Lynn O’Rourke: ‘There was no such thing as an Easter decoration’

I CAN hardly believe it is Easter next week. In the past I’ve trawled our garden looking for a branch that would work as a tree for the kids to decorate.

Thankfully the year I got really carried away and sprayed lots of branches gold appears to have been forgotten, which is just as well as I used the last of my decorating energies on the recent birthday party.

I’m hoping they’ve also forgotten the attempt to paint a large branch to create a pretty Scandinavian-style tree, which ended up looking like a dirty old bit of wood with paint spilt on it. And it still took me a long time.

We didn’t do this kind of thing as kids, so I’m not too sure where I’ve got it from. When I was a child, there was no such thing as an Easter decoration, but once those pretty little things started appearing, I was hooked. This year I’m keeping it simple – a bit of twig-collecting and leaving the kids to their own devices, which should take up about 15 minutes one rainy afternoon (it is the school holidays after all). I shall then boil many eggs for a long time – unlike the year I didn’t, and each carefully decorated egg smashed within ten seconds of our reaching a suitable hill for rolling. I shall also buy lots in advance and not pay a small fortune for half a dozen because only the posh deli has any left by the time I get round to it. Bearing all of this in mind, I’m ready – let the Easter holidays commence.

This week we take a look at artist Sandra Moffat’s restored Victorian house in Glasgow. Balancing light rooms with some painted a dark midnight blue creates a striking contrast that works beautifully. You can see the results on page 4. It has taken Joanne and Scott Brown four years to renovate their stone-built cottage near Linlithgow, but in that time they have created a lovely family home, featured on page 8, and a great lifestyle to go with it.