How to Plan an Easter Egg Hunt

A few months back something possessed us to think an Easter Egg Hunt might be fun to do with the grand-babies.

Oh were we ON with this one!

I just wanted to share our experience and ideas for anyone who might want to plan this for their grand kids or kids!  This was absolutely one of the most gloriously FUN times we’ve planned!

Of course I had to pull out all the inside Easter decor for the house for the party (and Hobby Lobby might be just a tad more affluent due to me this year).

(Carrot Bundle utensil idea from Our Best Bites).

It started with a small idea and grew somewhat. One look at Pinterest and I got hooked on SO many cute ideas I found on there!

Apparently tossing out a couple dozen eggs on the lawn is way outdated now.  Or else I just got sucked into a million shades of spring cuteness; I haven’t yet decided.

To begin, everyone arrived around eleven a.m.  We were so blessed to have perfect weather – it was not too cold, but still cool enough to not melt all the chocolate we had hidden in eggs all over the back yard.

As they kids arrived, I had an activity set up on our coffee table, so that it was at their munchkin level.  I found this cute idea from Cupcakes and Crinoline’s site via kaseybuick.com. The kids (well actually it was more like their parents) built tried to build a peep house. I say “parents” because the icing just wasn’t holding very well and the parents really had to help, which in the long run was pretty neat for them all to do together. We substituted colored green coconut flakes for grass in ours because Mr. Wonderful thought everything should be edible.

You could see the parents grinding their teeth in frustration at times, but they finally came up with a finished product. And the kids slid the Peeps inside very carefully.  My cousin Di has since advised me to to use Royal Icing as it is akin to using glue. Here’s a recipe from Wilton (click here).  It was pretty neat to see the families down on the floor together facing the challenge! (Of course I say that, because I was an un-involved camera person just standing by.)

After this activity, the kids were ready to HUNT EGGS!

Because we had age ranges from 6 all the way down to (barely) 2, we decided to give each kiddo a color of egg to hunt, thereby ensuring all kids received roughly the same number of eggs.

We had kept one egg out in the kids’ buckets (buckets purchased for $1 at Hobby Lobby) to show them what color they were looking for. Mr. Wonderful hid Jade’s (our 6 year old) eggs in tougher to find places and most of Madilyn’s (our 2 year old) were easier to find. Mr. Wonderful wrote the total count of eggs on the back of the tags on their basket, so when they thought they were finished, we counted and sent them back out to look for the remaining number still out. (Free printable basket tags from Smilebox and Petite Lemon can be found here).

I had printed some free Easter Egg Hunt signs out from Over the Big Moon and I hot-glued them onto some garden stake sticks we had out in the shed. Mr. Wonderful stuck them around the yard in various spots for a cute effect.

Bonus points to Mr. Wonderful for making this rustic and adorable arbor to our garden outside this week with all the kids’s names on it. We will add more as they come into our lives!

Once all the eggs were found and gathered, we headed back inside to eat.

The kids sat at a kid-sized table and had lots of Easter and bunny-themed food items to chow on.

I wanted to get a smidge of nutrition in them (due to candy overload), so from Bunny Sandwiches to Bunnybel cheese and veggie snacks to Easter Sugar Cookies to Carrot Patch Flower Pots, it was all fun to look at …and eat!  I’ll post the links below to each treat!

**Cheetoh Puff Carrots from A Thrifty Mom (I subbed green pipe-cleaners for ribbon and used these free printables to attach on from Craftaholics Anonymous).

**Carrot Patches Flower Pots from Taste and Tell

**Babybel Bunnies from Blessed Beyond Crazy

**Bunny Sandwiches from Anders Ruff

**Carrot Juice  printables from Lulu Cole (I used mango peach juice).

**The Easter Sugar Cookies were my family favorite Holiday Sugar Cookie dough and frosting recipe found here using these cookie cutters I found on Amazon.

The kids thought they were big stuff sitting at their own little table. We borrowed the table from our son Chris’ house but are now wanting one of our own for them!

When lunch was finished, everyone headed out to the kitchen table to color Easter eggs!

I love simple activities that bring everyone together in creativity, don’t you?

I had purchased some inexpensive Easter trays at Hobby Lobby and before the kids left, they got to load up with some little goodies to take home with them other than the candy eggs they gathered. (The Jelly Bean Prayer free printable from That’s What Che Said can be found here and flower stickers can be found at any craft store in the scrap booking department).

Funny story – we wanted to make sure and include the spiritual aspect of Easter in our egg hunt so we made these cute little bags of multi-colored jelly beans with the Jelly Bean Prayer attached to the bag.  After buying an inexpensive bag of jelly beans, we realized there were no white or black jelly beans inside (due to the nasty black licorice ones no kid ever likes, no doubt!), so we stopped in at the mall one day and bought some Jelly Belly’s in all the different colors as well as black and white. When they totaled our pound and one-quarter of jelly beans, the total came to $14.88 or something. We were shocked! However, we need those dratted black and white beans so we sucked it up and paid for them and then headed to Hobby Lobby to purchase the small flower pots for the Carrot Patches,  and lo and behold!

Hobby Lobby sells the Jelly Bean Prayers in separate little bags complete with the saying on the front – 17 in a bag for $4.00!  Oh, and if you know Mr. Wonderful and his thrifty heart, the fact that these were now marked 40% off was a little too much for his mind to handle!

Would you like a Porter house steak for dinner honey or another bag of jelly beans? EEK!

This kids were now bouncing around high off of excitement and sugar high energy and all us adult folk were ready for a nap. All in all, this was one of the best parties we’ve ever planned and we plan on doing it again next year!

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter and celebrated Sunday for our risen Savior!  Happy future egg hunting as well!