Crazy Crafty: My Blue Bunny Baby

If I'm not mistaken, Easter is the time for envy, the time for recognizing that the plastic Easter grass is indeed much greener on the other side of the fence - or in this case, the continent.  At least that is how I feel every time I catch a glimpse of the vintage Easter Bunny collection found in the Jersey shore home shared by Jenny & Aaron from Everyday is a Holiday (see here).  One bunny in particular has always caught my eye because I have never seen one in the wilds of Southern California's vast vintage landscape.  In fact, I very rarely see any kind of vintage Easter paraphernalia here, which makes me incredibly suspicious of the heathens by whom I am surrounded.  Setting aside the religious context of the Easter holiday, I think the world is in dire need of more chicks, chocolate eggs, and plush bunnies in that seasonally-specific pastel palette.  The bunny of Jenny's & Aaron's in which I find immeasurable inspiration is one of those crazy, stuffed bunnies with the face of a baby.

It may look even odder than it sounds.
Nevertheless, I want one!
(photo courtesy of Everyday is a Holiday)

The truth is that I covet the entirety of their bunny collection but there is something so equally sweet and disturbing about a baby-faced Easter Bunny that makes it a wacky tacky standout.  I mean, is this thing meant to be a spooky escapee from Dr. Moreau's infamous island or just an angel-faced kid in a costume?  Either way, I loved this human-hare hybrid and wanted one for my very own.  Because I have voluntarily removed myself from the regular activity of vintage "hunting and gathering," however, the acquisition of one such bunny would be relegated to either the unlikelihood of a gift (it's absolutely ages until my next birthday) or to making one myself.  Having gone the angel-faced-kid-in-a-costume route last year, this year it was time to celebrate the Easter season by making a genuine, homemade, blue bunny baby.

It all started with the face.
In cleaning out their 94-year-old garage, my brother and sister-in-law were
unnerved by the feeling that they were being watched.  I think they were
slightly relieved upon finding a cache of vintage, plastic doll faces that they
subsequently exorcised and then gifted to me.  Slightly flummoxed with how
to handle them, I was glad to finally have a project in which I could put at least
one of these little cherubs to good use (stay tuned, I'm sure they'll make a recurring
appearance in future Crazy Crafty projects - creepy clown kiddo, anyone?).

Even though the scant yard of vintage, blue cotton velvet that was too little to make into anything else wasn't quite within the range of traditional Easter hues, I slated it for my own velveteen-type rabbit.  In order to complete my bunny, the only thing I needed to buy was a small amount of blue satin to line the ears.  Have you ever tried to join satin and velvet in the shape of a rabbit ear?  It stinks.  Extremely fiddly in their own distinct way, each material left me ready to pull my hare hair out.  In the end, I was hoppy with the ears' imperfections.

Blue enough for you?
Did you see how sweet and delicate the vintage example of the bunny baby was?
Mine, on the other hand, is as sweet and delicate as a big, electric-blue punch in
the throat.  Even when I am trying to make something simple and lovely, my
wacky tacky instincts beat subtlety into utter submission!

Luckily, I had just enough aqua yarn to eke out a fluffy tail and the crudely-
executed crochet trim around the bunny baby's face (a necessity to disguise
the edges).  The ears are supported by an internal framework of heavy-gauge
floral wire.  In a show of my own surrender to the color story, I selected the blue
background and garden of blue, tissue-paper flowers.  The blue eggs are there
just to prove that, just like brown chickens and brown eggs, blue Easter eggs
come from blue Easter Bunnies. 

While I refuse to turn into one of those people who refers to his collection of inanimate objects as "children," I get such a surge of pride every time I look at the latest addition to the wacky tacky family that I feel like handing out cigars.  If you don't have a bunny baby of your own (or the inclination to make one), consider a lovingly-rendered version of Jenny's & Aaron's bunny baby in the form of a Jumbo, Wood-Mounted "Baby Bunny" Print from the Everyday is a Holiday online store to add some Easter awesomeness to your holiday decor - any holiday.

As a photographic thank you to our pals from Everyday is a Holiday
and in an effort to promote our own brand of cross-crafty, inter-
seasonal understanding, we saddled up our oversized, Christmas 
Dream Pet to give Baby Blue (take that, Knowles-Carter family) a
ride to the big Easter egg hunt.  Everyday really is a holiday!

A Happy, Happy Easter to you and yours, from our funny little bunny!!!

"Funny Little Bunnies" (1934)

Cheers!

Mr. Tiny

Kitsch-en Kounter: Pink Lemonade Pavlova

It may seem supremely un-wacky tacky, but the fact is that I have a passion for film noir.  I think it is because I am particularly simple-minded, not always understanding the many convolutions of plot but usually able to grasp the concept of good guy and bad.  I rather enjoy the exaggerated stylings of both the fast-paced, slang-ridden dialogue and the crisp, well-tailored clothing and hats (film noir has the best costuming).  As much as it is film noir's biggest cliché, I am nevertheless amused when characters are marked as "hard-boiled."  I would relish the opportunity to be so described.  I couldn't even be described as soft boiled.  At this point, the best I can ever hope for is "poached" - gelatinous, ghostly white, and ultimately, quite runny.

As disgusting as eggs (and their human counterparts) are when pondered too deeply, I can't help but love them.  Over-easy, scrambled, coddled, or fried, I will take an egg just about any way it comes.  When in Japan, we went to a hip pizza joint in Kyoto that served both our pizza and our salad with quivering poached eggs atop, baptized so briefly in boiling water that they appeared to be held together by prayer alone.  Wanting to avoid the nightmare of every international traveler (a raging case of salmonella poisoning), everyone in our party rather coyly ate all the way around the eggs.  Mary said that if she was going to get any kind of food poisoning, she wanted it to come from subpar sushi or contaminated horse meat.  Feeling brave, I finally broke the yolk; the velvety, richly-golden goodness that flowed therefrom blessed every remaining bite of that meal.

Where do baby bunnies come from?
Easter eggs!

Yes, eggs are magical - except for the gross white stringy part.  Because they are so versatile and so symbolic of the Easter season, I wanted to highlight eggs in our Easter Kitsch-en Kounter recipe, using them in two ways that I had never had the temerity to use them before.  I have always wanted to make a Pavlova, that pillowy, '20s-era, meringue confection from New Zealand named for Russia's greatest ballerina, Anna Pavlova.  Given that it is Easter, I thought I'd make the pavlova a pale pink.  Options for filling a pink pavlova are endless but in my best effort to again feature the humble egg, I opted for a thick, rich lemon curd.  I can't tell if it was a good idea to combine two things I'd never made before into one Easter dessert but as in many cases, ignorance can be empowering, if not entirely blissful.

The Pink Lemonade Easter Pavlova
A blissful view this ain't but blissfully delicious it was!!!
There really was no good side from which to take the finished product's photo but I
suppose it is as important to share the ecstasy of victory as well as the agony of defeat.
Fortunately, a bed of dyed-green coconut makes everything better.

For both the crackly, crumbly (and maybe under-baked) pavlova and the smooth, luscious lemon curd I will take full credit.  As I was ad lib-ing a meringue recipe for the pavlova, I thought to myself, "This baking stuff is easy.  I don't know why the experts always make it sound like such an exact science..."  I guess that's because it is.  Removing the pink, lemon-perfumed pavlova from the oven, it looked perfectly puffed and pretty; as it cooled it started to rapidly deflate.  When it came time to assemble it, it started cracking around the edges.  Undeterred, I figured the lemon curd (made with strict adherence to recipe guidelines), the pink mommy & me Easter bunnies, the speckled eggs, and the bed of freshly-mown coconut grass would be enough to disguise its many imperfections.  As delicious as the lemon curd was, its powers to save the pavlova pile-up were quite limited.  As with most Kitsch-en Kounter experiments, it comes down to a matter of the tortoise and the hare; taste reigns supreme, with looks running a very distant second.  Actually, I can't be sure if that makes "taste" the tortoise of the hare...

Thinking that I might get ambitious and make a black & white pavlova as
a tribute to film noir, I went ahead and made a chocolate bunny as well.
Based on the "roaring success" of the pink pavlova, I figured I'd let
sleeping Easter Bunnies lie...especially since their unblinking, beady,
pink eyes kept following me around the room.

Are you making any special recipes for Easter this year?  Have you ever experienced a triumph in making a pavlova?  With a video of the triumphant Anna Pavlova dancing her signature piece, "The Dying Swan" (an accurate reflection of our pavlova), we wish you and yours a very Happy Easter!

"The Dying Swan" - Anna Pavlova

Cheers!

Mr. Tiny

Kitsch-en Kounter: Bûche de Pâques

One needn't ponder long before remembering the true meaning of Easter - renewal, rebirth, resurrection.  All of these beautiful messages come with their own springtime symbols - a blossoming flower, a hatchling bird, a world reborn after months of frigid winter (as a lifelong Southern California native, I'll just have to believe that last one to be true).

With rebirth on the brain, I wondered what I could create in the wacky tacky kitsch-en that would represent a seasonally-appropriate gastronomic resurrection.  Without sounding too irreverent, I concluded that there is no better time of year to resurrect a classic symbol of the Christmas season, born again with an Easter Holiday twist!  The Bûche de Noël or Yule Log, is a rolled cake meant to resemble a fallen, winter, woodland log found during Christmas.  Figuring that if it is good enough for the birth then it's good enough for the resurrection, I came up with the "Bûche de Pâques" or "Easter Log" (even if you have no idea what it means, it's a name that sounds much more appetizing in French).

I had all my decorations ready but I didn't take many progress shots because I had never
made a rolled cake before - nerve wracking!  Using a recipe for a coconut-almond genoise,
I found that the cake went together much more easily than I had expected.  Although our
decorations skew Easter, I'm thinking that this cake (made without leavening agents)
might qualify as a Passover offering too - maybe adorned with Passover Possums?!!!

As ever, my visions of professional, cake-decorating perfection narrowly exceeded the spindly grasp of my pitiful pastry prowess.  Nevertheless, having become well acquainted with abject kitsch-en failure (believe it or not, I only show you the "successes"), I am mostly satisfied with the outcome.  The only concession in failure (or mild satisfaction) is that an ugly cake can still be a tasty cake!

Voila!  Mon Bûche de Pâques!!!
Perhaps the English name could be "Rabbit Roulade" or "Bunny Braciole;"
but then we get into the territory of wondering whether Peter Cottontail is
simply on the cake or in the cake...

Nestled on a bed of tinted coconut, the cake (a peeling birch log) is frosted with a coconut buttercream accented by a ganache made of  coconut milk and chocolate.  The bird and "Happy Easter" banner came from the reject room of a cake supply store; I highlighted the bird's features by painting it with the same chocolate ganache.  The toadstools are meringue cookies hand-painted with food coloring.  The blue, vintage Easter bunny was removed from a thrift store wreath - and thoroughly sanitized! 

In preparation for sharing the Bûche de Pâques with you, I obviously made it several days in advance of the Easter Holiday.  Not one to let a good cake go uncelebrated,  I repurposed it as a birthday cake to commemorate Mary's 21st birthday.

HAPPY EASTER BIRTHDAY, MARY!!!
She never knew the difference....

Other than the Bûche de Pâques, the Easter preparations are essentially over around here.  With no children around, there are less eggs to dye and less handfuls of jelly beans and chocolate eggs to surreptitiously rescue from unwatched Easter baskets - the real benefit being the absence of Easter grass to find everywhere, all year long, until next Easter no matter how often we sweep, vacuum, dust, swiffer, lint roll, etc.  Truly, the break is a bit of a relief from the veritable Easter Egg factory that is usual around these parts; we'll just have to get that old Easter feeling from the "Egg Cracker Suite."

"Egg Cracker Suite"

We wish you all the best for a very Happy Easter!!!


Cheers!

Mr. Tiny

Sew What?! Here Comes Peter Cottontail

The benefits of being an uncle are great, extending far beyond the pat witticism, "all of the fun and none of the diaper changing."  In reality, I have just as many rich opportunities to damage my nephew's young psyche as my sister and brother-in-law - without any of the pesky and complicated blame usually reserved for parents.

Growing up in a funny house (comically and otherwise), the sentence for misbehavior was usually lenient if it got a laugh; that is probably because a prankster precedent was long established by Mom and Dad.  My parents were famous for their food gags; Dad would record the faces of his infant children after allowing them to suck on a lemon wedge.  Mom would offer me a heaping spoonful of "whipped cream" just waiting for my emerging taste buds to discover the difference between whipped cream and horseradish.  But the hijinks were not limited to juvenile ulcers; every time I was late for junior high school, Dad would write a note detailing the crippling nature of my "chronic diarrhea" or the importance of my diplomacy efforts in Iran.  Mom was a consummate scarer; after so many times of her hiding behind a door or jumping from around the corner shouting "Boo," I have developed the stealth (deceptive for my size and shape) of a cat burglar, refusing to round a corner without clearing the area like a SWAT operative.

This practical-joke morality was always imbued with a strong pay-it-forward ethos; just because I am bereft of progeny doesn't mean that I shouldn't educate the next generation on the finer points of bad tastes, fear, and embarrassment.  While out thrifting, I found the perfect pay-it-forward moment in Simplicity 9050, a pattern for a children's costume, dated 1970.  I say, "Welcome home" to almost any pattern that says, "Simple-to-Sew."  In turn, my nephew can say "goodbye" to a carefree childhood devoid of humiliating costumery and "hello" to years of group counseling (given this trauma, the likelihood that he'll ever be able to afford private therapy sessions is improbable at best).

Simplicity 9050

I got the pattern for a quarter; it always makes me happy when I

pay less than the price Mrs. Smith paid more than forty years ago!

Sure, the kitties are pretty and the poodle divine
 but the real belly laughs are with that pink bunny rabbit!

I honestly thought that pink bunny suits were the invention of Jean Shepherd and have only ever associated them with Ralphie's yuletide mortification in A Christmas Story.

Peter Billingsley as Ralphie Parker
in A Christmas Story (1983)

If Mom thought the horseradish caper of '87 was a corker, then a bunny suit à la Mr. Tiny was sure to be one for the record books. 

Have you ever?!?!!!
I couldn't even finish zipping the zipper; I just about melted the minute I saw him in
this get-up!  I guess the joke was on me; he seemed to love being the Easter Bunny.

The "paws" are sewn like an envelope so the wearer can unwrap Easter candy (in true family tradition, I considered sewing them shut but I'm not a monster).  Staying faithful to A Christmas Story, I used a raspberry-colored charmeuse for the contrast material and made bunny faces on the feet.  I even finished the soles with the kind of non-skid material found on factory-made footie pajamas. 

Left with a scant yard of pink material and the inspiration of Fred Astaire in Easter Parade, I realized that our little hunny bunny needed a bunny of his own.

"Drum Crazy" - Fred Astaire in Easter Parade (1948)

My sincere expectation was that an early Easter celebration combined with his unqualified hatred
of the bunny suit would require an Easter basket bribe - I guess I shouldn't have worried.

The stuffed, pink bunny (bestowed with the name "Pinkaroni" by the waitress at our favorite pizza joint) is fashioned in the exact same materials as the suit and became a constant companion for a few days.  I used vintage, velvet ribbon to make an aqua bow tie and hastily embroidered a face finished by two shoe-button eyes. 

A bunny costume would not be complete without a fuzzy cottontail.
The costume pattern called for a homemade, yarn, pom-pom tail but I knew that I would be able
to find something ready-made that would outclass my meager pom-pom-making skills.
Do you see those fluffy, pink, cotton tails?  They started life as a pair of earmuffs from the 99¢ Only Store!
I considered sizing down the tail on the stuffed bunny rabbit but I thought the giant tail was much funnier. 

The cutest thing I have ever seen!!!
He wasn't even the slightest bit distressed looking like a "pink nightmare."

Maybe this is a time-release terror formula; maybe it won't kick in until he is old enough to understand the humiliation.  Maybe the payoff will be when he gets his first girlfriend and we break out the infamous bunny pictures.

The great part is that the joke is really on my sister; after many years have passed and my nephew looks back at pictures of himself in a pink bunny suit, even he won't wonder how Uncle Tiny fit into the equation, he'll really only wonder why his parents would allow this to happen.

"Here Comes Peter Cottontail" - Gene Autry (1950)

Until then, we wish you a Hop-Hop-Hoppy Easter!!!


Cheers!

Mr. Tiny

Hopping Mad: The Bunny Museum

I've found that a certain level of diplomacy is imperative when communicating my feelings on any given subject; I never know exactly to whom this blog will reach so I try to be extremely careful in my choice of words.  When it comes to one of Pasadena, CA's most famous repositories of historical "art and artifacts," however, there really is no other way to express this sentiment - IT IS CRAZY!!!

No, we're not talking about The Norton Simon Museum.  In a quaint neighborhood, on a charming street, in a fairly unassuming cottage there lies a giant secret - more like 30,000+ little secrets.  While Mary and I prefer to refer to it as the Bunny Ranch, The Bunny Museum is the private home/collection of Candace Frazee and Steve Lubanski.  Just in time for Easter, we found our way to the Guiness Book of World Record-holding, largest collection of bunnies.

Clue #1 that something is slightly different here is the wire, bunny
fence surrounding the 10-foot-tall topiary in the shape of a rabbit.

wacky tacky walks a fine line between kitschy/wildly wonderful and just good, old-fashioned insanity.  As we approached the front door, I couldn't shake the feeling that we should have told somebody where we were going.

Good thing Mary was on top of it.

Clue #2 that we were in for something odd was the hanging
 bunny on the front door.  I admit that I was a little frightened
that something bad was going to happen on the other side of
that threshold.

While it would have made for an especially-compelling (and probably Emmy-winning) episode of Law & Order - one in which Josh Brolin takes a break from the rigors of making major motion pictures for the challenge and thrill of playing Mr. Tiny - I had no desire to become the next permanent addition to the collection.  I was surprisingly relieved to see more people join our team.  Even if the other group included a grandmother, her daughter, and granddaughter, I felt that the "safety in numbers" rule still applied.

Candace Frazee
What's up, doc?  No seriously, what is going on here?

We were greeted at the door by Candace, the owner of the home/museum and invited to "Hop on in," once we had paid our "Bunny Money," a mandatory, five-dollar, suggested donation.  Candace explained that twenty-one years ago she and her husband, referring to each other as "Honey Bunny," began to exchange bunny-themed gifts and have continued to do so EVERY SINGLE DAY ever since.  

Ranging from collectible knick-knacks to dime store toys to pieces from Pasadena's Annual Tournament of Rose's Parade, the collection is an expression of their abiding love of and their unique obsession with rabbits and rabbit paraphernalia.

What would be the living room if there was room to live.
One of these things is not like the other.  Can you spy the living creature?

Display shelves line the walls and every available space is filled with figurines, stuffed toys, advertisements, penny banks, artwork, cookie jars, and even taxidermy -  all rabbit in nature.

Mr. Tiny doing his best rabbit impression.
I'm very sensitive to pets/pet odors...there were definitely live animals on the premises.

Bunnies from around the world!

A little like Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, this room appeared to have "No
windows and no doors."  The den was basically a giant ball pit of stuffed
rabbits with a small hollow carved out for a loveseat and Hoda & Kathie Lee

Real bunnies living in the laundry room

One sees some pretty cute things at The Bunny Museum, but "The Bunny Trail" in the museum's rear garden is home to some equally fascinating/frightening relics of rabbit history.

Once the framework for a Rose Parade float, this decaying
 bunny face is now a piece of garden art.

This brings memories of Bunnicula to the forefront of my overactive imagination.

We left our mark in 3D chalk

I'm grateful to Candace & Steve for maintaining their extensive bunny bonanza - but also a little scared.  It goes without saying that it probably takes a good measure of the March Hare's madness to perpetuate the ever-evolving collection; it seems they embrace that fact, even touting on their website that they have the "#1 Insane Museum" and the "#1 Weirdest Museum in the Los Angeles."  We wish them well in their extreme commitment and many happy years of exchanging daily bunny gifts.

"Here Comes Peter Cottontail" - Gene Autry

Be sure to check out the Funny-or-Die videos featuring The Bunny Museum (I couldn't figure out how to imbed them).  As Candace said, with much practice, as we left the museum, "Have a 'Hoppy' day!"

The Bunny Museum
1933 Jefferson Dr
Pasadena, CA
(626)798-8848 (open by appt. only, call for reservations)

www.thebunnymuseum.com


Cheers & Happy Easter!

Mr. Tiny