Smarty Easter Egg Hunt

By Guest Blogger, Heather Collier

As a former special events planner, I really enjoy hosting parties and I have a lot of fun coming-up with creative ideas for themed parties. On Sunday, I hosted an Easter egg hunt and party for 6 families. It was a terrific team effort as I coordinated the party and games and each family helped out by bringing a covered-dish for the lunch.

My 4-year-old daughter and I had a great time preparing for the festivities. About a week before the party, we painted an “egg hunt” banner that was placed in our front yard where we hid all the eggs. This was a great arts-n-crafts project and we had fun doing it together. We also filled lots of plastic eggs with candy and toys. The night before the big event, she helped me glue the goggley-eyes on the bunny nametags that we made for each child attending the party.

Peeps played a big role in my planning and that allowed me to incorporate an idea I saw in, of all things, a book on Peeps! I created the centerpiece by stacking Peeps in a square vase and then placed fresh flowers in a smaller bud vase in the middle of the square vase. I also made ‘Peeps S’more’ kits as the party favor. For the S’mores, I purchased paper grass and lined the bottom of a cellophane bag with it. I put in a Hershey’s chocolate bar and some graham crackers along with a 5-count box of Peeps. I created a little tag for the S’more instructions and tied the bag with polka-dot ribbon ~ the perfect Peep party favor.

I had two tables for lunch, so my second centerpiece involved some sod, a chocolate bunny and a few malted-milk eggs (Whoppers). I had a fun time trying to explain to the cashier at Lowe’s that I only needed about a foot of sod; not the whole roll. But they wouldn’t just sell me a square foot of sod, so I ended up with some extra sod for the yard and a cute centerpiece too!

My guests ate with utensils that were wrapped to look like carrots (orange dinner napkins from Party City, green cutlery from Party City and light green pipe cleaners tied off to make the top of the carrot). We also munched on “bunny dip” ~ a bowl of Ranch Dressing seasoned sour cream placed inside a hollowed out head of cabbage.

After lunch, we hunted for eggs. The kids also participated in the “Egg and Spoon” race with real hard-boiled eggs and spoons. The fun and games concluded with a “Bunny Hop” sack race. I found the adorable bunny sacs at Oriental Trading Company (12 sacs for $12). The kids really had a great time hopping around the yard in their sacs.

And not to exclude the Dads from the fun and games, we had a “Dad Egg Roll” too. The Dads had to roll their egg across the pavement using a swinging potato that was tied from their belts. The kids thought this was hilarious and they had a great time watching Dad play a game too:-)

Recipe for Peeps S’mores:
-Place chocolate on graham cracker half.
-Place peep on top of chocolate.
-Microwave for 10 to 15 seconds. Be sure to watch!
-Top off with other graham cracker half and enjoy the ooey goodness!

Thanks, Heather, for living Smarty and sharing your precious party with us! Next year, I may hire you to plan our neighborhood egg hunt:-) Hope you have an Eggcellent Easter Holiday and thanks so much for reading!

Don’t forget to register for our lateset giveaway! Filters Fast is offering one lucky Smarty one year’s worth of free air and water filtration service. This includes home delivery and installation, cleaning of return air grilles and thermostat calibration at every visit. Our Smarty winner can pick quality of product and frequency of change service up to $250! Click here to enter to win!