Hoppy Easter 2024!

My Awesome Parents (MAP) came to visit us for Easter this year. Saturday morning we went to the Strip District for breakfast and to walk around the shops. It was not as crowded as I had expected it to be, probably due to the cool weather that threatened rain. While Dear Husband was at church rehearsing, we spent the middle part of the day making things: hot-cross buns for Eastern morning, curtains for the guest bedroom, hard-boiled eggs, and plastic eggs to hang on the tree out front, which I've wanted to do for years. I also repaired several items of clothing by hand.

Saturday evening we went to a Liberty Magic show by Billy the Kidd and then out for dinner at Social House 7, before returning home to watch The Miracle Club (2023) with Maggie Smith. All 3 experiences I would grade as B+. The magician had some good tricks and others that were just meh. The restaurant kitchen took a long time to send out the third and largest dish, so we were hungry almost until we were ready to leave. The script had some good ideas, but the pacing was awkward.

Sunday morning we all had an early first Easter breakfast together (at 6am!) before DH left to play the first of three services. The rest of us spent the morning reading, emailing, and having second breakfast before heading up to Sewickley Presbyterian Church for the 11 o'clock worship service, complete with voice choir, brass choir, and beautiful flowers. Also a small snack before and a larger snack afterwards. Then home to change clothes and head to a friend's house for good food, better pisco sours, and an outdoor hunt for confetti-filled eggs that the kids broke on each other's heads. Although rain had been predicted, it was sunny and almost warm. There was time for a nap and a Zoom with family before settling in for smorgasbord for dinner while watching the first two episodes of the British original Ghosts, which is miles better than the American knock-off that DH once watched while we were flying cross-country.

Because we didn't sing my favorite verses from "Christ the Lord is Risen Today" by Charles Wesley (the Presbyterian hymnal has different words), I'll include them here in closing:

Lives again our glorious King! / Where, O death, is now thy sting? / Once he died our souls to save. / Where thy victory, O grave?

Soar we now, where Christ has led, / Following our exalted head; / Made like him, like him we rise,./ Ours the cross—the grave—the skies!

Admittedly, some of my experience of this hymn is undoubtedly tied up with having heard DH play these verses on the organ--triumphantly, as only he can--almost every year since 1997. Happy Easter to all of you, from both of us.

DIY: Rusted Tin Box Edition

When we purchased our house, which is larger than our apartment was, I spent a lot of time on Facebook Marketplace furnishing it, which is how I found this delightful enameled tin box, which I thought would be perfect for storing my cross-stitch supplies. However, it came with a lot of rust, so I looked up home rust-removal procedures, such as a soaped-up cut potato (?). I decided to try a coating of baking soda and water paste that I applied with an old sock and left to sit for an hour while crafting with a girlfriend by Zoom. Then I scrubbed everything with a toothbrush. It seemed to required more elbow grease to remove the gritty powder than the rust! I finished it off with a coat of linseed oil that a neighbor on our local Buy-Nothing Group dropped off. After sitting for several days, the box was shiny but slightly tacky, and I worried about storing thread unprotected. So while watching a presentation about caring for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, I applied some marble-patterned contact paper left over from a previous DIY project to freshen up an old Ikea shelf for the exercise room / conservatory. It's so much prettier on my shelf than the cardboard mailing box I had been hiding in a drawer!