Turn Your Easter Preparation into Fun with Your Child

Easter is my favorite holiday! Besides celebrating our Savior’s Resurrection, there is so much fun associated with Easter for little kids and grown-ups alike.  For me, Easter is when we can finally herald the arrival of spring, i.e. sunny warm days, blossoming trees, and of course the juicy and flavorful vegetables and fruits. Even a thought about all the deliciousness on the Easter table makes me drool.

And this year I am the one hosting the Easter dinner! Our close friends and a bunch of kids will be judging all that I’ll have prepared – decor, kid fun, food. If you haven’t heard, Armenians love to host guests. So I certainly put some extra thought into Easter preparation. I hope this will help you with yours 😉

Easter Decorations

Oh, how I wish we had our own house, where I could decorate freely to my liking and organize a fun egg hunt in the backyard. One day… As we are still renting, I just have to deal with what we’ve got. And because my boy is 2.5 now and loves to be part of any DIY project, most pieces of our Easter decor was made with his help.

When it comes to decor, I always try to mentally imagine a color theme first. Green, white and yellow are the colors I have in mind for this Easter, not forgetting a little touch of burgundy (my favorite color). Knowing which colors you want to build your decorations around can really help in choosing what to make or buy.

Easter Wreath

Because my boy and I enjoyed immensely putting together our Christmas wreath, we unanimously decided that Easter wreath will be a DIY project too. And this time, we have even more beautiful materials to work with as it is springtime. So all we needed is just a short tour to a local park and viola we had all that we needed. Although we already had the base from our Christmas wreath we decided to do everything from scratch.  We just put some sticks together in a circle using a floral wire and that became our base. Plus because it’s Easter I suggested (and my boy agreed)  adding some egg shells to our design. And of course, the main attribute of the holiday – a Cross!

Here is what we needed to create an Easter Wreath:

• Wire wreath frame
• Floral green wire
• Pruning Shears

And again, all the natural materials that Mother Nature gives us: moss, grass, dry sticks, small flowers. Just keep in mind your theme colors. The good thing about creating a wreath is that you cannot go wrong. Even if you are the worst at this (like me), with all this greenery and flowers, it turns out quite pretty.

I made one crucial mistake here: left the – so diligently collected – egg shells unattended and of course, my son did not hesitate to break them all (I guess that was the most fun part for him). I only saved 2 and even when those went to the wreath it became his mission impossible to get to those too. So eventually, just one “survived”.

As for the cross, we found two flat sticks and made a cross from those. I first tried to glue them together but that didn’t work, I guess they were too damp after the rain. So I just tied them with a rubber band and then covered it with a leaf. What do you think about the final result?

Bunny Shaped Napkins

There are so many ways to fold your napkins into bunnies. But I went the easy way because I wanted my son to be part of it and help me with folding. So here how to do it. The simplest bunny fold ever 😀

Where to Shop

As for non-DIY decorations, World Market and Pier 1 are my absolute favorite places for this. Here are some beautiful pieces for you to browse around if you decide to head there.

Egg Dying

Fun Way

This is another fun activity to do with your children. And there are so many ways to dye your eggs. Here are a couple of ideas how you can include children in the process.

• Sticker eggs – Your toddler would love placing stickers on eggs. So you can just boil those, let them cool. Buy an Easter-themed sticker book and have your toddler have all the fun.
• Hand-painted eggs – If you are good with arts and crafts (which I am not), you can paint funny bunnies with your child. Melted crayons would work really good for this (you can just use your blow-dryer to melt the crayon you need).

Armenian Way

This is actually not just Armenian way, but most post-Soviet and Eastern European Christian countries do the same. We don’t really eat chocolate eggs for Easter, but we do eat the dyed eggs. Before eating, we have some fun though. Everyone gets to choose one egg (children start first, obviously) and then starts to tap their opponent’s egg so it breaks. This goes round until there is the last person with the unbroken egg. And that’s the winner who gets a prize. Everyone eats their own egg as they are said to bring luck.

Traditionally dyed eggs along with the red wine symbolize Christ’s shed blood, so we mostly dye eggs in red.  There are quite a few legends about why we dye eggs red for Easter, one of them saying that, when Jesus was crucified, a woman who was passing by carrying a basket of eggs, stopped to look at Jesus. She put the basket next to the cross and blood poured over the eggs, coloring them in red.

I love following traditions – so red it is! And because our children will be eating those eggs, I’ll be dying the eggs naturally using red onion skins. That’s how my mom has always dyed our Easter eggs. You’ve probably heard the method of decorating the eggs with flower petals or herbs and wrapping them in a nylon stocking. The only difference from my mom’s method is that I actually want to do a cross decoration instead of flower one. There are a couple of tricks that you need to know for the best result so read the instructions carefully 😉

Kid Fun

Egg Hunting

And of course what an Easter without egg hunting and gifts. I’ve come to realize that not all egg hunts are actually fun. Some might be really crowded and even upsetting for little children. And because there are usually so many options to choose from, it’s important to understand what it is that will make the egg hunt fun for your child. If your child is just 2 or 3 running around a small filed with lots of older kids might not be as fun and even safe. So here is what to consider: 

• it’s better to choose an egg hunt that is organized by age groups,
• some malls do interesting egg quests with maps which might be really interesting for an older child,
• find a list of most egg hunts organized in your state to find the one best suited for your little one. Here is the one for California

Easter Basket Fillers 

Today Amazon’s Deal of the Day is on games and toys from Hasbro, most of which will be great for filling Easter baskets. Here is the link for you to browse. 

Best Books about Easter

I’ve also put together a list of some of the best children books about Easter. Click on each image to shop directly from Amazon.

What to Wear

I am so ready for light and breezy summer dresses. It’s been rather cold and rainy this month in California (I know I shouldn’t complain as many would trade their weather for ours) but no matter what weather on Easter Sunday, I made a decision to wear a pretty floral dress. So I’ve browsed through a few options and here there are if you are with me on this 😉