easter egg hunts | Roaming Rosie

This Mini Pumpkin Hunt is just about one of the easiest Halloween projects you can do, and your kids are just about guaranteed to completely freak out over how awesome it is.

Well, at least those kids who love Easter egg hunts will freak out over the awesomeness. But I don’t know any kids who don’t love Easter egg hunts.

The setup is simple: buy a bunch of mini pumpkins, hide aforementioned mini pumpkins in your yard or house, hand your kids a bucket or basket in which to collect them, and stand back while they stampede.

Unfortunately for us, on the day I told my girls we were going to go outside and search for mini pumpkins, it rained.

A lot.

So, we relegated the search mostly to areas of flora that could be easily accessed with feet still firmly planted on the sidewalk and out of the wet grass and mud.

It didn’t even matter to them that it only took a couple of minutes to find all 10 that I’d hidden. They were so excited about it that they hid them again so I could find them. And again. And again…

Eventually we made it inside to decorate our mini pumpkins.

I’d pulled out some glitter glue and some glitter in silver and gold. Neutral but shiny.

I spread a disposable table cloth over the floor and some newspaper in the middle of it, opened up the containers of glue and glitter, and stood back.

Well, not very far back. They insisted I help, and, really, it’s pretty fun to bury your hands in glitter sometimes. :)

And the end result looked rather pretty.

Some had designs, some were completely covered, but they all looked so fun and sparkly.

It was much easier to clean up, by the way, than it looks.

Once you move the pumpkins and glue/glitter containers, simply fold the paper in half to make it into a partial funnel, and let the glitter slide back into the container again to be reused for another project.

off-the-mark-comic-painting-the-wall-eggshell

Actually, Easter is over a month away, but the store shelves are full of baskets adorned with ribbon accompanied by spider webbed strands of hot glue, buckets painted with SpongeBob and Tinker Bell, plastic eggs pre-filled with a cocktail of chemicals that’s been labeled as candy, and cheaply made stuffed animals that are already falling apart at the seams.

Gosh – my rant on consumerism wasn’t too harsh, was it?

Truth be told, I enjoy making Easter baskets for my girls. Opening my own baskets as a kid is something I fondly remember. The translucent yet colorful plastic wrapping, the shiny pieces of grass that you were still finding months later, and, you know, lots of candy.

But my kids have so much stuff. There’s stuff everywhere. Stuff in every drawer, on every shelf, in boxes under the beds, and packed into dresser drawers.

We don’t need more stuff in our house. Or more candy.

But I really, really, really want to make Easter baskets for my kids. And have an Easter egg hunt.

Gotta find that balance.

And I was close last year. For example, instead of filling dozens of plastic eggs with tiny toys and piles of candy, we filled them with coins. This made them a bit musical, so my then-one-year-old had a blast shaking them, and they were then able to fill their piggy banks with the coins, which is exciting for kids.

That’s one problem solved.

Next would be the baskets. Last year I got a little overexcited and filled their baskets with a bunch of small toys and books. This wouldn’t have been so bad, except that a few other close family members also filled baskets to the brim with toys and snacks – and the baskets just so happened to be as big as my kids were.

And I get that the love language of gift giving runs in my family, but it was a wee bit too much. More than a wee. A wollap, really.

So this year, my suggestion for my close family is that we all go in together on one basket. They each get a chocolate bunny, a book, and a toy or two – but TWO, not two dozen.

For example, a couple of my favorite things from last year’s basket include the touch-and-feel board book Thumper’s Fluffy Tail, which we still read pretty regularly, and some outdoor toys, like this magnifying glass and flying disc:

My kids still play with both of those Melissa & Doug toys, and I like them because the toys get them outside to play and explore.

So, even though I don’t yet know exactly what they’ll be getting this year, I know I’d like it to be along those lines.

Also, in my search for the perfect Easter gift over the next month, I would love to gather some inspiration from your suggestions!

What are your kids going to get for Easter? Or do you not give presents at all? Maybe you have a different family tradition? I’d love to hear about it!

Roaming Rosie Signature