AN OUTDOOR EASTER IN CALGARY

IDEAS FOR A MEMORABLE EASTER

When I realized that Easter this year was in the latter half of April, and was actually going to be warm, I became really excited to plan something outdoors for Easter here in Calgary. Spring has always been a favourite season of mine, and although it’s not as full of blooms as the ones I grew up with in Ontario, I still want to make the most of it this year.

This year, we started the morning off as usual. The kids were so excited to see that the Easter bunny had left some goodies behind and quickly got to work finding all of the eggs. We had a lovely slow morning with no plans, the children had a great time enjoying the special gifts in their Easter baskets all morning.

A PICNIC AND EASTER EGG HUNT OUTDOORS

After church we headed out for an early dinner, setting up a picnic and enjoying being outside together, taking it slow and just being together. The kids had a good time running around exploring while Curtis and I tidied up, then we had the kids close their eyes while we hid some Easter eggs.

We had so much fun doing this that even if it’s too cold out next year, I think we will set up a picnic in the living room and do it all over again, just indoors.

Since they had already enjoyed quite a lot of candy, the eggs we hid outside in the afternoon were filled with little slips of paper that had an action they had to complete on them, such as “Hop like a bunny 10 times,” “Make a silly face,” or “Do a happy dance.” It was a huge hit!

They had such a great time just finding the eggs, they wanted to do it again! And then they asked if they could hide them for us to find and got a huge kick out of doing that. Curtis and I may have gotten slightly competitive, racing each other around and snatching eggs from one another if we happened to drop one. All that matters is that I found more than he did.

Many memories were made this Easter. We kept it simple and small with just our little family, but we spent it together, a perfect day in my books.

I kept the menu for our picnic simple, everything could be made the day before so that Easter day was completely stress (and cooking) free. Here are the recipe sources below:

The recipe for the Upside Down Blood Orange Cake can be found here.

The Citrus Salad recipe can be found here.

Here is the Cucumber Salad recipe.

And the Galette recipe is from Sarah Waldman’s incredible cookbook, Feeding a Family.