Easter Fun

When I think back on how my day unfolded my mind is filled with memories of:

• sunshine
• forsythia and daffodils
• chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate
• Easter dinner

And here's a sneak peak of what we ate for dessert.  I'm going to share the recipe in another post when I have time to write it up, but all I can say is this cake has a great story and tastes delicious.

Stay tuned!

Happy Easter

May God bless you at Easter,
and keep you all year through.

May God give you all the faith you need,

to make your dreams come true.

May His love and wisdom always help,

to guide you on your way.

May His light shine down upon you now,

to bless your Easter Day.


an old Irish Easter Blessing - author unknown

Happy Easter to all my bloggy friends!

A Blustery Day in Oakville

With a free afternoon yesterday it seemed like the perfect time to catch up with a girlfriend.  We went to Oakville, a quaint historic town on the shore of Lake Ontario, and drove around looking at the beautiful old houses and then went for a walk along the waterfront.


One of the houses had the most magnificent display of scillia.  While we were there taking pictures, several other cars also stopped to admire the flowers.

We walked around the historic Erchless Estate (c. 1858), which was the home of Colonel Chisholm who founded Oakville.  The house is now a musuem which I really need to visit when it is open as I've never been inside.  I love the position of prominence the house has on a hill overlooking the harbour and lake.  Can you imagine what a view you would get from the widow's walk up on top.

The gardens were just starting to spring to life and mostly had scillia, a few daffodils, and two brave tulips.

  

The air was cold and the wind was whipping the water up into a frenzy of splashing, crashing wave action.

The seagulls were enjoying the challenge of staying on the pier,

and I was enjoying the challenge of capturing pictures of waves mid-crash.

The colours were captivating with the gray skies and water, the red lighthouse, and yellow mooring posts on the pier.  

The colours have been altered in the picture above using Picnik, an on-line photo-editing programme, but I'm kind of liking the vintage look.  What about you - do you prefer the natural colours or the aged look?


Linked to Sweet Shot Tuesday at Life with my Three Boybarians

Ukrainian Church Architecture

When we went to the Easter sale at St. Elias the Prophet Church on the weekend and bought the bread and Pysanky (which you can read about here), we also went upstairs to tour the inside of the church.  Although the church building looks very traditional and as if it has been there for ages - well maybe not there, but in the Ukraine - it was in fact only built in 1995.  

The church is in the style of the Byzantine wooden architecture traditional to the western Ukraine.  I love the wooden shingles covering the domes and all the wood siding - looking a little water-logged in this photo because it was raining.

The front door and carved pillars look so rustic.

Inside the sanctuary there are only pews around the edges with a wide open space in the middle as they stand for their services.

Above the sanctuary is one of the domes all colourfully painted with pictures of saints and scenes from the Bible.

I wasn't expecting to see a Pharaoh's headdress in a Ukrainian church, but it makes sense since Joseph from the Old Testament rose to second-in-command in Egypt.  Don't you love the scrolly grape vines that link the pictures together.

The pretty design in the photo below, was one of my favourite parts of the decoration in the church.  I love the gray-blue with the orange and the touches of gold.

There are no electric lights in the church.  The priest told us that it is because you can't pray with harsh electric lights on, so they only have soft gas lights and candles during services.  I think he may have something there.  I love it when the lights are turned out at a Christmas Eve service and we sing by candlelight and this church must be gorgeous by candlelight with all the gold leaf decorating the walls.

Around the edges of the sanctuary are these candle chandeliers that I thought looked quite striking in their simplicity with all the ornate paintings and decorations.  The priest assured me that they would soon be replaced as they just came from IKEA.  I love it! IKEA decorations can even be found in an ornate Ukrainian Catholic church.  Who would have thought.

It must be Ukrainian heritage month at Sense and Simplicity or something - how else do you explain it!

Pysanky Easter Eggs

You might be under the impression that I'm Ukrainian, what with me showing you all these Ukrainian Easter eggs and all.  However, that would be incorrect - I'm really an Anglo-European dog's breakfast blend who just happens to like pysanky or Ukrainian Easter Eggs.


This past weekend I had the opportunity to go to an Easter fair with my parents at a church out in the country called St. Elias the Prophet.  Well, let's just say it made me want to be Ukrainian.


There were gorgeous hand-painted pysanky eggs.  If you want to see some pysanky made by an amateur with a shaky hand look here, but if you want to see what the pros make, check these out:

The eggs were decorated with horses, roosters, deer, oak leaves, crosses, stars, wheat, rakes and other symbols all with special meaning to the Ukrainian people.

I loved that there was a handout with an explanation about the meaning behind the decorations used on the eggs.  I took a picture of a part of the sheet explaining about the leaves and animals.

I didn't know that the style of decorations used on the pysanky varied from region to region in the Ukraine.  This is just a small sample of the regions they displayed.

Not only were there pysanky eggs at the Easter fair, but there were also beeswax candles, and handmade chocolates, and embroidery, 

and yummy Easter breads - some with braided crosses on top, some that had been baked in cans, and some that had been baked in special lamb-shaped molds.

After surveying all the goodies we bought some bread, some chocolate, and a couple of the pysanky.  With the huge selection  it was very difficult to decide which ones to choose. 

I finally chose these two beauties.

Yep it's definitely enough to make me want to be Ukrainian.  

Linked to Mosaic Monday at Little Red House