This month the Design Team is talking about their Easter and Passover traditions. I’ll let you in on a little secret – I suggested this topic and yet, I am having a hard time nailing down our Easter Traditions!
Did you see Nikki’s post? I love her traditions surrounding Lent. Growing up my family was also deeply religious, and Easter meant many trips to Church and sober reflection on Jesus’ sacrifice for us, but we were not Catholic so Lent had a different meaning for us. More prayer and less personal sacrifice! Then I married someone with very little personal faith or religious leanings so those spiritual traditions fell by the wayside. It’s something I personally struggle with as I feel I’ve let my children down. My faith in a Higher Power has sustained me through many a challenge in my life, and I worry that I haven’t passed that along to my girls.
Kids definitely brought a new dynamic into the Easter weekend. Chocolate seems to be the main focus now. When I was a kid we would get one large chocolate egg – usually filled with Smarties (the chocolate kind). As I grew up (mostly) in Britain, the Easter Bunny wasn’t a thing, and Easter Egg hunts didn’t happen either. When we moved to Canada I would occasionally participate in one held at a friends, but our Easters were still very faith focused. Then I had kids. And suddenly egg hunts were imperative! LOL I even had one of my daughters on the Saturday of the Easter weekend and remember vividly telling the doctor that we had to leave right away as my older daughter had an Easter Egg hunt at my parents on the Sunday!
Clearly we made the egg hunt (it helped that Paige was a relatively easy delivery). And her birth timing did change the way many an Easter was celebrated. So for today I thought I’d show you some of the ways I’ve used my love of paper crafting to personalize our Easter celebrations. And at the end, I’ll share an EPIC Easter Egg Hunt that my sister-in-law organized 3 years ago as well as an Easter themed Progressive Layout.
Easter Themed Birthday Parties
Paige’s birthday is the middle of April so it’s not often that Easter falls on her birthday, but often enough that we have had many an Easter Themed birthday party (or sent Easter Themed treats to school). My absolute favourite was the year she was in love with Scavenger Hunts so we came up with a Pirate Easter Bunny birthday party theme.
Her invitations were in the shape on a egg and on the back was a rolled “map” with all the party details.
Can you stand it? I have a Silhouette which got a LOT of use for my girls birthday parties. And of course, Pinterest is my best friend too.
I love it when I can bring my love of creating unique cards and gifts with paper, into my everyday life. Like these goody bags for another party held close to Easter. I used my dies, stamps and remnants from a Simon Says Stamp card kit. to create cute tags. Sometimes simple can be pretty effective, am I right?
Easter Themed Treats
At the beginning of this post I promised you some treats – well here you go. For more years than I can remember, Paige insisted on taking these to school as her special Birthday Treat to share with her classmates. Super easy to make – way easier than cupcakes! We used the Spring Rice Crispies mix to make a basic Rice Crispy treat, then scooped it into muffin cups and formed it into “nests”. (Hot Tip – use ice cold water to keep your utensils wet, that way the melted marshmallows won’t stick to your spoon as you scoop and form the nests.) Once cooled, we transferred the nests into cupcake liners, added a dollop of icing into the middle and nestled Cadbury’s Mini Eggs on top.
They also pair really well with that restorative, post birthday party glass of wine. Just saying!
An Epic Easter Egg Hunt idea
As I was looking through all my Easter pictures from years gone by, I realized that since having our children, we have celebrated with my brother and his family. I guess that’s part of our family tradition. We live only 40 minutes apart and while we don’t see each other super often (both of us have crazy schedules) we make an effort to get together whenever we can. My brother and I grew up far from our cousins and vowed that our children wouldn’t experience that. It helps that our kids are all spaced out roughly the same so they have really good relationships with each other.
In 2019 my sister-in-law planned an EPIC Easter Egg Scavenger hunt. It was so much fun and had the added bonus of forcing the kids to run all over the neighbourhood looking for clues before returning to the house for the eventual prize of massive amounts of chocolate.
I am all for anything that is a bit different. And the kids (and dogs) had a blast. And it took ages compared to the usual “hide some eggs in the backyard, have the children find them all in 5 minutes” scenario. And then of course there’s less risk of something like this happening …
Yep, someone turned on the dryer and these eggs under the vent got a wee bit melted! Whoops!
Before I go I just have to share this photo of my youngest daughter (also a spring baby who sometimes has to share her birthday with Easter) – she loves the Mini Eggs!
She was probably one in this photo and yes, I made her spit out the eggs before she choked on them. But after I took some photos of course. I am a scrapbooker! LOL. Which leaves me with one parting thought.
Don't forget to Scrapbook The Hunt
The photo above wasn’t the only time Christine stuffed her face with chocolate eggs! The next year we had a hunt at a friends house and I captured her chocolate feast and scrapbooked it for a Stampin’ Up contest (I was a Stampin’ Up Rep at the time). Looking back, I love this layout! It was called a progressive layout and you can read all about its creation here. The photo by the title just kills me! Those big blue eyes and then the chocolate all over what is clearly a full mouth! So Christine!!
So whatever happens over your Easter Weekend, remember to take the photos, and scrapbook them later. And don’t forget that your scraps, stamps, dies, and inks are perfect to make cards, tags, and all sorts of fun things for the occasion. If your kids are still small, get them involved too. Paige was very involved in how her invitations and goody bags looked.
I hope you have enjoyed this trip down memory lane with me. Ultimately, to me Easter means gathering with family. We did a virtual egg hunt with my brother’s family in 2020, and managed a small gathering last year. This year we will have to see. My husband and youngest will be out of town for a soccer tournament and it’ll be Paige’s 16th birthday so there’s some figuring out to do! But whatever we plan, you can bet it will involve family and chocolate!