Hopping Down the Bunny Trail

Kids love Easter and our little bunnies are no exception. Teaching them the true meaning about Easter and Jesus’ ressurection was my main aim, but throwing in some fun helps the little ones. They aren’t still little, but when they were, I wanted their Easter baskets to be something special. Read on for our Easter experience when they were toddlers.

I happened upon these bright buckets at Lowe’s one day (for about $6 each) and knew they would be perfect to hold all the treasures the Easter Bunny would bring this year. {You could also use the cute sand castle buckets that I found here!}

The lady at the checkout counter looked at me incredulously when I told her why I was buying the buckets. She remarked that I would have to get a “lot of toys and candy to fill up those things.” Little did she know that they would be filled with mostly “grass“! {Sidenote: I hate to admit she was right, but these really were a tad too big!}

I lined the buckets with “grass” made from brightly colored cardstock paper that was run through our industrial-sized shredder at my office (it makes crinkle-cut shreds). You can also make small quantities of paper with small shredders from office-supply stores. As you’ll see in just a moment, we had enough grass to plant a small yard, which I would not recommend unless you plan to single-handedly bring back multi-colored shag.

I filled the “baskets” with lots of fun items from the “fun” section at Target (I even managed to squeak by this year without including any candy…don’t worry, they had plenty from friends & family!). I cut out colorful flowers and glued them onto paint sticks to add a bit of height to the baskets. Our kids used them as wands and rakes to scoop up their grass. They became somewhat dangerous as the day wore on so they were retired to the “later” pile (the wands, not the kids).

After church, we went out for Easter lunch and the cutest centerpieces were on our table. What fun to put Peeps and jelly beans in the vases! They didn’t last long…our kids took one look at them and the Peeps were history within minutes. So much for the no-candy Easter!

Our three-year-old got a haircut on Good Friday and his hairdresser (yes, he already has a hairdresser) surprised him with this cute-as-a-button homemade bunny cake. It was as delicious as it was pretty. I had a hard time making it out of the parking lot without biting off an ear. Don’t think the kids wasted any time in getting to know this wabbit weally well!

Egg-coloring (real) and hunting (plastic) were big at our house this year. I’ve never seen a prettier bunch of eggs than this, the first-ever batch colored by my little rabbit foo foo’s (when I was younger I used to recite the riddle from that book over and over, standing on my grandparents’ hearth. Maybe I was doing a rain dance of sorts and didn’t know it, since I ended up with so many rabbits?).

A tiny part (and I do mean tiny) of our Easter grass explosion, or tumbleweed, is depicted here. Honestly, the kids loved the grass more than any of the other toys, proving once again that the packaging is often better than the product. As they say, the grass is always greener.