Last year on Easter, I wrote all about some of my sad Easter memories. Easter is a sad memory-filled time for me, unfortunately, but I hope to give my kids a fun time to give them happy Easter memories.
So here’s a celebration of all the fun Easter things we do together – I hope you might get some ideas for a new Easter tradition in your family!
Easter Egg Hunt
Of course there’s the annual Easter egg hunt. In the evening after the kids have gone to bed, we hide eggs all over the house. I would hide them outside but the weather here in Connecticut is just too iffy for that.
There’s also a fun free egg hunt in our town that I take the boys to – it’s a lot of fun for them to run around and scoop up eggs. It’s also frankly exciting for them to see a field full of eggs! Even my 14 year old has fun, although he’s “too old” to do the hunt. So now he “helps” his two year old brother, and collects a candy bounty for his services.
Easter Cookies
We have a fun tradition here, making Easter themed sugar cookies. It’s the same recipe I use for making Valentines cookies (find the recipe here), but using Easter shaped cookie cutters. And of course the icing I use isn’t red, pink and white like Valentine’s Day, but instead are fun Easter colors. I’ve found in my years of cake making that the paste took colors are best. They not only last forever, but it only takes a very small amount to create great colors. Here’s the set I get and use for years.
Easter Egg Hunt
Every Easter morning, the boys wake up excited to start their hunt for eggs. They tear through the house, looking high and low, and put all the eggs in their baskets. Then once that’s done, they empty out all the candy and split it evenly.
Once or twice we’ve made them Easter baskets, but it’s not an annual tradition. They’ve always enjoyed the egg hunt the most. Even my fourteen year old is excited for the egg hunt this coming Sunday. He told me “I love Easter this year. Not only is it the best day of the year, because, free candy, but also it’s April fools day. So there will be a bunch of funny videos uploaded to YouTube.” Got to love the priorities of teenagers!
Easter Decorations
As you might have noticed from my Halloween and Christmas posts, we love doing crafts around here. For some reason we don’t have a lot of Easter crafts-just a painted large wooden egg. This tells me I should hit the after-Easter craft store sales! But we do have several Easter decorations.
My grandmother used to have a small collection of bunnies in her home. After she passed away a few years ago, we took the bunnies into our house, and take them out on Easter. One thing I do wish I had was Easter hand towels. Kind of odd, huh? Well my grandmother used to gift me hand towels for Christmas every year. I eventually had more than I could ever use (still cycling through them, in fact) but most of them were Christmas themed. Some nice Easter towels would be a nice way to remember grandma.
Another thing we do is make confetti eggs. You know how you likely use a lot of eggs for Easter baking? If you blow them out, instead of just cracking them, you can fill them with stuff. We’ve filled them with very small pieces of paper, so when the egg breaks open it’s filled with confetti. It also makes a great painting project! I’ve found this to be a fun way to have decorated eggs for Easter, if your family doesn’t like hard boiled eggs.
Easter Dinner
After my grandmother passed, Easter became “my” holiday. So every year now we bake dinner and desserts for the family. The menu this year includes:
- Ham
- Mashed and Au Gratin potatoes-both homemade
- Potato and cheese pierogis – homemade (with caramelized onions and sour cream)
- Corn
- Asparagus
- Rolls – homemade
- Lemon cheesecake – homemade
My aunt will bring kielbasa, my brother some drinks, and my parents another dessert. Plus we’ll have those Easter sugar cookies I mentioned above. How are we saving? Two ways-shopping at Aldi for the groceries, and making everything from scratch. Not only does scratch baking taste better, but it’s also hugely less expensive than buying poorer quality food.
We’ll also likely make a homemade Easter breakfast-either cinnamon rolls or Easter men. I’m thinking the second one-never tried that before and they look so cute!
Bonus-we’ll have lots of leftovers for next week! Be sure to be in touch with me on Instagram or Twitter if you want to check out how everything turned out.
What Are Your Traditions?
As you read through all these, you’ll notice what’s not here. Thinks like matching Easter outfits for the boys, a new Easter dress, expensive Easter baskets or forty dollar photos with the Easter bunny. Keeping things fun, creative and simple also keeps them frugal.
So I’d like to know -what are your favorite frugal Easter traditions? And what’s your fav Easter recipe? Let me know in the comments!
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My dad’s uncle owned a candy shop, so for the first many years of my life the chocolate bunnies in our Easter baskets were from there. We did have baskets which usually had the bunny and a few other things. The Easter bunny used different color cellophane on each, and if you found someone else’s you weren’t supposed to tell. 2 stand out memories include the year my sister was almost in tears because “the bunny must have forgotten her basket, she looked everywhere!” Dad’s hints to look under the table, meant to actually get under the table and look, because the tablecloth obscured it if you just looked AT the table. Trickster that he is the Easter bunny put my basket behind the piano one year. Only I’m was a kid, and didn’t have very long arms. This resulted in dad holding my legs, as I may across the top of the piano being lowered closer and closer until I could grab the cellophane and haul it up. Mom stood by and roller her eyes at the bunny’s ‘clever’ hiding spot. The Easter bunny never used that as a hiding spot again. We have on video my brother having his chocolate dinosaur, and mom chasing him around the kitchen (literally because the kitchen had two doors) trying to reclaim it before he got covered in chocolate. She eventually got him, but it was out of a comedy show as they’d circle though, change directions, Dan giggling the whole time clutching a starting to melt hunk of chocolate.
We did ‘blow out eggs’ for dyeing, in my family. That meant scrambled eggs (instead of over easy), and french toast, and other baked goods to use the insides for weeks leading up to Easter. These were displayed and only the plastic ones hidden. The Easter bunny gave mom a note with how many eggs he hid, to make sure we found them all, and didn’t wind up with a chocolate filled one being left in a windowsill.
I think my parents kept it pretty frugal with re-using the eggs & baskets each year and buying “local” for the chocolate bunnies. We used up all of the egg insides to do the blow out eggs. Even if there was some money spent on the candy, the memories we have of hunting are priceless!
Sounds like a ton of fun! We also re-use the baskets for hunting eggs. And I can imagine that chocolate chasing scene playing out here too. Although this year we got chocolate eggs from Aldi. Hope they’re tasty!
My kids are older now but they still want their chocolate! Since it is also April’s fools day on Sunday, I may pretend to hide the eggs and let them look for a while…a long while:)
Happy Easter Liz.
Ha ha, that would be hilarious!