Come Easter time, most of us are attached to images of little girls with ringlets carrying around a beautiful Easter basket with all the usual trimmings. I imagine a white girlie-looking wicker basket adorned with lace and pastel-colored satin ribbons, stuffed with eggs and other yummy edible treats nestled on top of willowy cotton patches; all surrounded by other magical treasures with any of the following motifs: bunnies, chicks, birdies, ponies, ducks, swans, unicorns, Disney princesses, Barbie, Dora, etc.
My mind kept wandering at how lovely and easy it would be to make one up, except I have a BOY. I asked myself, "Do boys get Easter baskets with all the frills, too?" Maybe, but I wasn't sure I wanted one for my two-year old boy.
Then, my mother found this gem of a "basket". It's wicker and the tag read "Easter basket", but it doesn't quite look like a frilly basket. So, Liam's Easter "basket" was a large, green, wicker egg "basket" stuffed with two-dozen, multi-colored plastic eggs stuffed with edible treats, plus one big red car, a Porsche to be exact, nestled right in there, too. Oh, and I also threw in a watercolor kit (an impulse purchase) which I though might be cool, since I would like to introduce him to painting sometime soon. Of course, I will first need to get him a frock of some sort to protect his clothing and then condition a space just for this task.
The plastic-colored eggs I found were quite small, and could be filled with any assortment of small edible treats that can potentially become choking hazards. With this scary thought in mind, I opted for the large Cadbury creme, caramel, and marshmallow stuffed chocolate eggs that fit perfectly into the plastic eggs and little hands (and melt nicely in little hands, too). I also thought the softer Lindt truffle chocolates (perfectly round and individually wrapped) to be just the right size. I also bought a small packet of three Ferrero Rocher chocolates since these too were the right size. I know chocolate is chocolate for some people, but let's face it, some chocolate is way better tasting. Since I can't fill these babies up with my favorite Jacques Torres or even Godiva for that matter, I thought the next best thing would be Cadbury, Lindt, and Ferrero Rocher that are available almost anywhere; and these are a modest improvement over your standard Hershey's, Mars, and Nestle. (Not that these aren't yummy, too!)
Since I had all of 24 eggs to fill up, I only stuffed some of the eggs with these nicer chocolates (that daddy, mommy and abuelita would also enjoy) and the rest with animal crackers (2 crackers per egg). I also placed a Sesame Street sticker in with the chocolates and the crackers in each egg. I was slightly disappointed that the idea of the stickers was not a winner. Liam just didn't know what to do with them. Note to self: Must introduce him to the idea of sticker books. The chocolatey goodness and the unexpected animal crackers though were a huge hit. He got a real kick out of "cracking" the eggs open and "pouring" the animal crackers into a small container and then munching on them. The biggest hit was, of course, the red Porsche.
Here is Liam after a successful "Easter egg hunt" at abuelita's apartment. His hair looks funny from bending down to pick up the eggs.
Here he is hoarding, I mean, neatly putting all his eggs away in the egg basket.
And here he is devouring a chocolate bunny given to him by abuelita. Oh well... Later, though, he did have a Lindt truffle, and he just looked up at me as if to say, "Hmm, I can really taste the difference." Here's hoping, anyway.
The chocolate goeyness left on his face made him smell so delicious, I was tempted to lick his cheeks like a puppy (which of course I didn't!).Liam, my love, your cheeks are yummy with or without chocolate.
