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