I started with an Evite, I think this a great tool for casual get together. You can easily track guests, people can identify how many adults vs. kids are coming, guests can leave comments - it's super easy! This year we had almost 60 confirmed guests and half of those were kids! All guests showed! Yea! There are almost always no shows at a party - but not this one!
When I started this tradition a few years ago, I had planned to make all of the food, but have a lot of generous friends who offered to bring dishes to support the buffet! This part of the tradition has continued!
I did provide food suggestions to those who offered. I made an apple, Italian sausage, and egg casserole, supplied turkey sausage and Canadian bacon, as well as Peeps Pops - everything else was supplied by friends! We had fruit, cheesy potatoes, veggies and dip, a green salad, a pasta salad, a broccoli slaw, a quiche, and muffins. The dessert table was full of colorful cakes, cupcakes, Rice Krispie nests, homemade Oreo cookies, and small buckets of jelly beans. The dessert table was a little heavier on the food than the buffet table, but that's OK! I was so busy with the party, I never did take photos of the brunch buffet or the dessert table! Shame on me! I'll remember to do so next time!
I also wrapped the green forks in orange napkins to make carrots! Thanks Disney's Family Fun for the idea! I only wrapped the forks (instead of a fork, knife, and spoon) because I wasn't all would be used! I did make spoons and knives available, but have a lot leftover (as expected) and can use them next year!
We had all of the food set up inside, but had the bar set up outside. We had juice boxes, water, beer, OJ, Bloody Mary mix, vodka, white wine, and of course, Champagne!
For decorations, I used simple vinyl tablecloths for the kids tables and adult tables, we had lots of umbrellas in the yard and lots of flowers! I also had a bucket of Easter pinwheels (bucket is actually used at Christmas and is full of rock salt that holds candles) - the rock salt held the pinwheels just fine! I didn't place it very well, however, not very many kids saw them!
For fun, we set up a few yard games on one side of the yard, hired Balloons by Tim (aka The Balloon Guy to my boys) to make fun balloon creations for the kids (he does AMAZING work and the kids wait SO patiently for him!) and had the always popular bounce house set up! We also made sure there were lots of balls, footballs, Frisbees, bubbles, and other yard toys available for the kids to use!
For the egg hunt, we decided to use the common area across the street from our house to "hide" the eggs. We got a lot of egg fillers from Oriental Trading Company like stamps, tattoos, bouncy balls, sticky hands, stationary, stickers, and slap bands. This was about half of the eggs - the other half were filled with candy! I did keep the candy eggs together and stuck them in the freezer the day before the party so that we wouldn't have any melted chocolate on our hands when kids opened up their eggs!
The hubby took about 4 other dads out to the common area to spread out the eggs and asked for "5 minutes" - I said, I'll give you 10. 15 minutes later, they were still scattering eggs! He said there were about 1200 eggs out there! More than I originally planned - but I always want the kids to have an overflowing basket full of eggs!
We all had so much fun - I can't wait until next year!
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