By: Sarah Huda

The flowers are blooming, the sky is blue, and you’re probably sniffling from allergies – which means Spring has sprung! Besides the excitement of swapping your winter coats for your lighter sweaters, the start of Spring means Easter is just around the corner. While family gatherings are still discouraged, that doesn’t have to stop you from getting creative on spreading cheer and cavities to your loved ones! Here are some ideas on how to celebrate Easter with your family while maintaining social distance.

Virtual Celebrations

Virtually celebrating Easter allows you to skip dressing the young kids in Church attire – suits and white dresses – that will inevitably get stained with grass stains and streaks of chocolate fingerprints. Hide Easter eggs behind you for others to find during the video call for a fun way to keep others engaged in the conference. Or, send each other gift baskets to open on camera!

In the era of Zoom gatherings, creating a gift basket full of goodies to send to your family to enjoy together allows you to experience the fun without sacrificing safety. However, what should go inside the basket? Well, that could depend on where you live!

Easter Candy

The popularity of Easter candy is a staple for the holiday; each store is adorned with isles and isles of pastel packages filled with chocolate and sweet candy alike. Yet, each region across the United States has their favorites for the top pick to place in their Easter baskets. The West Coast prefers the creamy Cadbury Eggs, while the East Coast prefers Reese’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Eggs. The Midwest and the South is a toss-up between Reese’s and Cadbury Eggs; either way you look at it, Peeps and Jellybeans didn’t make it high on either list!

DIY Chocolate Easter Eggs

Once you have some basic candy staples in your basket, you can create a fun activity for parents and kids alike, making customizable chocolate Easter eggs! During winter, hot chocolate bombs were all the rage; you would put the fixings of a cup of hot chocolate in a chocolate ball, which then would melt with hot milk. While hot milk would be avoided for this activity, the fun is all the same! All you need is melting chocolate, a circular mold, and candy of your choosing. First, you melt the chocolate over a double boiler or in the microwave at increments and pour into the mold. Once you shake out the excess, you leave it to harden. Now comes the fun! In one half of the mold, you can put sprinkles, jellybeans, peanut butter, or even a vanilla custard inside. The possibilities are endless! Then you take the other half and using melted chocolate as glue, place the other half on top and leave to harden. You can also take melted chocolate or white chocolate to drizzle on top for decoration.

Finally, that leaves egg dying! You can place different colored dyes in the basket and hard-boiled eggs with spoons for easy, mess free excitement. Together, you wrap up your items and deliver to your family to open via Zoom or other platforms for an opportunity to be together while far apart.