I’m not going to do it. Tempting as it might be. I could just leave these pictures to speak for themselves and if I did, what would they say? Something like, “What, these old Easter celebrations? I just flung them together, no big deal, with a baby on my hip, because grace and ease just come naturally to me, you see. My baby? She’s one of those self-cleaning, silent ones. My toddler? Just likes to entertain himself – quietly, in an educational and mess-free manner – while I get on with the crafting that just flows from my creative mind out into the world like raindrops on rose and whiskers on kittens…”

There are quite a few parenting blogs like that, aren’t there? Mostly American, mind. At best they make me feel a bit deflated, at worst pretty stabby. You?

Anyway, setting aside the question of whether their lives are really like that or whether these women are surfing on a wave of prozac and temazepan or whether it’s all a complete fantasy - it should be obvious by now that graceful ease is just… not me.

So instead, this blog post comes with a big health warning: if you do not have a week off, with lots of extra people to grapple with the baby and the toddler for you, and a father-in-law with superhuman powers of patience and helpfulness, and at least two nieces on hand who are more creative and sensible than you and remember things like the need to boil the egg shells in order to avoid giving all the children salmonella… If you DON’T have those things then DO NOT, whatever you do, attempt to blow ten chicken eggs and five quail eggs, paint them in different designs, varnish them, fill them with sherbet and sweets and then plug them with a chocolate stopper. And then, DEFINITELY do not use any remaining downtime to construct one Spring Crown from chicken wire and seasonal blossom and  then another from card and staples. Just step away from the kitchen, get in the car, drive to the garage and buy some mini eggs. Believe me, £4.99 is a small price to pay for your sanity, marriage and the preservation of all your kitchen utensils.

If the above DOES apply to you, however, then read on. You’ll find you actually get a weird kick out of it. And the kick will hang about for way longer than the sugar rush from a petrol station easter egg. And it’ll turn out to be a better use of your time than most of the things you usually do (even the marathon reruns of Grand Designs).

Funnelling sherbet and little sweets into the blown, painted eggs, after knocking a sizeable hole in their tops. After this, we melted some milk chocolate to a thickish consistency and blobbed it over the top of the holes before sticking them into the fridge so the chocolate solidified and plugged the hole.

Start of the egg hunt…

Following the daffs…

Woah! The chickens laid a golden egg!

Hidden dragons eggs (sherbet-filled quail eggs covered in colourful glitter)

Yum

Egg folk having a chat in the shrubbery (get the Mr Printables free template here)

Found you!

… then cracked you in half and ate you.

And the final crown…

For an easter breakfast.

That’s all folks! Except for one final thought…

We bought the sweets and sherbet. The eggs were free, but only because we were staying with the in-laws and they have their own chickens. If we’d had to buy those, and buy in new paints for the eggs too, would this really have been any cheaper than buying ordinary easter eggs? Honestly, I think probably not. But it was nice, either way, that the eggs didn’t come branded with some famous cartoon character. It was a welcome respite from a world COMPLETELY dominated by Fireman Sam (yup, the obsession endures…) And I got some real satisfaction from doing it. I’m still a long way from a Domestic Goddess, but I’m beginning to see the appeal. In small doses. And thankfully, Easter only comes once a year….