I absolutely love playing the Easter bunny, and this year, with baby bubba now here, it’s twice as much fun! Besides the fact that I just couldn’t wait, we’ll be away for a good chunk of next week, so I figured I’d get everything picked up and ready to go this week so that I’m ready for when Easter weekend rolls around. I still have to add grass and make them look pretty, but I think we’re now pretty much good to go as far as Easter baskets are considered. ☺
This afternoon, after a lovely morning out of the house, Miss G and I got started on the first of our homemade Easter treats. After seeing some milk chocolate lollies covered with pastel-coloured candy sprinkles while at Dean & Deluca last, I knew we could very easily make our own {healthier} version and that’s exactly what we did today… We made dark chocolate fruit and nut lollies and Miss G is pleased as punch about having a bowl full of these pretty little lollies sitting in our kitchen!
It’s hard to believe that it’s already almost Easter… {Ummmm, wasn’t it January just a couple of days ago?! I’m certain it was.} Either way, it’s about time Miss G and I get busy with some Easter fun, and we decided we’d start with baking up something delicious in the kitchen along with our friends from Hillary with two Ls {please} and Little Miss Mama. As usual, we started with a totally non-healthy recipe {this one for Rice Krispie Treat Speckled Eggs} and then worked our magic on it to make it sugar-free and more whole foods based. While we concocted a delicious healthier version of rice crispy treats over a year ago {and even formed them into rice crispy treat eggs last Easter}, this time I wanted to try something new.
This morning we all gathered at Grandma Sue’s house for a big Sunday brunch and a backyard egg hunt with all of the cousins.
Now before I go on, I must admit I was totally clueless about the fact that the Easter Bunny is the one who hides eggs for kids to find. Seriously – what?! I knew he (or she) was in charge of leaving Easter baskets, but i guess I just thought parents hid eggs in the yard for kids… Is that crazy? Anyways, I’m glad I had this epiphany last night in the company of my brother and sister-in-law, because I totally would have been the terrible Auntie to ruin it all by saying something like, “Okay, guys. Your daddy and I need a minute to hide all of the eggs” after breakfast this morning.
Knowing what I now know, we asked all of the kids to go downstairs and play while we tidied up the breakfast dishes, and Gary and I snuck out to quickly stash the eggs around the yard. That Easter Bunny sure is a smart rabbit… He (or she) left a baker’s dozen of one colour of eggs for each child, thus allowing the slower ones enough time to uncover their treasures (and us to make sure Miss G got all of the eggs filled with Gracen-style treats).
The hunt went really well. The boys’ eggs were hidden well enough to keep them busy for almost the whole time, the kids were great about only collecting their colour of eggs, and everyone was excited about their goodies.
Grae’s eggs were filled some of her favourite snacks (trail mix, sunflower seeds, healthy banana chips, cashews, dried pineapple, and seedy crackers), my homemade healthy crispy rice treats formed into egg shapes, some fun glitter glue, stickers, and mystery capsules. She was pretty excited to say the least.
I know that there are a million perks to going and that we’ll be home for 3 months of summer each year, but mornings like this make me a little bit sad that we’ll be taking Gracen away from her cousins and grandparents come August…
♥
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Holidays like Halloween and Easter, which are most often filled with chocolate, candy, and other junk can definitely be a little challenging when you work hard to not have your child eat any of those things. And while I’m certainly not ready to throw in the towel and pass the jellybeans her way, I also really don’t want her to ever feel like she’s missing out on something special. My solution? Creating treats that are fun and delicious, but healthy at the same time. I won’t deny that it takes a little bit of extra planning, some extra effort, and some extra time, but for me, it’s 100% worth it that my little love gets to enjoy and indulge, while maintaining a wholesome, healthy diet. Needless to say, when I saw this adorable idea on Play Eat Grow, I knew I had to try a version of my own for Miss G and her cousins.
Before I could get to making the popsicles themselves, I had to prepare the moulds first. And by *I*, I mean I had to ask my hubby to drill holes in the bottoms of the plastic eggs, to which he recruited my father-in-law’s help. The two of them disappeared into the garage for a minute, and returned in no time with the job done.
For the filling, I knew I’d have to make them a little sweeter than I normally would in order to coax my niece and nephews into eating them, but I also wanted to keep the ingredients very simple. Grae and I popped a cup of plain organic yogurt, a cup of no-sugar-added frozen berries, and 3 tablespoons of pure maple syrup (you could easily do with less – half even) into Grandma Sue’s food processor, and blended it up until nearly smooth. My plan was to fill a piping bag and carefully pipe the mixture into the closed plastic eggs via the drilled hole, but at the last minute, I decided to go with a less finicky and much more messy method. Basically, I dunked the egg halves into the mixture to fill them up separately, then quickly slapped the two halves together trying to lose as little as possible in the process. It worked fairly well.
With the eggs full, I plugged the drilled holes with my fingertips, quickly ran them under some cool water to clean off the exterior of the eggs, then popped them into an empty egg carton and added sucker sticks into the holes. We froze them for several hours, and voila! A new Easter treat was ready.
The good news is that most everyone really liked them. Even my 6 year old nephew who tried a piece of apple for the first time this weekend ate about a 1/4 of his before leaving it to melt in a cup (pretty much a huge success in my books). And most importantly, Grae loved them. While her cousins moved on to apple pie, Jell-O dessert, and salt water taffy afterwards, she happily asked for another popsicle. Yay.
♥
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