Orthodox Easter 2016 - Egg Dye Trial

I know this is a little (lol VERY) late, but oh well. I'm pregnant, forgetful and slow. Whaddyagunnado..

This year, since becoming pregnant I thought I would make a effort to start becoming a proper domakinka (Macedonian for housewife but it means so much more than just 'wifely duties'. I'll have to do a separate post about it). I figured my first domakinka duty would be Easter egg dying and seeing as though I had never done it myself before I bent the rules slightly.

In my Easter post from last year there's more information about the traditions involved with Orthodox Easter (link here). I wanted to follow the 'rules' but I figured this year could be my test run. I say this mostly because I knew something would stuff up and I didn't want to be disappointed in my efforts. It was all to lesson the blow really haha

I went to a wog deli to scout the things I would need and was half successful. I had wanted to do traditional red eggs as well as some pink eggs. Pink isn't a colour that people dye their eggs because, as I found out, pink dye is so fricking hard to find. The usual colours people use aside from red are blue, green and yellow. They come in the same type of foiled packets as shown above and you can sometimes find them in your local Coles or Woolies depending on how woggy your area is. Some people had suggested to me that food colouring would work if I couldn't find pink dye...

On the left is a pot with the regular red dye colouring the eggs and on the right is the pot with food colouring...

Can you tell which ones are pink and which are red? hahaha 

Needless to say, using food colouring was a big fail. I don't know why the pink dye made the eggs red and I don't know why the eggs had stripes across them, but I guess its ok because lucky this was a test run, right? When Easter passed and people were posting pictured of their eggs I saw some GORGEOUS colours being used. There was baby pink, mint green, hot pink, bright purple, lavender and baby blue. It was like nothing I had ever seen before! I asked around and apparently they were all made through packet dye just like the red colouring but you had to go to the markets at just the right time before easter to be able to find them. At least I know now for next year!

I didn't take photos of the feast because it was making me feel nauseous looking at the mix of food but I was alllllll about the sweets. I could've eaten these two trays by myself. Damnnnnn!

I can't wait to take the little lessons I learnt from this years trial and hopefully I'll have some better coloured eggs next year!

Orthodox Easter OOTD featuring THE BUMP!

The baby belly is appearing! Slowly but surely its growing and growing and I couldn't be more excited! If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen me air my worries and frustrations at not having noticed a change in my belly and not having felt any movements yet, but I'm so happy to tell you that my worries are all gone now! Last week I felt (for sure, 100%, definitely) baby move! It was absolutely bizarre and wonderful and I can only imagine how much more brilliant its going to be when baby is bigger and I can feel more defined movements.





The past few weeks have been really great! I finished up at my temp job and have started to nest..or try to at least. Trying to find things to fill the nursery with on a small budget within the style that I'm wanting is proving to be really annoying. Seems like most nursery furniture easily available is very modern or Danish style and thats not really my thing. I was hoping to find more cool vintage type things in op shops but I'm just not having any luck. If anyone knows of any places in Melbourne I could suss out, please let me know!
It was also Orthodox Easter a couple of weekends ago (when these photos were taken) so we spent the day with family having a traditional Easter feast, but I'll post more about that fun stuff separately. It's been really great getting to spend a lot of time with family recently.





Do you celebrate Othodox Easter? What did you get up to?

Cardigan: Sussan  //  Dress: Kmart  //  Boots: Kmart

Necklace: Tiffany & Co  //  Pantyhose: Sonsee

Orthodox Easter Coloured Egg Tradition

I was really excited to see a comment pop up on my Orthodox Easter blog post asking about the tradition of dyed eggs. I was trying to find a way of structuring my answer but one of my fave blogs already had the perfect post that explains it all wonderfully.

The Modern Domakinka (domakinka means housewife in Macedonian.) is a fantastic new blog all about traditional Macedonian recipes and I'll insert her post below.

"The traditional red, hard-boiled egg is the most prominent symbol of Orthodox Easter. Orthodox Christians will spend Thursday (Veliki Cetvrtok) dying dozens of eggs and decorating them with different colours and designs. However, it must be noted that the first three eggs should be dyed before dawn on Thursday, before Good Friday. It is said that these three eggs will not go rotten for years to come if they are dyed before the sun rises.

The first egg is dedicated to God; the second egg is dedicated to the head of the house or the 'Domakin'; and the third egg is for good luck. The first egg is said to be magical, and is therefore placed next to a religious icon in the house. It is even believed that this egg can cure illnesses. It is for this reason that the housewife or the 'Domakinka' should not attempt to dye these three eggs on an empty stomach. She must eat at least a mouthful of bread, as any eggs dyed on an empty stomach do not bring any luck. It is even believed that they can bring bad luck and illness. The egg placed on the icon last year should be buried in the ground before placing the new egg on the icon.

With the first rays of sunlight, the housewife or the 'Domakinka' will wake each member of the household by rubbing the first boiled egg on each of their faces saying "Crveno, belo, debelo," or "Red, white, plump!"

This beautiful tradition of egg dying represents life and birth; and the red dye symbolises the blood of Christ. The tradition stems from the story of Marija Magdalena who travelled to Rome to inform King Tiberij of the miracle of the resurrection of Christ. She offered a dyed red egg to the King and said "Hristos Voskrese!" or "Christ has risen!" From then on, Orthodox Christians have been dying red eggs to symbolise the resurrection of Christ."

I honestly couldn't have put it better myself. The whole process is a tradition and when I was a kid it was a fun one. You would never see the stuff that happened really early in the morning but when you got up baba (grandma) and/or mum would be dying the eggs and you'd stand at the stove with her and it was some good bonding time. You buy the dye at most delis (you can tell which ones will have them by how woggy they look) and I remember there being a lot of egg stickers that you could put on them too. Nowadays theres heaps of fancy things you can do to the boiled eggs. People paint them, add stickers, add textured coatings and all this stuff but they're especially beautiful when they're kept simple. 

Usually over Easter the Eggs are given to basically everyone you interact with. For example, one of my grandmas makes eggs for her household, then gives my family a dozen for us to share, then some for my other grandma, some for my aunties family and any of her friends that are Orthodox, and then everyone that receives the eggs gives her some of their batch. So its basically a lot of egg swapping haha

If you want to know more about being a Modern Macedonian housewife and learn about some great traditional recipes do check out The Modern Domakinka's blog  &  The Modern Domakinka's Facebook page because I'm honestly obsessed with it.

Orthodox Easter

I know its a bit late but hey, this blog didn't technically exist yet to be able to post this at the right time. Two weekends ago (Sunday April 12th 2015), it was Orthodox Easter (Yes, Orthodox Easter, not Greek Easter. All wogs aren't Greek so plz don't call it Greek Easter). Its usually a week after 'normal' easter and its a pretty festive time especially if you go to the church gatherings.
My family doesn't go to church for Easter because we're not really that religious but we do always go to my grandparents houses for lunch/dinner. Wogs everywhere gather with their families and stuff their faces with good/greasy food on Easter because most of them had been fasting in the weeks leading up to it.

After spending the whole day at both grandparents houses, you basically roll back home while carrying a tray of more food to last you the next week and a half. I'ts pretty frickin awesome.
As well as the great food, theres also a mountain of sweets that all the oldies make usually just for Easter and Christmas (Christmas is also on another day but more on that when the time comes around). I'm so bummed I didn't take more photos of all the food but as soon as we got there, we pretty much got straight into eating haha

We take a pretty chill approach to our Easter gatherings but some people go all out and dress up really nice to go over to each others houses. That's not how we roll. The uniform for my family is basically jeans and a tee (or jumper depending on the weather). I haven't been a jeans person since I was about 16. All that changed about a year ago when a friend gave me basically all her plus size clothing and amongst it all was a pair of jeans. The most perfect pair of jeans to grace my plus thighs (ha! see what I did there!) since I was an inbetweenie. I've since worn them to death and haven't been able to find the same pair anywhere so I've been looking for a new pair to replace them and I think I may have found them *choir sings* 

When I told my husband to take some outfit photos he just groaned and wasn't having a bar of it, but then we got into it and he was like 'ok, now you take some of me' haha he's pretty cute.

Hope all you guys had a great wog easter/regular easter!

Jumper: Miss Shop (from a few years ago, but similar here) // Jeans: Suzanne Grae // Shoes: Converse