It's rather the Star Wars painting I'm not sure about :)