Preparing Easter Baskets for My Annual Egg Hunt
Are you ready for Easter? It's just a couple days away.
As many of you know, I’ve always enjoyed holidays, but they’re even more fun now with my grandchildren, Jude and Truman. Among my favorites is Easter, and this year, I'm having more than 60-guests join me for Easter lunch at my Bedford, New York farm. Nearly 30 of them are young children who will participate in my annual Easter egg hunt. And to hold all those colorful eggs they find, we prepared whimsical bunny boxes from Sugarfina filled with lots of yummy treats from Sugarfina, Mars, Gimbal's Fine Candies, and chocolate bunnies from my Gourmet Collection at QVC.
There are tons of preparations underway - enjoy these photos.
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- For my annual Easter egg hunt, we’re using these decorative bento boxes for gathering eggs. They’re about eight-inches long by five-inches wide and three-inches deep, with one strap handle – perfect for little egg hunters. They’re from Sugarfina, and can be customized with your choice of two types of candies inside. Take a look at it on my Instagram page @MarthaStewart48. https://www.sugarfina.com/design-your-own-2-piece-bunny-basket
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- We’re filling the boxes with lots of yummy candies – chocolate and caramel M&Ms, Dove Easter Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Eggs, and Skittle eggs – all from Mars, one of our favorite sources. http://www.mars.com/global/brands/confectionery
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- These M&M caramel chocolates from Mars come in a variety of pastel colors.
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- Easter always includes jelly beans. This year, I got jelly beans from Gimbal’s Fine Candies in San Francisco, California. They’ll be a big hit with the children and the adults! http://www.gimbalscandy.com
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- We had several flavors – these are tangerine.
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- We mixed the jelly beans to make them look even more fun – these white jelly beans are coconut flavored.
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- And the pink are grapefruit.
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- The bowl in the back is filled with bubble gum, coconut and key lime flavored jelly beans.
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- Jelly beans from Gimbal’s are also available in pre-mixed bags, but we like to create our own color combinations.
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- Shqipe prepared the candy, and filled 28-cellophane bags with caramel M&Ms.
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- About one-fourth of the bag is filled with chocolates – that’s a good amount for little ones.
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- Cellophane bags come in all sizes with and without flat bottoms. They are available at party supply stores and online. We get ours from Nashville Wraps. https://www.nashvillewraps.com/
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- Shqipe ties the candy bags with a colored ribbon and trims the top of the bag, so everything is well-proportioned.
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- These solid chocolate bunnies are from my special Easter Collection on QVC. We sold out of them quickly for Easter.
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- These are fine Belgium Callebaut chocolates made in old fashioned molds – they are so good.
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- Once all the candy was prepared and packaged, Shqipe began filling the boxes – first with a bedding of Easter grass.
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- Easter grass comes in all different colors, but I prefer the natural light straw color.
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- This candy from Sugarfina is called Suns Out, Buns Out Fluffy Bunnies – fruity sour bunnies and fluffy marshmallow tails. https://www.sugarfina.com
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- Shqipe places one box of candy on top of the straw, alternating the colors, pink and blue.
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- And then she adds a chocolate bunny and a bag of caramel M&Ms. Each child will get a box filled with candy and then use the box for collecting eggs – maybe even a “golden egg”.
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- Such adorable Easter baskets – practical, personal and sweet.
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- Shqipe also packages Dove Easter Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Eggs for all the children of those who work here at my farm.
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- Each bag is filled about a third of the way up and then tied with a satin ribbon.
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- The children and their parents will enjoy these creamy treats. Tomorrow, I’ll share photos of how we decorated my home for the holiday – you’ll get lots of fun ideas!
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- Meanwhile, everyone is pitching in to get the farm clean and ready for my Easter guests. Here’s Fernando “dragging the roads”. My farm has four-miles of carriage road, and all the gravel must be leveled properly for good coverage and drainage. We attached rakes to the back of our all-terrain-vehicle to make this task easier and faster.
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- Here’s Chhiring at the winding cleamtis pergola removing the burlap covers from the row of young boxwood.
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- Pete takes all the burlap frames to storage where they will be kept until the fall, when we cover the boxwood again.
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- And Chhewang ties up and labels each roll of burlap before it also gets stored away for the warm season.
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- Phurba is in my “Party Lawn” blowing leaves and gathering various twigs that fell during the recent storms – it’s a big job to clean the farm before Easter.
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- And right on time – signs of spring are emerging everywhere. These are ‘Natascha’ miniature iris – a lovely ice blue in color. They bloom in early spring and grow to about four to six inches tall.
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- Winter aconite just waiting to open – these produce such cheerful yellow flowers that appear in late winter or earliest spring. And, they are deer resistant.
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- Here are some white crocuses. They only reach about two to four inches tall, but they naturalize easily, meaning they spread and come back year after year. It is so nice to see all the spring flowers.
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