Happy Easter Monday...

Ahhh yes, the festivities continue! In reality, today is the holiday in Hungary - not the Friday like here in North America. Today is the day that young girls/ladies in Hungary dread and love at the same time! It is Easter Monday or Dousing Day or Water Plunge Monday... Way back when, this is the day that the boys would either drag the girls to the creek or well and douse them completely from head to toe with water, so basically they don't wilt, and in return for all that fun, the girls would give the boys decorated eggs, food and drink. For more pictures of decorated eggs, you can go here (under kepek) or here

This tradition of soaking the girls on Easter Monday has its roots as a fertility ritual - the soaking is to make the girls good wives and more fertile to bear many children. Today, however this tradition is continued with a modern twist... instead of being dunked in a creek or have a bucket of water thrown on you, the boys come around and "sprinkle" you with perfume - you can imagine the stench if you were visited by several boys during the day! (Trust me on that one! Its fun to have lots of visitors but smelly at the same time!) - though you will still get the occassional boy who brings water instead...

We had a very nice Easter dinner last night with the family (plus an extra). It was very pleasant, the food was good, and oh my we had lots of food! Dad cooked up a ham that was big enough to feed an army! It was 8.75kgs!!! That 's a lot of ham! But it was tasty!! Here is a picture of my easter egg tree (okay so its not really a tree, but in Hungarian that is what its called)You can also see what the Easter bunny brought for us - the three of us each got DVD's - Narnia for dad, Memoirs of a Geisha for me, and King Kong for Laci. Laci also got the little blue chick and I got the little rose in the lamb planter. I do have many more painted eggs from my years in Hungary, but sadly they are still packed away in boxes... these are the only ones I have out right now... (they are one of my favorite things to buy while there...)

On the stitching front, here is my one week's progress on the wedding piece for my niece! Yes its finally started, and if I do say so myself, I think I did pretty good for the amount of time I was able to actually sit down and stitch this week! Also I really love the way its turning out on this fabric! I have also decided that since I am enjoying working on this so much right now - I just love this fabric - that this week instead of switching out to a different project (my box is up next) that I will continue along with this one this week!