Easter crafts, Easter hunt, Easter day feast

This Easter was the most fun! In previous years, Tristan wasn't really interested in many crafts and he was too young to play in Easter hunts. He is almost 3 1/2 now and he is quite ready for all of that now.

EASTER CRAFTS

We painted boiled eggs. Not only Tristan and I but Jean-Louis as well! Jean-Louis really got into it. He carefully painted a couple of pretty rainbow eggs :) Now that is what I call family Easter fun!

Tristan wanted a tiger so I painted Tigger.

Oh yeah, I also baked sugar cookies and cupcakes :) What kind of foodie would I be if I didn't?

1st EASTER HUNT

On Saturday night, I planned a egg hunt for Tristan. I took the idea from the Easter hunt article I found, which suggested to insert clues inside eggs that would eventually lead to finding the Easter basket. I bought 8 plastic eggs from the dollar store and wrote 8 clues about where to find the next egg. The important thing is that all the eggs have to be located in the exact order! As I unfortunately found out last night, you can't just randomly hide the eggs. Lol.

I set aside the first clue and inserted the last 7 clues into 7 eggs. The first clue was given at the start of the game. The 8th and final egg said "good job!" and gave a clue of where to find the prize. It helps to write down all the clues and then number them in the order they should be found. Then I crossed my fingers, went to bed, and hoped everything would work out as planned :)

There are three floors to our home and I made sure clues were distributed everywhere. I planned it so that Tristan would have to go up and down the stairs many times. He had to work for his prize, yo!

Here are examples of some of the clues I used:

• This is your favorite toy. You love playing this with daddy. Look around here for the next egg.
• You sleep with this at night. His first name is "Black."
• "To infinity and beyond!" Find me and you'll find the egg.
• You hide here every time it is time to go have your bath.

The last egg had a different color note inside, which Tristan noticed right away. It provided a drawing of where his prize was located. Unfortunately, Tristan didn't get the drawing at all. Jean-Louis had to help him.

Overall, Tristan did extremely well. We did the egg hunt first thing in the morning when we woke up. I didn't want to risk him accidentally running into the hidden eggs. He was super excited when we first started. Near the end, he was a bit distracted and didn't really want to hear clues anymore. At one point, he went around randomly and searched for eggs. We told him the game didn't work like that. Then after it was all done, he kept asking why there aren't any more eggs to look for. When the Easter basket was handed over, he let him eat a bit of the chocolate right away. Then we sat down for our regular breakfast.

The "prize"

This was the first egg hunt I planned. My parents bought chocolate eggs for us when we were kids and they randomly hid them outside. It was hard to find them and I'm pretty sure some were forgotten completely. I love these planned egg hunts a lot better :)

This was Tristan's first egg hunt. He didn't really get it but he is still learning. We tried to explain it to him the day before to prepare him. When he woke up he knew there was an egg hunt so he dashed off and told us he was going to hide the eggs. I think he was referring to the eggs we painted the other day. My guess was he was going to the fridge to grab those eggs and hide them. No, no, no.

This was Jean-Louis' first egg hunt. He doesn't remember any egg hunt but that doesn't really surprise me because he grew up in France and the French don't go crazy with the chocolate, eggs, or presents. He comes from a Catholic family and they just go to church and have a nice traditional meal. It's only in the past 5 years or so that the crazy North American culture of chocolate eggs has crept into France. It's all for commercialization.

EASTER DAY FEAST

This year is the first year we ever had a vegetarian Easter. That's right, no meat! We had some eggs in the salad and a bit of cheese in the gougères, else it would have been a vegan Easter. Actually, we had non-vegan cupcakes too. Anyhow, the food was great and it was not a big deal at all. We had a vegan dish which resembled steak but was made from chickpeas and gluten. Psychologically, I guess we thought we were having meat and we were satisfied :)

Chickpea cutlets