Easter is on Sunday, April 17th - that's less than two weeks away. The holiday coincides with the vernal equinox, which welcomes the new season here in the northern hemisphere. This year, why not celebrate spring with lots of beautiful new products for decorating, cooking, baking, entertaining, and more. I have so many wonderful offerings on Martha.com. There are also items from my collections at Macy’s, from Martha Stewart Wine Co., Martha Stewart Kitchen, iGourmet, Goldbelly, Wayfair, Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon, and 19 Crimes - so many terrific products that will delight your family, your friends - and you, too!
Here are some of my favorites, enjoy.
Whether you’re hosting Easter lunch this year, or visiting friends and family, these vintage-inspired jadeite cake stands from Martha.com are perfect for displaying desserts or creating beautiful tiered serving pieces. On Martha.com, you can shop all the wonderful products I’ve collected, curated, and designed over the years.
Chocolate eggs and candy are the quintessential Easter treats. This Easter Basket from iGourmet is packed with springtime specialties to share with loved ones. It includes artisanal chocolate candies, caramel robin eggs, cookies, and more.
There’s nothing like waking up Easter morning to the smell of warm, delicious pastries. These danishes bake up in your oven to flaky, buttery, golden brown perfection, and will make your home smell absolutely incredible! This pack from my Goldbelly Collection contains apricot, cherry, and cream cheese danishes.
Add Easter cheer to your home with my Easter Bunny Figural featuring a solid white ground and porcelain design. It’s created exclusively for Macy’s.
Perhaps you’d like to give a gift that keeps on giving – a subscription to my delicious Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon meal kits. Martha & Marley Spoon continues to be a great meal kit delivery service that’s full of delicious recipes and helpful cooking tips – especially now that we’re all spending more time at home.
Another offering from Martha.com – die-cut table accents that make wonderful place cards. You can also use them under flatware and glasses, scattered on your tabletop, or as an oversized gift tags.
Have you tried my delicious Chard from 19-Crimes? It’s so well-balanced and smooth. It will quickly become your favorite new wine. You can find it by visiting 19Crimes.com for a store near you. Work hard, play hard and drink Martha’s Chard.
I loves to serve a delicious roast leg of lamb at Easter lunch. These are D’Artagnan’s 100-percent grass-fed Dorset breed lambs pasture-raised in the Victoria region of southeast Australia. It’s available for pre-order now on Martha.com and will ship just days before Easter Sunday in time for your gathering.
Easter Sunday lunch wouldn’t be right without some of your favortie sides. My thinly sliced scalloped potatoes from Martha Stewart Kitchen are layered with generous amounts of parmesan cheese, baked in cream with lots of ground black pepper.
If you’re looking for charming spring decorations, my bird’s nest replicas are made from gathered bundles of natural twigs and decorated with pretty faux eggs—a lovely accent for Easter and spring tables.
Add a fresh touch of opulence to spring tablescapes with this set of Baroque salad plates from my Collection exclusively at Macy’s. They feature a delightful floral design complete with sculptural curves and gold-tone rims.
My Baroque Dinnerware plates add a more formal touch in all white with a gold rim.
At Martha.com, order my paperbound compendium of all my best holiday crafts ideas from early spring to late winter.
From our own Martha Wine Co., try this selection of chardonnays from Europe and South America. This trio includes a 2020 Vinum Africa Unoaked Chardonnay, a 2019 Bayshore Vintners Chardonnay, and a 2020 Balbo Estate Chardonnay from Argentina.
From Wayfair, you’ll love my Martha Stewart mini loaf pan bakers. They’re perfect for cooking individual bread portions. These bakers are not only functional but also stylish, designed with a colored stoneware finish and embossed outer stripe so you can take your dish straight from the oven to the table.
For all those spring baking projects, you’ll need some good bowls. These have wide and shallow shapes, are freezer-safe, and chip resistant.
The kouign-amann is a layered pastry of dough, sugar and butter from the French region of Brittany. When baked in the oven, the exterior caramelizes with crispy sugar while the inside remains tender and flaky. It’s absolutely delicious, and one of my favorite pastries.
This beautiful 24-inch forsythia wreath adds a colorful accent to any door or mantle, brightens your spring and Easter décor, and makes a unique housewarming gift.
This rustic yet refined set of 12 Seedling Wreath die-cut placemats available on Martha.com are a delightful way to create a charming seasonal table setting.
From delicate florals to figural bunnies and flowers, my Easter Collection has the essentials you need to dine, decorate and entertain in style throughout the spring and into summer. I hope you shop all my Collections today – I know you’ll find something for everyone’s basket.
Spring is always a good time to get those outdoor projects out of the way. Here at my Bedford, New York farm, that includes the installment of a very special ornamental cast iron horse head above the front barn doors of my stable - gifted to me by my friend, antiques dealer Jim Klinko, owner of Furniture on Consignment II in Westport, Connecticut.
I called Carmine Luppino, from Luppino Landscaping and Masonry LLC, to discuss the project details and make a plan. Carmine and his talented crew are responsible for all the stonework at the farm and always seem to know exactly how I'd like things done. It took more than a full day to get the task completed, but I am happy to report the horse head is up and it looks fantastic.
Enjoy these photos.
This is an old French cast iron horse head, most likely from the late 19th century. The patina suggests it spent lots of time outdoors. These horse heads were often used as emblems outside butcher shops specializing in horseflesh. Some were also used on the exterior walls of saddleries, or in front of a farrier or livery stable.
You may recall seeing this photo last December on my Instagram page @MarthaStewart48. My friend Jim in the Santa Claus suit, his husband Layton, and their son Jacob, delivered the 150 pound horse head via pick-up truck all the way from Westport, Connecticut. It was among my favorite Christmas gifts last year. It took five strong guys to lift it out of the truck and onto the stable cobblestone courtyard. I knew it would look so perfect above the barn doors.
Last week, a team from Luppino Landscaping and Masonry came over and got to work. Early in the morning, they began putting up the scaffolding in front of the stable.
Good preparation for any project is key. The crew of seven made sure everything was secure and centered before starting any of the work.
I knew I wanted the horse head to be above the center keystone of the doorway. A keystone is the wedge-shaped stone at the apex of a masonry arch. The keystone is the final piece placed during construction and locks all the stones into position, allowing the arch of the doorway to bear weight. Here, the crew uses a level to evaluate the surface of the stone where the horse head will be mounted.
My property manager, Doug White, made this plywood back plate for the horse head, so it has something to sit on once installed. Doug is a very experienced carpenter and takes on some of the smaller carpentry tasks around the farm.
Once the exact location is determined, the plywood mount is held up and its outline traced lightly on the facade.
Then the stones are shaved down, so the surface is flat.
Here’s Carmine doing some of the work – in some areas, up to an inch of stone is shaved down to create a flat, level space for the horse head.
Every so often, a level is used to ensure the area is both level and plumb.
Meanwhile, on the ground, the crew measures the location of the horse head’s holes.
The wooden mount is marked where the holes match up to those on the piece.
And then holes are drilled into the wood.
Here one can see how the holes match up on both the horse and the mount. The horse head is very heavy, so several guys are needed to carefully lift it up and down.
Galvanized steel anchor L-bolts are placed into the holes – these fit just right.
Two of these bolts will secure the mount to the horse and then into the stone.
Next, holes are drilled into the stone. The crew measures several times before drilling to be 100-percent sure everything is done right.
Once again, the wooden mount is held up as a test – everything looks great so far.
By afternoon, the holes are ready for the epoxy which will help to keep the screws in place. At this time, it started to rain – this delayed the epoxy drying time. This then caused a pause in the installation process. Carmine decided everyone would return the next morning to finish the job.
And here they are the next day. The epoxy is completely dried and the the horse head is finally screwed into the stone wall.
This part of the job took less than an hour – it looks great. Here, the head is almost completely secured. They called me down to make a final check before tightening the screws and getting off the scaffolding.
And here I am on my trusted steed, Rinze. I think it looks great and makes a nice ornamental addition to my stable. What do you think? Share your thoughts with me in the section below.
It's very busy up at my compost yard - one of the most important areas on my Bedford, New York farm.
Over the last few weeks, my outdoor grounds crew has been gathering all the organic debris - logs, stumps, bark and brush, and transporting it to the compost yard in preparation for the tub grinder. I like to call in the massive machine once a year or once every two years, to reduce the size of our debris pile into much finer, usable wood chips and mulch. The tub grinder from Material Processors Inc. arrived this week and is already making lots of progress.
Here are some photos and videos, enjoy.
This may be our largest pile of debris yet at the farm! It’s all piled up in my large compost yard ready for the tub grinder.
For years, I’ve used a team from Material Processors, Inc. – a 30-year old company that focuses on recycling green waste, and clearing and preparing land spaces for development.
Tub grinders are extremely large and heavy, so the team delivers the tub grinder and excavator to the farm the day before to set it up and prepare it for work.
Tub grinders are named for the distinctive in-feed hopper – the large round tub, normally 10 to 14-feet in diameter and roughly six-feet deep. It is moved into position close to the wood pile. Before any equipment is used, all the controls are checked to make sure everything is in good working order.
Most tub grinders are powered by diesel engines. Here is a closer look at the back of the unit, where all the mechanicals are located.
Tub grinders have a variety of screens for the output. The screen selection for each job is usually based on the type of material being processed and the desired end-product.
A conveyor belt or augers located below the screens transports the finished product away from the mill to this discharge conveyor which carries the material away from the machine.
Here is the excavator, which is used to pick up the material using its large “jaws grab” bucket attachment and drop it into the tub grinder.
The jaws are huge and can pick up, move and sort several large logs or pieces of debris at a time.
Of course, there is always a fire extinguisher nearby for safety.
Tub grinders rely primarily on gravity to feed the material into the hammermill at the bottom of the tub. As the tub revolves, the hammermill below, shatters the wood into smaller fragments.
The excavator works with a hydraulic system allowing the operator to raise and lower the long boom and bucket. Because the chassis is built on top of the undercarriage, it is also able to rotate 360-degrees. As the big machines are used, one also cuts large logs into smaller pieces nearby.
Tub grinders are typically loaded from the top. Here, one can see a load as it is delivered to the grinder just before it is dropped.
Here is the continuous discharge conveyor carrying the material away from the machine and onto a mound. It is always sad to see the trees go, but I am glad they can be repurposed into usable rich materials for the gardens.
The machines do this over and over, one load at a time. There is a lot of dust and occasional debris flying around – it is very important to stay several feet away whenever visiting an excavator and tub grinder at work. The team prefers to work on rainy days, which helps to cut down on all the dust. This day was perfect – on and off showers from morning to afternoon.
This tractor and bucket work to keep the processed mound together and neat. Later, this pile will be put through the grinder a second time. The second pass makes it even finer. The grinding process is actually quite mesmerizing to watch. It is also extremely loud – the tub grinder can be heard all the way on the other side of the farm.
In this area, I also have several piles of organic material in different stages of decomposition – mulch, leaf mold, and manure. It will all be ready to use after it is mixed together, turned and then sieved through the grinder.
This crew has been doing this for many years and works very quickly and efficiently. Everyone at the farm visits the area several times a day to see them at work.
It’s a huge job to grind all of this debris. The crew will be here for several more days. I can’ wait to see how much is produced after everything is processed. I’ll be sure to share more photos.
Here are two short clips showing the excavator, tub grinder, and conveyor at work.
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