Easter: what's the plan? Share your top Easter tips and traditions with Lidl and you could win one of five £50 vouchers. NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

With the Easter long weekend fast approaching, we have been asked by the team at Lidl to find out your top tips and traditions for the bank holiday weekend.

Please share on this thread what makes a perfect Easter weekend for you and your family.

Do you celebrate with a big family get-together and meal? Or take it as a chance to catch on some long overdue jobs round the house and garden? Do you get all crafty in the run up with bonnets and cards? Or are you a baking goddess rustling up your own hot cross buns? And what do you do with any left over chocolate? Do you have family traditions which you have developed over the years - please share them here!

Add your comment and you'll be entered into a prize draw where five MNers will each win a £50 voucher for Lidl.

Please note that any comments posted on this thread may be used by Lidl in further marketing material (anonymously, of course)

Thanks and good luck
MNHQ

We do mini competitions throughout the holidays. The kids have to best their previous performance and I (dressed in a rabbit onesie), go around to inspect and pick my favourite. Of course, my favourite ends up being all of them so we end up sharing the prizes out. The kids see the chocolates as a treat so they end up saving it. Any left overs are used in baking.

we go to messy church on good friday and to the morning service on easter sunday. we also do an easter egg hunt either in mums garden or around the living room of the flat.

We do a bit of a mixture, it's a big deal for us to get four days off together but we have tons of jobs to do bu Easter especially in the garden. So we tend so spend half of it doing jobs which we all do together, the Su day having an egg hunt and big roast and one day going out somewhere as a family

We are off to the mother-in-law's for easter mayhem! Egg hunts in the garden - spring walks in the Welsh countryside & more chocolate eggs than you can shake a stick at it! We may even make some easter egg nest cakes with crumbled up shredded wheat, melted chocolate & mini-eggs - yummo! x

Eggs for breakfast, will have previously decorated hard boiled eggs which we will roll down the hill outside the house. Easter egg hunt in Grandads garden (which is much nicer than ours and has lots of nooks and crannies for hiding things in)
Home for a roast dinner with family and then chocolate fest!
Can't wait!

The tradition in my home for Easter Monday is for all the men and boys of the family to go and visit all the women and girls of the family and "water" them with a light scent or a bit of water... like the flowers need watering.:) The women would then give them chocolate eggs or hand painted eggs (in old days). Everyone would prepare buffets, cakes and different treats for the visits and would chat and expect many male visitors:) (usually family members, neighbours or family friends...)when I was younger we used to count how many boys I had visiting me...the girls would feel very special on that day....:)
On Easter Friday and the Easter weekend we would paint the Easter eggs and decorate the house with them, bake cakes and visit the family.
Easter holiday for us is all about family and catching up with the close ones and having a nice time.

It's got to be a big lamb dinner on Easter Sunday. Maybe a day out to a farm or easter egg hunt. Then watch some family movies in the evening.

It's all eggy fun at our house. The Easter egg hunt has morphed into a cryptic clue hunt for our teenagers to find their chocolate eggs. We still paint hardboiled eggs for rolling in our local field. And we paint blown eggs as decorations - we keep the best ones and have ended up with a large boxful of eggs that we get out every year and hang on an Easter branch. Mainly I love the family vibe, spring weather and feeling of hope and renewal. And hot cross buns are an added bonus!

Plan to decorate hard boiled eggs with variously coloured dyes. Kids will get a bit of chocolate (eggs or rabbits) and when younger, they would get a little toy/treat as well.

My DD was born on Easter Monday so although it's not her birthday it's a special day for the two of us.
We have family round for a nice meal on Easter Sunday, but Easter Monday is just for the two of us to do something fun together.
She has a big thing about egg shapes at the moment so we're going to "liberate" some paint colour charts from the DIY shop and use them to make pretty striped eggs to hang as bunting.

We spend time together as a family, an egg hunt, lunch and lazy afternoon. Bliss!

Easter means skiing, simple! ( and the added bound of some good swiss chocolate!)

dd (PFB!) was born on one of the Easter holiday days so I know just what you mean bubbles - a special day and time of year

We go to church on Easter morning, then usually have an egg hunt and an egg and spoon race in the afternoon (even though the participants are now aged 17, 14, 13 and 81!!) Then a lovely roast with no worries about getting the kids clothes ready for school the following day.

Good food, long walks and a family movie night makes Easter for us.
We also love a good egg hunt but we try to step back from chocolate eggs and replace them with real ones... despite the fact that I love and adore chocolate in every amount, too much chocolate doesn't do kids any good.

I'm praying for good weather for a lovely long country walk and a big picnic complete with hard-boiled eggs that we've decorated being rolled down a hill (and ending up covered in grass and mud probably!).

Once everyone has eaten their fill of easter egg chocolate we use the remnants to make either tiffin or rocky road-the mild, sweet chocolate is perfect for the task and the results can be cut into squares and enjoyed anew by all

For a change we're off to Brighton for a weekend away by the sea but I'm sure they'll be room for an egg hunt and lots of choccie :)

Unless we're drafted in for overtime, I get a 4 day weekend to spend with my family, which is amazing! Good Friday is spent baking Easter treats (biscuits, cakes, hot cross buns), Saturday is movie day (and we eat the treats!), Sunday we go to my Mum's for Easter Dinner and an egg hunt then Easter Monday we recover from the foodie weekend with a stroll in the park if the weathers nice or fun time indoors if it's rainy.

On Easter Sunday the children wake up to an Easter egg hunt searching the house for little eggs (or the garden) if the weather is fine then they lead to the big Easter egg, we usually have a big family roast dinner for lunch which is followed by our traditional family Easter Pudding a dessert made from Slicing hot cross buns, covering them in apricot jam and them covering the whole lot in vanilla custard before baking in the oven , Delicious

We love Easter & I must confess I love all the eggs-xitement too. Seriously though a few weeks before I hunt for little extra special & unusual sweets & treats to fit inside the plastic eggs to hide in the garden. The night before H & I are up late with a glass of wine busy filling & hiding all the eggs & depending on the weather we will do half inside & outside if possible. Wandering around the garden with a torch in fits of laughter. The plastic eggs will protect the chocolates if it should rain unexpectedly. We love loads of tiny foil mini eggs as it makes them feel that they have loads in their buckets without breaking the bank. H & I also hide the eggs at the different heights & difficulty levels so each child is challenged in the hunt with only one GOLDEN egg in which we hide a pound.
We have also always left flour bunny foot prints in a trail on the carpet with a small ball of blue tack dipped in flour. The trail will lead to patio door if any eggs are outside. Each child has their own little metal bucket (even my 17yr old) & its a race to fill it up & find the "most" & one & only golden egg.
Then all their finds are tipped onto a tray & shared out equally. And favourites swopped & negotiated. Except the pound that goes in the finders money box.My daughter found it last year.
Then its roast lamb with all the trimmings. Odd I know, but we also keep some Crackers from Christmas decorated in plain foil especially for Easter to jazz up lunch & we hide mini eggs in the serviettes in the wine glasses. Kids also have a wine glass filled with juice or cola. We like staying home & as family are far away, we try make it special at home playing board games eg. 3D ludo,cluedo, monopoly etc all afternoon with using the mini eggs as counters (that we personalize with edible felt tips) that are eaten at the end.
Any left over chocolate... then it gets put to a vote if its going to be melted to become Choc Mousse, Hot chocolate or Choc ice cream sauce.

The very best part for me is the family time & the sense of togetherness laughing & even the arguing... as life is so short & we never know what lies down the road.

easter egg hunts and a lovely roast dinner :)

Easter tree - stick of blackthorn in bloom with easter decorations hung on it as the table centrepiece.
Easter egg hunt in the garden for the DCs - they each have special baskets for this.
A huge joint of roast lamb. I think I like Easter better than Christmas. :)

No Easter tradition as such. Just visit family. Obviously have to have an Easter Egg or two.

Lots of chocolate and an afternoon stroll in the park