Easter Egg Tree

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Easter Egg Tree

March 7, 2016 by Jaci Dawn

First off, I was mildly surprised that my post last night about my sewing machine generated considerable traffic and several “likes” from other bloggers who happen to love sewing (I wonder if they actually read my blog because I don’t actually “love” sewing – and none of them commented). I checked out their profiles and am even following one because she didn’t seem to be selling anything, and she had a readable blog.

So, tonight’s post is brought to you by my maternal grandmother and Pinterest™. I actually have a Pinterest page. I don’t do a lot over there, but I am beginning to learn the ropes – and this post is brought to you courtesy of some great ideas I found there (posted on my Easter Ideas board).

Grandma always had an Easter Egg tree. I’m pretty certain my mother did, too, but for whatever reason, I associate the Easter Egg tree with Grandma. I only spent one Easter with Grandma, and that was when I was 18.

I have gone through several variations on the theme, and with little success. For a very long time, I had real egg shells (devoid of the insides, of course), painted and all, that I hung on whatever passed for the Easter Egg tree that year. After 30 years of hauling those eggs around, I finally tossed them last year. I still have the one goose egg, but the rest are either store bought or (more likely) yard sale purchased. I bought a nice wire display for the majority of the heavy ceramic eggs (estate sale), but the light weight hanging stuff…

See, I am almost as bad about Easter as I am Christmas: I *love* the celebration and I *need* to decorate. The problem with this is, decorating for Easter hasn’t really caught on within the money-spending Christian community. The bunnies, chickies, and eggs are rather “taboo” still (unlike the pagan symbols of Christmas).

So I have quietly amassed my collection of lambs, bunnies, eggs, and even a goose (green ceramic thing, bottom left of the above photo). I even managed to find a Christian symbol somewhere – the white ceramic cross in the back, by the lovely crochet gazebo. (Machine crochet, I got it at K-Mart, which is also where I got the cross). I love my ceramic bunnies. The swing set was a yard sale find.

Easter conjures up memories of my ultra-tiny mother in a new (and fashionable dress, usually along the lines of Jackie Kennedy) and all of us kids in Easter finery. Dad hid. The rest of us went to services at the Methodist Church where we kids got to sit in the main service and Mom kept us silent by feeding us wintergreen flavored Certs™ breath mints. We sang lovely hymns like “Little Brown Church in the Vale” and we girls got to wear little white hats and patent leather shoes that hurt our feet. We felt like princesses.

After church, and after we all shook the reverend’s hand and gushed over his wonderful sermon, and after Mom tired of greeting all the E&C people (Easter & Christmas), we loaded up into the station wagon and returned home. We kids got to tear into our baskets and fall into sugar comas at that point, while Mom prepared an Easter ham that I would refuse to eat. (I love ham now, but back then, I hated it. The only plus to ham was that we could have scalloped potatoes later in the week.)

All that to say: I found a pattern for an Easter Egg tree that I wanted to try this year. And I’m very happy with the results.

White on white isn’t the best photography option. I cut branches from the flowering plum that leans over into our yard (most of it is in our yard). I wrapped those branches in a mix of ribbon and yarn. I secured the branches in a funky milk-glass finger vase with marbles for ballast. I hung all the ornaments, including the ones my daughter sent me at Christmas.

The little half-egg wooden pieces in the shape of eggs. They are so cool. There are nine of them.

Here’s the whole display: ceramic “rescue” bunnies at the bottom, cool vintage wire basket with silk flowers, awesome plant stand I picked up at Goodwill for $2, and the Easter Egg tree (held up with one of my faerie houses).

When I got the big bunnies out, Murphy thought they were living animals. Harvey was pretty fascinated, too, but one sniff dispelled any fantasies for him. Murphy actually tried to eat the bunny on the right.