Applecrumble and Fitch: Honey Bunny

Hi, y'all!

I hope you're doing well and you are only mildly affected by that damn' virus. Our company gave the order that we either have to work from home or use our leftover vacation days from last year. Business trips are to be deferred and if meetings have to take place they have to be approved by management and have to be very small. The capacity of our conference rooms was cut in half - a room where 10 people fit in is now open for five people only to ensure enough space between each meeting participant. My choir rehearsals will take place via skype and I am very curious to experience this.

I didn't stash any toilet paper but as I used up all my stock in my pantry during fall I now refilled it with rice, pasta, lentils, flour, soy and so-on. We can easily wing two weeks, in worst case even more. At the moment we stay at home most of the time and apart from walkies with the dogs it will stay that way. Due to efficiency and time reasons I do my grocery shopping once a week and from the infection perspective I will keep it like this. After our offices in Essen and Dusseldorf were shut down because of one colleague who caught the virus, now one of our largest locations in Germany had to close due to four infected colleagues. In our business it is easily possible to work from home and I am very grateful for this, but my thoughts are with all the smaller therapy institutions, service providers and craftspeople who will be heavily affected by the pandemic. And I would like to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to all the people in the grocery stores who ensure that all hamsters constantly get their pasta (except the spelt type!) and of course to all people who make sure that our health system stays functioning!

But apart from all precautionary measures please let's talk about something nice. Since last weekend there is a hint of spring in the air! Sun came out and instantly you heard the lawnmowers humming :-) Hubby and me also did some work in the garden and once I got going I couldn't stop myself from making some Easter decorations.

I started with some Easter egg hangers made from some kind of salt dough, only with cornstarch and baking soda instead of flour and salt. Furthermore, you mix it when it's cold but you have to heat it afterwards. And after cooling down you can use it like cookie dough. You could dry it in the oven if you want, but if you've got some time to spare, you can easily let it dry by air.

It's said to look a bit like china/porcelain and when it's still wet, there is a slight resemblance and it looks very elegant. But you have to be careful to roll the dough not thinner than 5 mm because you risk tears in the material. I cut out Easter eggs and stamped them and cut a little hole to be able to hang them somewhere. After drying, several eggs had tears where the material got thin by stamping. I thought I could fix that by filling it with glue and applying a light, slightly iridescent nail polish to cover the glue. a) that didn't work pretty well and b) the nail polish looked tacky. Thus I threw a third of the eggs away. Unfortunately I coated all eggs with the nail polish to look the same and now they all looked the same kind of tacky. Therefore, I gave the remaining eggs another coat of paint but then I used some white acrylic. They are not very delicate and china-like and you have to be careful when sanding them because they chip easily. But I may like them in some forsythia branches for example.