Prepping for the Persian New Year | Norouz

The Persian New Year, or Norouz as we call it is starting in 10 days and I'm excitedly looking forward to it. Norouz means 'a new day', and I think we Persians have the most beautiful way and customs of celebrating a new year, not to mention we have chosen the most beautiful day out of 365 to set as the beginning of the year! No prejudice or anything; read on and you'll admit it too! Ha ha! New Year's Day is on spring equinox (how meaningful? *coughs*) when the Earth is reborn, trees blossom, plants sprout, birds sore and fly... Okay, enough poetry. Moving on to the traditions.

The tradition for the moment the Earth finishes a full spin around the sun (which is gonna be on Friday, March 20 at 10:45:11 PM GMT this year) is that the whole family, dressed up in new clothes, sit around the Haft Seen (which is a table setting that holds seven objects -each symbolizing a beautiful meaning [I'll do a complete blog post on Haft Seen] that start with the /s/ sound in Farsi), read poems of Hafez or Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, wish everyone well and celebrate the new year.

Enough rambling now. Let's get to the point of this blog post! One of the things we have on the Haft Seen, is colored eggs. This year (1394) is the year of the goat, so the eggs I made are a male and a female goat and green themed ones. I only wish I had photographed/filmed the way I did these eggs as I think some of them might come in handy for those of you who celebrate Easter. But I can give a few tips here:

1. I made the goats out of hot glue. After emptying the egg, I drew the pattern of the body of the goat (just the body - without the head), and then filled the pattern with hot glue. 

2. Then I drew the shape of its head on a flat cold surface and when it hardened, I detached it from the surface and glued it on the body.

3. For the horns, I dipped two curved short wire pieces in hot glue and once the glue was cold, I glued the horns behind the head. 

4. I painted the eggs green, and the goats white (with Pelikan watercolor; God it was so tough) and that was it.

4.1 The girlie goatie's dress is just pieces of red ribbon.

*YOU CAN FOLLOW THIS PROCEDURE TO MAKE EASTER BUNNIES ON YOUR EGGS.

Picture number 4 above has two needle felted hearts made by yours truly. I am obsessed with this art, and I cannot wait for the holidays to spend more time on it.

If you'd like any tips on how to make the eggs, feel free to ask me in the comments.

Last but not least, I "invented" these egg holders the other day and I'm so happy with the result! You only need 3 paper clips and some hot glue or super glue. They are flexible for any egg size and more importantly they're so convenient and light weight.

What a long blog post! I can't wait to share my Haft Seen here soon which I think is gonna make an even longer post! Ha ha!

♥

Noushin