Easter is Coming!

Easter is coming!  Are you ready?  Time to start growing that Easter grass for your baskets, if you haven't already.  It's a great eco-friendly alternative to that awful plastic traditional "grass."  Plus, it's fun to watch it grow, and it only takes two weeks for a nice full basket!

Here's how we did ours:

Get yourself some baskets, potting soil, wheat berries,
plastic (we used garbage bags), and some kids who
like to get dirty.  Line the baskets with plastic so
you don't ruin the baskets and so they won't leak
when you water them.  Fill with soil and sprinkle a generous
amount of wheat berries in a nice layer on top.

Cover with about 1/4"  or 1 cm soil and pat done lightly. Water until soil is damp.

Trim plastic liner to about 1/2" above soil line.  You won't even
see it once the grass starts growing.

Spray with water twice a day until seeds sprout.
Here they are just four days after we planted them.
Once they've sprouted just water them enough
to keep the soil moist.

It grows fast!  Here it is at only six days!

And here we have our baskets at two weeks.  I actually had
to give the grass a trim by then!  In the bigger basket, I
stuck in some twigs from the yard to hang our egg
ornaments.

If I had had some foresight, I would have popped in a few flower seeds or crocus bulbs, too.  Maybe next year...

If growing your own grass isn't an option for whatever reason, here are still some great alternatives for filling your baskets:

-green cotton or wool yarn

-green or natural wool roving or fairy wool

-shredded green or multi-colored paper (run some construction paper through a shredder!)

Does the Easter Bunny hide eggs at your house?  He does at ours, but they're not filled with candy (who needs a sugar rush/crash at 7am?).  This year he'll be hiding eggs filled with polished crystals and stones.  And they won't be plastic eggs either.  This year they'll be in real eggs, which have been blown out, dyed, had a hole trimmed in them, filled with treats and sealed back up with tissue paper.  This is a bit of an experiment on my part, so I'll let you know how it goes.  If it goes well, I'll post a how-to.  

We have added some bunny stories to the kids' bookshelf in addition to the other spring books.  Marshmallow, The Easter Egg, and The Golden Egg are some of our favorites, and are not all specifically Easter books.  I heard a rumor that the Easter bunny will also be dropping off Reg Down's new Tiptoes book, The Starry Bird, which is an Easter story.

Have a warm, renewing, and fun Easter!