Looking for Easter Tradition Ideas

[booksie]

I'm curious to know everyone's Easter traditions, especially with kids.

Does the Easter bunny hide eggs? Hide baskets?? Do the kids decorate their own baskets or does the Easter Bunny surprise them with new ones every year, etc. Who decorates the eggs?

I just heard about a fun tradition where the Easter Bunny leaves a trail of chocolate eggs from each child's bedroom to their hidden Easter basket, I thought that was cute!

[Missy2U]

DS is no longer a kid so I just give him money now. :D

But, when he was a kid, here's what we did.

We'd decorate eggs together, each year we'd try a different technnique - it was our "arts and crafts" time kind of thing. We only did a dozen, because he didn't like hard boiled eggs, and I can only eat so much egg salad.

I did hide eggs, but I used the plastic ones, and filled some with candy, some with money, some with tiny little notes that were for "Mom makes brownies", "you and Mom go to McDonald's for lunch" - that kind of thing. I usually hid a dozen, and he'd find them on Easter morning. We always left carrots outside for the bunny and I made sure that he could tell the bunny had eaten them. I didn't hide his basket - it was always in the same spot - right by the TV, because we always watched TV together in the mornings.

[Sophia]

Each child has one basket that is used every year. I just bought DD2's basket yesterday. DS is 14 and DD1 is almost 12, and we still have their baskets. They don't get filled anymore, though.

The basket magically appears, filled with goodies, by the foot of their crib/bed on Easter morning, filled by the "Easter Bunny."

The hunt is for cascarones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascarones). The "Easter Bunny" hides a few dozen for the kids to find Easter morning, and the rest are usually taken to a family gathering to hunt and break. Cascarones can be decorated at home by the kids or bought at roadside stands that pop up a few weeks before Easter. I'm making them this year, probably with my older kids' help--the ILs have been saving shells for months--I think I saw about 8 dozen last time I was there. Which reminds me, I need to get the good confetti and some dye. I rarely use plastic eggs. When I do I only get one dozen and fill them with small toys like Hotwheels or Polly Pocket and they go in the baskets. I never use boiled eggs.

[Chimichanga]

We'll be starting some of these traditions with DD this year:

Easter Bunny will leave a new basket filled with candy
Easter Bunny will leave 1-2 larger gifts (for now a stuffed animal/outfit; when she's older a kite or soemthing like that) for each child
Easter Bunny will hide plastic eggs with money and such
The family will decorate Easter eggs the night before Easter. Mom and Dad will hide them after Easter presents are opened


One thing that my family started later on was these Mexican eggs. Sophia probably knows the correct name. ;) We would hollow out an egg, fill it with confetti/flour and then decorate the outside. Then we'd crack it on each other's heads. My mom preferred confetti because it was easier to clean up. :) I'd like to keep doing that with DD and DH.

[jennylou]

sophia - lol, I didn't know those had a name! :) We had tons of those that we would have to find, some plastic eggs with money and some regular hard boiled eggs. The best Easters growing up were the ones where we had tons of us cousins looking for eggs. :)

As for what we'll do - we'll go to Mass on Easter Morning. After that, I'm not sure. I do want to do the Easter basket as well as an egg hunt, but I'm not sure of the logistics this year. :) We'll have to figure it out. ;)

[rubyredslippers]

You can grow real grass for the Easter baskets--line the basket with plastic or find a bowl that fits inside, fill it with potting soil and sprinkle the grass seed over the surface. Water well.

Takes about 2 weeks to get a good crop, if you have a nice warm place to keep it.

[Sophia]

Chimichanga, my mom never let us use flour for the cascarones (she didn't even like using the really skinny confetti--just the round kind), but my cousins would usually have one or two flour ones and it was always a huge deal to see who would find it and who would get smacked with it. It was a huge PITA to get out of your hair, and of course wetting your hair just made a messy paste. :p

Jenny, I think "cascarones" means "shell," so there you go. ;) My mom only had boiled eggs when she was little. When she told us I said something like "that's no fun." I've never liked eggs, so finding a whole bunch I'd have to eat didn't seem as fun as smashing a bunch of confetti ones on my cousins. We even "broke" them on our dogs by pre-cracking them. Same thing with small children & babies.

[Rosebud]

There are some really cute ideas here! Our family was pretty standard-- we all painted eggs together, then the "Easter bunny" hid them and when we woke up in the morning it was a free-for-all to find them. Inevitably one egg would go missing and no one could find it... :)

The one cool/different thing we did is that we would always leave Easter eggs & candy for our elderly neighbors (sort of like another set of grandparents to us) early Easter morning. Our parents would walk us over and we'd "hide" them somewhere on their porch. We thought we were all secretive. Later in the day our neighbors would come over and tell us how they could never catch that Easter bunny. It was really cute and it went on for years!

[snowzilla]

We always do the egg-dyeing thing, and usually an Easter egg hunt, with some sort of "prize" at the end - like a larger chocolate bunny or something. This worked well when my kids were small - now, they're older (other than our 20-month old who is too small to totally get Easter) so we still do the egg hunt, but the prize is usually a book or something on the small side that they'll enjoy.

We don't usually do Easter "dinner", but I'd like to get that tradition going.

[sparkle&shine]

I read a cute idea recently:

Put clues in the eggs to help the kids find their baskets.



We also do cascarones! We do two rounds. One for the little kids and one for the adults ;) It is so much fun and there is money in ours. From change to usually one egg with a $20 in it! Easter is one of my favorite holidays.

[Toonces]

The Dora Easter episode this year is about cascarones. :)

DD is 2.5 this year so we'll start the tradition of hunting for Easter eggs in the backyard. She & DS will each get an easter basket with small toys. We'll also go to church in the morning.

[Veleno]

This year will be a very special easter for us.
DS+DD will be converting to Catholicism.
At the Easter vigil they will do their credo and in two weeks they will get their first holy communion.
I´m so proud of them.