I love Easter, hate buying, but now

[Ravin]

You could do an egg scavenger hunt. Inside each egg is a clue to where to find the next egg, and at the end they find their basket. I did something like this with a bunch of college students once, they loved it. We hid the eggs all over campus, but you could easily hide them in your house/yard, just in more challenging places that they need the clues to find.

 

My DD still hasn't found all the eggs I hid for Ostara (which was on the 21st); fortunately the candy inside isn't quickly perishable! This is also why we do indoor egghunts. If she wants to hunt for eggs outside, we go to my friend K's house. They have free range chickens and DD LOVES collecting the eggs with K's sons.

[Matryoshka]

I do always use the vinegar. I had problems two years in a row with some brightly colored variation of the PAAS kits (not the classic kits) when the kids were quite small. It probably was just those kits, which is good to know.

 

My guess is it's the kits - I've never used those. The regular old bottles of food coloring in the baking aisle have instructions on the back for how many drops to put in water to color eggs - I just fill mugs with boiling water, put 1 T of vinegar, however much food coloring (and you can mix to make some wonderful colors), and perfect every time. I have never understood why anyone would need to buy a "kit" to make colored eggs... :confused:

 

We also always use crayons to make designs or write people's names on the eggs - the dye doesn't stick where there's wax.

[Jumping In Puddles]

:cool: I didn't know that is how most people did the egg hunt, interesting! My kids love hiding the eggs so I'm not going to switch now but I'm happy to know what everyone else is talking about, lol!

 

 

I don't think you can do it "wrong". I do think that most of us hide the eggs and our kids hunt for them. But I think my sons would have enjoyed hiding some for the Easter Bunny to find and leave a chocolate egg for them in its place.

 

We all dye them sometime on Saturday. Saturday night the night owl bunny, (me), sets up the basket with the chocolate bunny and if there is anything else. Sunday morning the early rising bunny, (the husband) hides the eggs.

 

Christmas works basically the same way. Night owl Santa sets up stuff. Early rise Santa turns on lights, does finishing touches, and finishes off the cookies left on the plate. And if I'm really lucky, Early rise Santa makes coffee for Night owl Santa, because my son takes after the early rise side of this family!

 

Well, yeah. After the kids go to bed I hide them all over the living room, and put their baskets with all the chocolate on the coffee table.

 

We have to be at church at 8:30 tomorrow morning, and they're insisting they're going to do the egg hunt first! Ugh. (Usually we go to the later service, but my dds are in the choir/accompanying at the early service this year.)

 

Speaking of traditions, when they were little I had this idea it'd be nice to have a tradition of making an Easter Crown bread for Easter morning breakfast. Now I'm always up till the wee hours making the darn thing, waiting for the dough to rise, and I'm wiped on Easter morning! :glare:

[BikeBookBread]

To the OP: I completely understand the desire to NOT fill a basket with throwaway junk. I really, really work hard to not make purchases just for the sake of purchasing (like, "Oh, I need to get a Pez, because every year we do a Pez... etc.). So this year, I went to an independent toy and learning store instead of the big box store for the main part of their baskets.

 

I made the girls' Easter baskets out of those reed kits when they were 3 and 1 respectively, and we re-use them every year. They even have the same grosgrain ribbon on them from the first year. Yes, the girls do get a stuffed animal every year (last year I made amigurumi (crocheted) stuffed animals, but this year I bought) I'm sure this will be one of the last years for stuffed animals, though. The girls each got the same items in their baskets (color variations): lip smacker, rainbow-leaded pencil, wooden spinning top, mini Dover Easter coloring book, mini paper doll kit, a couple of tubs of PlayDoh each (I'm also hiding tubs as part of the Easter egg hunt outside - 4 packs were on sale), a small chocolate bunny, one pack of Peeps (they'll probably eat half of them), and a few handfuls of loose candy. I re-use the paper grass every year, and re-use the same plastic eggs for their egg hunts.

 

The girls are so looking forward to seeking out their Easter baskets tomorrow morning, then going to church, coming home to do the egg hunt, and having Easter dinner (grilling a roast! it's hot in the desert already....). I can't imagine not doing an egg hunt for them.

[LibraryLover]

My 10 yr old loves our simple easter egg hunt. Her sister hides some eggs, she finds them, then she hides some for her sister and the little cousin, and then whoever is in the mood hides some more (mostly the same ones, perhaps with something else in in it. (A jellly bean, gum, a Dad's generous donation of a nickel lol). We often put pennies in them. Some kids thrive on certain tradtions.

 

My kids share one Easter basket, and in it there is some candy, a book each, seeds, a family DVD, & hemp necklaces. No junk. We reuse the same basket year after year (this one is over 15 yrs old) and we reuse the same little plastic eggs. They do fade...lol But we don't care.

 

I wouldn't think of my dds need to carry on our family tradtions as demanding. :shrug:.

 

We've uses natural dyes with great success. Onion skins make a brown yellow, beets, pink, blueberries, kind of a purple. We dont' go crazy. Just a few here and there, sometimes none at all. Tomorrow, the kids will be using a some glitter stuff they saw at a craft shop. I have no idea how that will go, and I really don't have concerns about it one way or the other. (Yeah, sometimes we boil up and dye our eggs on the Sunday; crazy living here).

Edited April 4, 2010 by LibraryLover

[mom4him]

We don't do the egg thing and haven't now for several years. I buy the kids books that I know they will like and I got each of them a stuffy at Christmas and ended up not getting them in time so I just held them but and will give them today.

Last year we bought them their back yard pool and they knew that was it.

[La Condessa]

Have her dye hard boiled eggs and hide those in the yard. If you think you're giving too much 'junk', you are. Stop. There may be whining at first, but you don't have to keep doing something you don't feel is best just because it's what you've done in the past.

[Big Buckin' Longhorn]

Gosh, my step-daughter was crying that I ruined her Easter when she found out... on Easter Day... that the Easter Bunny wasn't real.(She was almost 10) She still was thinking that she may spend Easter with us this year, because she wants to hunt for Easter Eggs..... (she'll be 18 in a couple of months.)

So....

Hmmmmmm

 

 

:001_smile: So sweet. My almost 17 year old son still likes Easter Egg hunts too. These days we put art supplies, DVDs, cash etc . . . in the bucket. It's starting to get expensive, but I guess that's the nature of the beast.

 

My parents still have Santa visit my stocking at their house and I'm . . . not a child, LOL.

 

Don't you love holidays.

[Teachin'Mine]

Maybe it's a good time to get back to the real meaning of Easter. The associated activities can be a lot of fun, but if they're not, then maybe something more important is missing. Pray for your children, pray with your children. Just a thought.

 

As far as what to give, I still make an Easter basket because we all have fun with it - giving and receiving. I haven't used a traditional basket in years. One year I got a bag for pool stuff, a book bag another, a back pack another, etc.. We always put a little candy in, but also something else that isn't edible. One year the book Narnia, another year some puzzles of Easter eggs, an appropriate DVD, things like this.

 

Sounds like you could use some help too! Instead of doing all the cooking and preparing all alone, tell your daughter that now she's old enough to learn how to do these things too and will be your most excellent helper! When you make the menu, bring her in on the plans and the shopping list. Let her help you bake the cake, color the eggs, and prepare the meal. When it's time to shop for what to put in the basket, let your husband come along and come up with ideas too.

 

Wishing you and your family a happy Easter. :) :grouphug:

[Impish]

My Tazzie was first up this am, and burst into tears when he was told that there was no egg hunt. :( Cassie, our Great Pyr x Akbash being the reason...she'd have eaten everything, and gotten incredibly ill.

 

So, we put Cassie in the yard, sent Tazzie back to bed (along with his sisters who had woken up) and hid eggs.

 

I guess we've started a new tradition...egg hiding in the am, once the dog is in the yard! One thing is for certain...I'll never *not* hide eggs again! Its funny how kids get attached to one ritual...I never realized that the hunt was so important to them, I thought it was about the chocolate.

[Corraleno]

Easter baskets are a big deal here; DS has said that Easter is his favorite holiday, even though he gets more presents at Christmas. He just loves the egg hunt and getting a basket of things that are total surprises. Over the years I've cut way back on the candy; this year they each got a Pez dispenser & some pez, one Reese's egg, and several packs of sugarless gum, plus chocolate-covered dried cherries/strawberries/apricots in the plastic eggs we hide around the house.

 

In the baskets, they each got a MadLibs book, a card game, a bubble wand, and a stuffed rabbit ~ DD7 got a Hello Kitty rabbit and DS12 got a Monty Python Killer Rabbit (which had both DS and DH in stitches for about 20 minutes). Plus DD got a Hello Kitty math workbook, a big pack of colored pipecleaners, and a pink mini-Etch-a-Sketch, and DS got a 2 small lego kits and a tiny Stonehenge kit.

 

I always do a basket for DH, too ~ this year he got Dutch extra-salt licorice, German marzipan, British "HobNobs," assorted hot sauces, exotic mustards, a Madlibs book (Worst Case Scenario/Survival) and a stuffed Mr. Krabs (from SpongeBob). :001_smile:

 

Jackie

[mirth]

If you think you're giving too much 'junk', you are. Stop.

 

I truly agree.

[MrsMe]

This is a huge, huge list of great ideas.

 

And..they are now all safely copied and filed in My Documents.

Thanks everyone!

[freerange]

We used treasure hunt clues - a mixture of literary & historical references, clues in Latin & French, one in the style of a Singapore math's puzzle, and I thought a particularly inspired one - frozen into a large block of ice! It took them over an hour to work through them. I'm currently putting together one for DS to do tomorrow since he missed this morning's fun. The first clue is a diagram of a caffeine mollecule, which I hope will lead him to the coffee jar.

[teamturner]

Its funny how kids get attached to one ritual...I never realized that the hunt was so important to them, I thought it was about the chocolate.

 

 

Yes, even my twin 10 yo boys were into it this year. And a girl neighbor friend has been coming to our house for the egg hunt for so many years now that she expects it too. Her family doesn't do an egg hunt. I reuse my plastic eggs and just buy candy each year. My candy was quite lame this year since I didn't get enough and no one complained. It's all about the hunt! One year I bought some Easter temporary tatoos and I've still got enough of those to last a few more years!

[Pippen]

We used treasure hunt clues - a mixture of literary & historical references, clues in Latin & French, one in the style of a Singapore math's puzzle, and I thought a particularly inspired one - frozen into a large block of ice! It took them over an hour to work through them. I'm currently putting together one for DS to do tomorrow since he missed this morning's fun. The first clue is a diagram of a caffeine mollecule, which I hope will lead him to the coffee jar.

 

Ooooo, I like this! I spent a long time writing up my usual bad rhyming clues last night and they turned out to be way too easy for my now older kids.