Ostara: Spring Equinox

Today was Ostara, or spring equinox when the hours of daylight and darkness are equal. It heralds the true arrival of Spring, and this year we decided to mark it.
A few days ago the children and I had felted some eggs, I made a little Bud Baby to go inside an egg for Rebe...

And a little chick for Benny. I left these on the breakfast table for them to find in the morning, hanging on our spring branches along side the other eggs we'd felted.

Benny was delighted with his chick and has called it 'Bok', as in the noise chickens make. It's filthy now as he's been playing with it, and feeding it all day.

Rebe's Bud Baby (she called Timmy) is in the background, and helped her to sing a lovely spring song this morning.


I came across the idea of 'wish eggs' on some website or another, it's a pagan idea and I liked it straight away.

First everyone writes down their wish. It's a wish just for yourself, something you hope will be brought to you this year...

Then you carefully crack your eggs, and keep the egg itself to bake something yummy.

Place your wish inside the egg.

And glue the egg back together.

Cover your egg with watered down glue and tissue paper

and leave them in the sun to dry.

We decorated ours with ribbons, but you could do anything, paint, glitter, different coloured paper, whatever tickles your fancy.

Then hang them from your spring branches, or even outside somewhere and hope your wish comes true.


We also did a bit of spring cleaning,

We decluttered the play room. We put half of their toys upstairs in the spare room. I hope it will make a difference. Benny is just emptying everything on the floor all the time, and they are just jumping from one thing to the next without tidying up so the playroom is like a bombsite most of the time and this in turn prevents them from playing properly. They enjoyed the space straight away and I'm sure they'll enjoy their toys more too, now they can really see what they have and when they get bored we can just have a jiggle around.

After all that I needed a sit down in the afternoon and while Benny had his nap Andy and Rebe set about using up the eggs.

They made these and they are absolutely delicious!

It was also a delight to listen to them doing it while sitting knitting in the living room. They're like a comedy duo the pair of them.

The last thing we made were these Hot Cross Buns, another pagan tradition, and so scrummy!

I made them mostly in the machine then just crossed them and bunged them in the oven.

So it was a busy spring day here (we also went to the park in Timoleague until Benny fell off the slide and Rebe fell off the swing) but I think we really welcomed in the spring! How do you welcome spring?