Does the Easter Bunny like to put something homemade in your kids' Easter baskets?
In my house, sometimes the Easter Bunny does not, because the Easter Bunny is busy. Sometimes, however, the Easter Bunny makes a pair of comfy shorts, or a hooded towel, or a cupcake pincushion. This year, the Easter Bunny is thinking about zippered pencil cases.
Last year, however, the Easter Bunny quite outdid herself, if I do say so myself!
I normally don't love hand-sewing, but I've found myself doing a lot more of it over the past year, as I've wanted to make things that require it. I finally mastered the ladder stitch--actually, I mastered that ALSO for Easter crafts!--and my desire to make stuffed Peeps Bunnies for the kids, and my firm belief that they would only look as cute as possible when made from felt and embroidery floss, is what led me to finally mastering the blanket stitch.
I didn't want to master the French knot on top of that, so first I tried button eyes and a nose:
That was a big nope!
I never did actually master the actual French knot, but I somehow muddled something that results in a similar cuteness level:
Here's the template that I used for my felt Peeps Bunnies. To make the stuffie, cut out two bunnies, then a super long 2" wide strip of felt. You could, of course, figure out the exact length you need by measuring the perimeter of your bunny, but it also works to simply start sewing it on and cut it off when you're back to your starting place.
Embroider on the bunny's eyes and nose, and use a complementary color of embroidery floss to blanket stitch everything together. Stuff the bunny full of cotton, then finish blanket stitching it closed.
Your felt Peeps Bunny is best introduced in an Easter basket chock-full of candy and little presents, and afterwards in a teenager's bedroom, perched on a nightstand next to her bed, looking adorable and always up for a cuddle.
The reason being that I figured out exactly what I SUPER wanted to sew for my baby niece for Easter far too close to Easter to actually sew it, but I was so excited about it that I didn't want to set the idea aside for the ten months that it would take me to be bored of it when I remembered it again and not want to do it.
Because you might as well sew what you're excited to sew when you're excited to sew it!
Even if it will sit in your closet for the next ten months until you can mail it off to your niece at a seasonally appropriate time.
I'm especially excited about this fabric Easter basket, because I made it from the vintage quilt top that I have had in my stash for... a decade, perhaps? Shamefully, I don't even remember where I got it! Either someone once upon a time gave me their old quilt top, or I scored it from some upcycling center or freecycling meet-up, but ever since then, it has sat in the back of my fabric stash. I'd notice it when I was digging for something specific, and feel kind of guilty because surely there is SOME cool thing I could be making from someone's vintage charm quilt top!
Turns out that the cool thing? Is Easter baskets.
The Easter eggs took a lot of fiddling to get right, and I learned a lot about fabric grain and stretch as I did so. Say yay to the self-taught sewer figuring shit out on her own!
I finally decided that I prefer canvas to quilting cotton, both for the interesting texture and because I think the Easter eggs hold their shape better (I'm using pre-printed fabric, but you could also sew these in plain canvas and then decorate them with paint and markers!). When I make another set, though, I think I'm going to also experiment with interfacing to make the eggs even more absolutely perfect than they already are:
As usual, I had some buddies helping me out with these photographs. We are all loving the newly sunny and warm days!
I'll make you your own set, though, because this particular set has one particular kid's name already on it, and it's going to spend the next ten months in my closet waiting for the perfect time for me to give it to her!
P.S. Want some other Easter crafts and projects that you can do, seasonably appropriate or not? Here's my massive list of all my favorite Easter craft tutorials.
P.P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!
Over the weekend, I spent some time looking through old blog posts, reminiscing about Easters past, and whoa. Last Easter was the most high-key celebration we have EVER had for that holiday! Like, we did more for Easter last year than we did when the kids were toddlers! We dyed eggs and painted eggs and sewed eggs out of felt, I modeled an egg out of plaster of Paris, Matt built an entire MACHINE for egg decorating, I... BAKED AN ENTIRE LITERAL CAKE.
I get it, man. This time last year, I was absolutely beside myself with anxiety, and Easter was a darn good distraction. The kids were reeling from the cancellation of all their fun extracurriculars and every last out-of-the-house activity on their schedules, and, again, Easter was a darn good distraction.
This year, I'm still absolutely beside myself with anxiety, but that's old news by now. The kids, even though all their fun extracurriculars and most of their out-of-the-house activities are still cancelled, have a new normal. Syd's life is full of public school busywork, and Will's got plenty of her own, more meaningful (ahem) academic deadlines.
So what did we need in this little break before nine pages of biology worksheets that won't be on the test, AP exam prep, and assisting with nonsense biology worksheets and exam prep and my own work?
We needed nothing, mostly, other than to hang out on the couch together. Or the back deck, in the shade. Or the driveway, in the sunshine.
To be honest, I might have gone overboard a bit on the traditional Easter Basket Clue Hunt. It took the kids upwards of 40 minutes to solve all the clues, oops, and one of them, I'm pretty sure, was long ready to say the hell with it and let the baskets be uncovered in their own time. But how can one prove one's worth for an entire basket of candy and small presents if one doesn't decipher and then follow clues that lead one from the refrigerator to the trampoline to your own bed to the bird feeder to the aerial silks rig to the car to the tree house to the bookshelves? What is Easter without computer research to find a specific Dewey Decimal number, or half an hour rifling through the car to find an Easter egg hidden in a secret compartment that you 100% did not know even existed in that car?
Sunglasses compartment? How is that even a real thing?
In my family, gummy bunnies and chocolate eggs and fuzzy socks and ponytail holders and geography coloring books are only for the wisest, the bravest, and the most daring.
Also, these Peeps bunnies that I hand-sewed from felt:
You would do anything to earn those bunnies, and you would be right to do so.
I was not able to talk everyone in the family into coming together to make an Easter-themed meal. I had big dreams of everyone choosing some tacky, Easter-themed menu item--bread shaped like a bunny with a hole cut out of its tummy for dip, perhaps, or Jello poured into plastic Easter eggs to set--but nobody else had the same enthusiasm, so we got by with our old standards of canned cinnamon rolls shaped to have bunny ears, and, for the adults, Baileys drunk out of hollow chocolate rabbits.
I also wasn't able to martial the kids to dye Easter eggs with me, even though they had expressed enthusiasm for the project long enough for Matt to get the eggs hard-boiled. Come to think of it, I'm actually pretty sure that was just a ruse to get enough hard-boiled eggs into the house that I feel like I have to make egg salad, a favorite of the kids that I rarely make because I detest peeling the eggs.
I was able to get everybody onto the back deck to paint wooden eggs, however! One must take one's successes wherever one can get them!
I experimented with staining an egg, and I LOVE it, and painting one galaxy-themed, which... well, I can say now that I've done it!
It is VERY important that I watch Jesus Christ Superstar on Easter, and usually I can wheedle another person or two into watching it with me. I tested everyone's patience even more this year by insisting on watching this Swedish arena production that I'd heard had some interesting acting choices for Jesus and Judas:
It DID have some interesting acting choices! Of course, it was also in Swedish... When Syd complained, I was all, "Well, I could always sing the lyrics along with them in English," and Syd was all, "Oh, yeah? Why don't you, then!"
Matt had the genius idea to actually, you know, *count* the eggs as he hid them this year, and... yeah, he hid 120 of them.
Unfortunately, after a full ten minutes of hunting--
--we only got back 109. Oops!
I guess we'll have a fun side quest while we mow the lawn this summer!
Some Easters, it's pouring. Some, it's freezing. Some, there's a global pandemic going on but at least the weather is gorgeous, sunny and warm, and when one finishes one's quest for Easter eggs (or, rather, gives up on one's quest for Easter eggs, as there are still 11 unfound eggs out there!), it's especially nice to just lie down on the warm driveway, a cat or two under your arm, and savor a day with nothing important to do other than eat candy, paint wooden eggs, and watch TV with your mom:
And if your Mom sneaks the opportunity to get the first family portrait she's managed since October--
This is a fun Easter craft to do with giant Easter eggs! I created this last year when I was on a Zentangles kick, but I think it would work well with any kind of design, abstract or realistic.
I use the largest wooden eggs available from Casey's Wood Products (and I buy them in bulk, because the younger kid, especially, LOVES to decorate wooden eggs and wooden peg people), although I've seen larger plastic Easter eggs, and I'm sure you could upcycle those, or even use papier mache Easter eggs exactly ("egg-sactly"--UGH, I can't stand myself!) the way that you do these wooden ones.
To make the glittered and embossed Easter egg, first you draw a design directly onto the egg. With my wooden Easter eggs, I draw the design on in pencil--
--but if you were upcycling a plastic Easter egg, you should use a Sharpie.
Next, trace over your drawing with hot glue:
Try to do a better job than I did keeping your lines even by keeping the pressure on the glue gun's trigger nice and steady. You might want to practice on cardboard first.
I sure should have!
Pull off all the little hot glue strings, then use spray paint to prime and paint the egg a base color. This is basically the same thing that the big kid and I did when we made our spooky potion bottles, but then, because we were going to mess with the embossing a lot more, we painted on the base layer and THEN did the hot glue.
OMG I just realized that you could make these EXACTLY (egg-sactly!) the way you make the potion bottles! Hello, spooky embossed Easter eggs!
Okay, pace yourself, Julie. Finish this blog post, wash the dishes, edit your kid's English essay, answer a zillion emails, go to your Zoom meeting, and TOMORROW you can make spooky embossed Easter eggs.
ANYWAY, you want that base layer to be a color similar to the color of glitter spray paint that you're using. For one thing, it adds depth, and for another, it'll hide any thin spots if you don't do a perfect job with the glitter spray.
Spray this glitter spray OUTSIDE (I feel like you were already outside; I mean, you just spray painted your egg and I hope you were outside for that, but seriously, this glitter spray means business!), let it dry for the recommended time period, and then admire your beautiful Easter egg!
I hate that you can't see how awesomely sparkly this Easter egg is. Here, though--I'll zoom in, and you can see all the billion bits of glitter that make it so sparkly:
It's. So. SPARKLY!!!
I've mentioned before that we are fierce, ferocious, take-no-prisoners Easter egg hunters at our house, and so pretty, precious-looking eggs like these aren't for Easter egg hunts, because I would be absolutely beside myself to lose this, then hit it with the lawnmower five months later.
Honestly, the lawnmower wouldn't be that excited, either. This baby is BIG!
P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!
Want to know my hands-down favorite holiday crafting supply?
Unfinished wood Easter eggs!
I first bought wood Easter eggs on a bit of a whim over a dozen years ago, and we have absolutely loved them every year since. We end up embellishing several every Easter, and if we decide we don't like the look of one, we just cover it up with more paint and re-embellish it the next year!
Because we did more Easter stuff than usual last year (thanks to a global pandemic!), I restocked us this year. Don't get me wrong--we do NOT need more Easter eggs; I mean, least year I hid over a hundred for the kids' egg hunt!--but we enjoy decorating them so much that I can't imagine not having some on hand.
AND while I was buying just our favorite sizes from Casey's Wood Products (hen eggs with flat bottoms for most of our projects, but a few jumbo eggs for the really special stuff), I saw that they've got a new style of egg this year: basswood eggs suitable for carving!
The kids' woodcarving kit was a hit last Easter, so it's extra fun that this Easter they can use it to carve some of our decorations.
Below is a list of our favorite ways to decorate wood Easter eggs. There are activities for little kids, activities for bigger kids, and activities that are equally fun and lovely for any age. The kids and I have done most of these--some of them we do every year!--but there are also a few that are here because they're on our to-do list.
wood burned Easter egg with watercolor stain. Wood burning is lovely on its own, but it's extra special when combined with a watercolor stain, or careful watercolor painting. Eggs that are wood burned are still quite hardy, but the watercolor stain can bleed if it gets wet, so you'll want to keep it away from most Easter mischief.
galaxy eggs. I made a couple of these last year with jumbo wood eggs, and it went exactly the way the tutorial said it should! They're some of my absolute favorite eggs now.
yarn-wrapped eggs. A method that completely covers the wood egg is a great way to re-use an egg that had an unfortunate paint or marker job done to it in a previous year.
eggshell mosaic egg. I haven't tried this tutorial yet, but I'm really intrigued by it. I think that if I wash the shells well, they should be archivally-safe. I mean, I've got blown-out eggs that I've had on display for years and they're still nice!
felted wool Easter egg. If you felt the wool roving directly onto the wood egg you won't be able to remove it, but I think it gives the felted wool egg a pleasingly realistic weight. If you do want to remove the roving, perhaps to make an egg that you can open and shut, put plastic wrap around the wood egg before you felt onto it.
hot glue raised embellishments. I tried this a couple of years ago with jumbo wood eggs, and I really love the look of the hot glue! Instead of the silver leaf that this tutorial uses, I spray painted my egg light blue, and then coated it in glitter spray. It looks not at all homemade!
chalkboard Easter egg. This project is less about the final result than about creating a process-oriented, open-ended Easter activity. Coat a wood Easter egg in a few layers of smooth chalkboard paint, and it can be decorated over and over again! Our favorite supplies for this are chalk pastels and chalk markers.
spin art eggs. This is a perfect project for little ones. The heft of the wood eggs makes them work especially well with spin art, and if you offer a kid only two or three color options, they'll be able to enjoy the sensory and process-oriented experience of spin art egg decorating... AND the eggs will still be suitable for display afterwards!
speckled eggs. These are also ridiculously cute, and I'm obsessed with how weirdly realistic they are!
unicorn eggs. They're too delicate for an egg hunt, so they can supervise from the table set for Easter dinner.
Sharpie-embellished Easter eggs. As you can tell, this is the first method we ever used for decorating our wood eggs. Look at my little Syd baby! She's always been so artistic. In subsequent years, I sometimes first put a white base layer on the eggs to make them look a little more realistic under their Sharpie embellishments. If you pick up some paint pens, you can put any color down as a base layer, because paint pens will show up well on top of anything.
coloring page decoupaged eggs. Decoupage of all kinds works especially well with wood Easter eggs. This project is a fun way to upcycle part of a coloring page onto an egg.
Mandalorian and Baby Yoda painted eggs. It's my second-year-in-a-row tradition to treat myself to a month of Disney+ after closing out Girl Scout cookie season. There's something about watching Moana every day for 30 days that just washes away all the Girl Scout cookie stress! I LOVE The Mandalorian, too, so I'm stoked to make myself a little Mandalorian Easter egg!
book page decoupaged egg. This would be so awesome to do with a beat-up copy of a book that the kids and I have read together. If I can find a Percy Jackson at the very tag-end of its life Syd would be thrilled!
acorn eggs. I love how this tutorial uses pinecones and hemp twine to make eggs that look like acorns. Paired with the unfinished wood eggs, it makes for a completely natural project!
watercolor-dyed Easter eggs. This is absolutely the easiest method to make some extremely bright and colorful wood Easter eggs! Liquid watercolors are beautiful on their own, but you can also add Sharpie or pain pen embellishments for even more fun.
painted babouchka eggs. Painting projects of all kinds work great on wood eggs, so I have a lot of fun and random ones. No reason for me having a babouchka egg other than that I think it's cute!
painted animal eggs. I really like the felt and pipe cleaner embellishments that make these animal eggs look even cuter!
gold foil eggs. I have been longing for an excuse to play with gold leaf!
stained wood eggs. I have no idea why this had not occurred to me at ALL until I saw this tute, but I am seriously about to go drag out all the wood stain I own and try it. This would look really pretty on top of a wood burned egg.
tissue paper-decoupaged Easter eggs. The kids and I didn't know what to expect when we first tried this project, but the result is surprisingly lovely! Tissue paper is so thin that you can actually blend the colors, and the ample application of Mod Podge makes the finished eggs super shiny with colors that have depth and seem slightly translucent.
stamped tissue paper-decoupaged eggs. You can get all kinds of cool details by stamping onto tissue paper. If you want to try this, don't use the dyed craft tissue paper that we use for the previous tutorial--that stuff bleeds like crazy!
mood eggs. Syd actually has some thermochromic powder leftover from her years-long passion for slime-making. I wonder if the paint would stay working well for multiple years in a row on our wood eggs?
painted ice cream egg. Here's another niche but weirdly adorable painted egg project.
masking fluid and watercolor eggs. I had never heard of masking fluid before, but Syd likes painting with watercolors, so it might be a useful purchase in general for her--and then I could play with it by making Easter eggs!
P.S. If you know of a good way to decorate a wood Easter egg, please tell me about it in the Comments. I can always use another happily-embellished Easter egg in our stash!
This is one of the easiest Easter egg crafts that you can make, and one of the longest-lasting, too! You'll love the ability to decorate your chalkboard Easter eggs in a different way every year.
Heck, if you have kids, they'll enjoy decorating these chalkboard Easter eggs in a different way every day!
To make the chalkboard Easter eggs, all you need are:
wooden or papier mache egg. These are commonly found at craft stores now. I like to avoid buying plastic eggs, but if you already have some on hand, you can use many kinds of chalkboard paint on plastic--check out the instructions on your paint for details.
chalkboard paint. Eco-friendly chalkboard paint does exist, but I haven't personally tried it, as I'm still working through the 32-ounce can of Disney chalkboard paint that I bought years ago--that stuff really lasts! I've also not tried tinted or homemade chalkboard paints, but again, they do exist.
Chalkboard paint is super easy to apply. Yes, you can apply primer first, especially if you have primer tinted toward the color of chalkboard paint that you're using, but for the particular wooden eggs in this project, some were unfinished new wood and some were previously painted white, so I didn't bother with primer.
You're also meant to use a foam brush or foam roller to apply your chalkboard paint, but with these small surfaces, I used a regular bristle paintbrush that I had on hand. I might have had to apply an extra coat or two over what I would have had to do with a foam brush, especially on that white egg, where my brush strokes showed up exceptionally well, but after four coats, even the white egg was covered cleanly, and the paint on such small surfaces dried quickly enough that the two extra coats weren't a huge waste of time.
There are a lot of tutorials that tell you that you have to condition your chalkboard before you can really draw on it, but unless the instructions on the container of chalkboard paint call for this step, I don't do it, and personally, my projects have never suffered from "ghosting" or any other of the ills said to be caused by lack of seasoning.
I love these chalkboard Easter eggs because you can decorate them as elaborately as the Easter eggs that you see in children's picture books. And if you used white or light brown chalkboard paint, the effect would be even more realistic!
A great way to avoid buying plastic Easter eggs is to make your own stash of eco-friendly Easter eggs that you can re-use year after year, or embellish store-bought Easter eggs made with natural materials, such as wood, ceramic, or papier mache.
We've done all of the above, including making DIY papier mache Easter eggs and wool felted Easter eggs, but I enjoy adding to our stash every year--for one thing, I've got two kids to whom I'm hoping to pass down our beautiful handmade eggs, so I need a good stash, and for another, I'm never quite sure that we get *every* single egg back from every single Easter egg hunt...
One of the easiest ways to have a beautiful stash of heirloom Easter eggs is to buy wooden eggs and then embellish them. To wood burn and stain them, you'll need just the following:
wooden Easter eggs. I'm a HUGE fan of Casey's Wood Products, and I've purchased a ridiculous number of wooden objects from them over the past several years, including pretty much every size of wooden egg. I look for the items made in Maine, and of second-quality.
wood burner. I own this one, and although I don't love it, the price was certainly right, and it's worked for me for probably six years by now, so I certainly don't have much to complain about. I really want these alphabet brands that you can use with a wood burner, and if they fit mine, then that would certainly raise my opinion of it!
watercolors. Use liquid watercolors if you're wanting to stain the wood, and any watercolors if you're wanting to paint on details.
The method itself is super easy, and a great family activity.
1. Draw your design in pencil. This is something the the whole family can do while sitting around the table together. Add in some music or an audiobook and you've got the perfect hour before bedtime in my family!
My kids prefer to draw scenes onto their eggs (I have one kid who draws dragons on everything, including every holiday decoration for the past three years), but I think these eggs look really interesting with little designs and patterns, zentangle-style, done all over them. I especially like it because it's something that you simply can't do with most eggs, so it adds to their interest and appeal.
You might want to watch against penciling in too many tiny details, as you'll soon be wood burning them, but I've actually found that my wood burner can get quite a bit of detail if I use a light touch.
2. Wood burn your design into the egg. If you're wood burning noobs, you can designate a "practice egg" for yourself so that you can play around with the wood burner and get a feel for it. It doesn't really work to use any old scrap of wood for practice, because the wood burner will burn each type of wood differently.
My kids have been using the wood burner since they were both pretty small; they still don't totally have the hand for it--they tend to press too hard and have a lot of stop-and-starts--but they're quite capable of doing it, and they love it.
3. Embellish with watercolor. If you're looking to stain your egg all over, you can do it with any color of liquid watercolor--my tutorial for that is here.
If you want to paint details onto your egg, you can do that with any watercolors and a small paintbrush. Manage your expectations by realizing that the watercolor will flow along the grain of the wood, often unexpectedly, so don't expect rigid lines demarcations except where you've wood burned.
Optional: Seal the completed Easter egg. Oh, my gosh, y'all, I get so many questions about this! People really, really, REALLY want a non-toxic, eco-friendly, food-grade wood sealant that will stand up to a kid putting a stained and sealed toy into her mouth.
I am sitting right here and killing that dream for you. Your sealant can be non-toxic, eco-friendly, and food-grade, OR it can stand up to a kid putting it into her mouth. If your kid is still putting her toys in her mouth, just... don't stain it those beautiful watercolor colors until she's older.
If a kid mouthing your Easter eggs is not a concern for you--and if you're head-scratching right now, I promise you that it's such a concern for SO many people that I had to write it first--then check out the following options for sealing your wooden Easter egg.
1. Don't seal it. It doesn't really need it if it's just coming out to play around Easter time.
2. Use this homemade beeswax wood polish. Test it on your practice egg first. I, personally, don't love sealing stuff with beeswax polish, but a lot of people do, so there you go.
4. Use a non-eco-friendly product. I know, I know, but it's my personal philosophy that if we use eco-friendly products whenever possible, then we have the wiggle room to use something not eco-friendly whenever it's legitimately the best solution. Sealant and aerosol spray mount are two products that I do own and use, simply because I haven't yet found acceptable, eco-friendly alternatives. If YOU know of great, eco-friendly alternatives, let me know right this second!
I store our stash of Easter eggs year-round with our other holiday decorations, and bring them out sometime after St. Patrick's Day every year, when they once again strike us as new and colorful and festive and fun. Sometime after Easter, I might buy a few more plain wooden eggs to have on hand, because the next year, we're for sure going to want to decorate some more!
P.S. Need even more Easter crafts? Here are all my Easter tutorials right there in one place!
It was surprisingly pleasant! Who knew that dyeing eggs bright colors and eating a lot of ham could temporarily put a lid on that bottomless well of aching horror?
Even though we still have full days of school (it's a small comfort to know that my children's schooling is the one thing that hasn't been completely disrupted by the pandemic, considering how most other children are struggling right now with the annihilation of their school routine on top of all their other stressors), much of that time that the kids used to spend being shuttled to and from extracurriculars, as well as the extracurriculars, themselves, is now free.
Instead of spending that free time sitting on the couch and staring with dead eyes at the wall, for the past week, at least, we've been spending it making ALL THE EASTER CRAFTS.
We spray painted wooden eggs out on the driveway, then decorated them with paint pens and acrylic paint. They turned out amazing, and we loved them.
I taught Matt to blow out eggs, then went a little crazy and ended up blowing out about a dozen on my own (head rush!!!), and then went even crazier and tried filling some of the eggshells with cement and some with plaster.
The cement did not work for me AT ALL... almost as if the random cement that I just happened to have in my garage isn't the exact right kind of cement for making Easter egg molds. Imagine that!
The plaster of Paris worked perfectly, I guess. I mean, it technically worked. Tape off the small hole:
Enlarge the larger hole and then fill it with plaster of Paris:
After about an hour or so, spend WAY longer than you ever wanted to spend in your entire life peeling eggshell off of plaster--
--and then marvel at this. Completely. Typical. Egg:
I guess that if you 1) wanted a reusable Easter egg, 2) did not have any wood or papier mache eggs to use, and 3) DID have plaster of Paris, this would be a good way to DIY some non-egg Easter eggs to paint, but eh. My plaster egg looked identical to every other egg in the world but was a billion times more annoying to make. I am definitely a wooden egg person all the way!
The kids and I made embroidered felt Easter eggs while listening to podcasts and then the first hour of our new Dracula audiobook (only fourteen more hours to go!). These were awesome, too, and were super useful during the kids' Easter morning clue hunt, on account of these eggs can be hidden in very obnoxious places that three-dimensional eggs can't:
Also awesome? I dragged out my under-utilized set of silk dyes for the kids to use to dye our chicken eggs:
These resulted in epic Easter eggs, you guys. EPIC!!!
Check out those saturated colors, those deep jewel tones! And I don't even understand how some of the eggs came out of the dye bath with that metallic sheen?!?
I was actually sad yesterday when we peeled them all and made them into deviled eggs. They really were almost too pretty to eat!
Alas, Syd found the process of hand-molding crushed shredded wheat mixed with melted butter and marshmallow to be so disgusting that it quite spoiled the fun of eating the resultant shredded wheat bird nests:
It didn't spoil the fun for me, though! They were delicious!
Matt had his own DIY build: a drill-powered LEGO egg decorating machine!
Will, especially, LOVED this drill-powered egg machine. She used Sharpies and Prismacolor markers with it, and the eggs came out really pretty!
The Easter Bunny traditionally leads the children on an Easter morning clue hunt to find their baskets--I swear that our Easter Bunny was doing this years before the Easter Bunnies of all the Instagram influencers! Matt and I generally linger in bed and listen to doors and cabinets slamming, stuff getting kerfuffled during frantic searching, kids loudly bickering as they run around the yard at too early o'clock on a Sunday morning, etc., and only come out when there's a silence that means that each clue hunter's mouth is too full of candy to gripe at her sister.
I don't know what everybody else's Easter Bunny does, but our family Easter Bunny pretty reliably gives the kids too much candy plus a couple of presents that I'm confident they're supposed to share, but instead they always want to divvy ownership of. Later, I will have to talk Will into sharing this wood carving kit with Syd--
--and Syd this sticker mosaic kit with Will:
Our weather forecast was dire, so I was worried we wouldn't be able to have our insanely competitive Easter egg hunt outdoors this year, but fortunately, the rain held off long enough for me to madden the children by hiding 100+ Easter eggs really, really, REALLY WELL!
I don't know why the kids get so competitive over this, as it's literally just our stash of reusable Easter eggs with zero prizes to gain, but at one point Syd found an egg right where Will had just stepped, and in retaliation Will lost her ever-loving mind and just started crawling through the grass to hunt. And then Syd tried to swoop down on the entire basket of eggs that Will had abandoned when she started crawling, and Will got to her feet, ran at her, and chased her off with a stick!
We more successfully divvied up responsibility for Easter dinner, even though we didn't get to eat it until after 9:00 because for some reason Will's math class still met on Easter. Yawn!
Matt made the ham, the mashed potatoes, and the Cadbury Egg martinis for the adults, Will made roasted carrots, Syd made roasted asparagus, I made deviled eggs, and Syd and I made an absolutely epic garden cake.
I had wanted to make something exactly like this Betty Crocker garden cake, and was more than a little worried when my best efforts were making it look exactly like trash, instead, but hallelujah, Syd stepped in with a grass tip and good design skills--
--and our final cake was the cutest thing that I ever did see:
Alas, we didn't have enough room in our bellies to even taste it after our 9 pm Easter dinner! Ah, well... garden cake is also delicious for breakfast.
Easter isn't such a big deal to us (over dinner last night, Will was all, "So, today is Jesus'... birthday?"), and honestly, I think this is by far the biggest fuss we have ever made over it, even counting when the kids were small and wanted to dye eggs every day for a month!
It was vastly more of a sugar fest than my body needed right now, but it turns out that it was exactly what my heart needed.
I'll remember this Easter fondly even when the lawnmower is still hitting random eggs in August...
