Easter Traditions

Easter Traditions at our house have always included baking, dyeing and decorating. And of course hunting for the Easter nest. When Colin was little it would include a chocolate bunny, chocolate eggs, "real" eggs and a small gift like a book or a toy car. 

Since his birthday is in September, Easter was always a nice opportunity / excuse to treat him to something he enjoys.

Now that he's a teenager he would probably enjoy hunting for cash, but we won't go there ;-)

Instead I prepared an Easter nest hunt for him and his friends. More about that later. First a couple of recipes and tutorials.

Carrot Bread 

Carrot Cake Muffins 

Zopf can be used to shape bunnies or Grittibänze

How to make silk tie dye eggs.

Just a random picture of seven year old Colin having fun dyeing his Easter eggs. This year he did the same with his friend while I was out and about, prepping for their hunt that was going to happen on Monday. 

Whereas in the past you could hide Easter eggs in the leaves of daffodils or in a shoe, this year I had to work a little harder to entertain a group of 15 and 16-year-olds, and I was surprised that they were interested in the event at all. 

They live within a radius of around 10 km / 6 miles, so they first had to meet in the town where their school is located.

Their first clue was this song:

While there are several parks, I was confident they would go to the one I had in mind, and they did.

"We're at Starbucks now" they texted me. "What's next"?

They had to find out what year Starbucks was founded, and what year that particular store, which is the closest to where we live, was opened. (It's 2006, and I was part of that opening back then.) 

Next they had to venture to "Einstein Plaza". I may have mentioned before that Albert Einstein and I were practically schoolmates. Fact is, he did attend the same college, just roughly 100 years before I did. His grades were almost the same as mine, just in different subjects. Of course he was brilliant in math, physics, you name it, but his performance in French was lacking. I was the other way around.

Anyway. The kids had to google these grades, as they were one of many clues to figure out the final location.

Their journey brought them to this sculpture. They had to find out what it's called, and what British rock band had a song with the same name. (Dreamer, Supertramp)

More stopovers included this painted heart

Number 5

Villa Magnolia

And many. more. They also got to use more musical hints like

All the numbers they collected on their trail, ended up being the zip code of the town they had to take the train to, and as soon as they did so, I jumped in my car to meet them there. 

Their last song was supposed to take them to a repurposed transformation station that is a restaurant called "Ampère" today:

Since they took a different bridge to cross the river, they had to walk a detour, and it began to rain as well, but they made it!

I didn't park by the restaurant but the scrapyard next door and hid their goodie bags in a discarded washing machine that actually still smelled like freshly washed laundry!

Speaking of goodie bags... I needed five identical bags, and I have many, many bags at home! 

I mean, just take my collection of bags I got at some point in my life  to carry my whole bean coffee... It was still a challenge. It was also a bit of a challenge to get rid of a lot of bags I really don't need or use.

They all enjoyed the hunt, and so did I

What are your Easter (or Passover) traditions? Have they changed over the course of time?