Spring Bonnets on Parade

I remember, in my youth, we used to get dressed up for Easter.  Often I got new shiny black Patten leather shoes, a colourful new spring coat, or a pretty new hat. I don't know if that's when it began, but I've always loved hats.

This year the New Horizon's Club in Burritts Rapids held a Spring Tea and the powers that be requested we wear our prettiest bonnets.  They could be store bought or something specially created for the event. Some people commented that they didn't have hats, and I offered to share some of mine. I already knew which one I would wear. It lives in a box in my basement and seldom gets out as it is so special there are very few places one could wear such a creation. It's too grand to wear even to a wedding.  It would outshine the bride.  So, when this occasion presented itself, I simply had to wear it.  It had been passed to me by a friend several years back, and the only other time I ever got to wear it was for the Hats and Hostas event.

Now, this is not the sort of hat that one slips on while wearing blue jeans or some other casual duds. I rummaged in the back of the closet and chose a dress. It was sleeveless and since it can be cool at the hall, I hauled out a silver scarf that worked well as a shawl. The chunky pearl necklace finished off the regal look.

The tea was lovely. Almost everyone wore some sort of hat.  Some put in a lot of work to create something very Easter like, pinning chickens and eggs, etc to their hats. We sat at tables set up for four, and were served fancy sandwiches and squares along with out tea or coffee. Then we lined up to parade around the room a couple of times. I'm not sure who was left to watch us, other than the judges.

They say I won the prize for the best hat, but really, it was the hat that won the prize, and I just gratefully received it.  All this did bring back the fun of getting all dressed up, and I do wish there were still more opportunities to do so. I think I may at least have to go on a little spring shopping spree.

Easter Chocolate Adventures

I decided to have the family Easter gathering a little early this year, in order to make sure I got a turn with the grandchildren. I wanted to get them some treats, but decided that it would be more fun to let them make their own.  My grandsons are now 6 and 10 years old, and I figured they might enjoy filling some of my old chocolate molds themselves. 

The younger one put a few spoonfuls into the mold that made assorted bunny and chick shapes, and then wandered off to watch a movie. The older one loves doing anything involving food, so he stuck around and finished filling that tray. I popped it into the freezer, and proceeded to teach him how to make a  hollow egg.  While he was doing that, I made a hollow duck for his little brother.

I also had a mold that has a space for sucker sticks, but that mold makes 8 three inch rabbits, and that can be a lot of chocolate to eat all at once.  I added some Rice Krispies to the remaining chocolate, and we proceeded to create those together. He spooned the chocolate, and I inserted the sticks, banging the tray on the table from time to time to settle the chocolate more evenly into the molds. 

When things came out of the freezer, I had everyone's attention.  They liked the cute shapes the chocolate had made.  I divided up everything equally, and putting the treats into special bags I had picked up at Bulk Barn. They had different colours and patterns on them so there would be no arguments about who owned the one that had the most left in it later in the week.

When we were making the hollow stuff, I was busy instructing my grandson to turn the egg, to make sure he got the chocolate everywhere on both sides and to keep turning it so that none of the chocolate would settle in all one place inside.  I wasn't paying enough attention to the little duck I was making.  When we unmolded them, the little duck had weak spots, and broke.  Luckily the younger grandson was not at all disappointed. He quickly learned that you can eat mistakes and they taste just as good.

I hope everyone has a very Happy Easter.

Not Quite Easter Eggs

Sorry people. I have a lot on my mind lately and I want to express myself, but it’s piling up so fast I not only can’t get it all out, I just can’t get started. Unfortunately that’s sort of what happened to my other blog. I got behind and kept wanting to catch up before entering anything new. It never happened and that blog died. Well, maybe. I have something new to post there now, but perhaps I’ll just include it in this one instead, as I think most of my readers are following me here now anyway.

So, where to start. Oh my.....
Perhaps I’ll start with what I just mentioned above.

I’ve been geocaching for the first time this year, and while we didn’t go very far, I do like to tell people where and when I’ve been.

I live in a tiny village, but even here there are four caches available for those who want to look for them. I’ve found a couple of them before, and even another that no longer exists. Easter Sunday was a really nice day to go for a walk, so I took my hubby and headed out.

The first one we looked for (GC26GHY) was what they call a multi cache. That means the way point that is given is not the one where you will find the cache itself. We had to check out a sign at the given way point, find all the numbers on it and then do some mathematics using them. Finding all the numbers is not as easy as it sounds, but we managed, and got the math right too. We know that because the nice person who was giving the clues gave us a way to know for sure that we were arriving at the correct numbers without actually telling us what they were.

Then, that’s where we ran into trouble. One of the numbers would tell us the distance to the cache in metres, while the other was supposed to give us the bearing to the cache in degrees from True North. It said to project a way point on my GPS to calculate where the cache was located. Uh huh. Some of you may understand that but I sure didn’t. I’ll be having to consult my manual to see if my GPS model even does such a thing. I could have tried to walk in a circle, but between the canal and the river, I’m sure I would have drowned in the process.

Never mind. We’re brave souls and we set out to find it anyway. We have enough experience at this that we figured we’d have some idea of where to look.....or at least in which direction to look, and hope we’d find a logical hiding place along the way. What I found was that the beavers had been very busy since my last walk in that area. While I was checking that out, my hubby poked about in a few places, and then found the cache using what he referred to as "man sense." Lovely. I am the registered member of www.geocaching.com, by the way, and I just log him in as +1 after my caching name when we find a cache. So hey, he may have found it, but I’ll still get the credit :)

The other cache (GC1NWQ6) was also nearby. I had looked for it for a few moments last fall, when I first learned about it. I followed the clues and looked where it should have been and it wasn’t. I wasn’t dressed for the adventure so decided to come back someday and look again. I did, and since I didn’t find it where I had expected to previously, I handed off the GPS to the hubby and he went right too it. And yes, it was right where it should have been! It was NOT there when I looked. But I could see where some smart #@$ may have put it just to make things more difficult. Or maybe that’s where it actually belongs and some lazy person didn’t put it back there this time. Either way, we (he) found both caches that day, but it did wet our appetite to go hunting again soon.