Prepare for the Easter Egg Hunt in advance of your guests' arrival. You can purchase colored plastic eggs at most supermarkets or discount stores at this time of year. It's better to use those eggs (instead of chocolate or real eggs), if you are holding the hunt outdoors. Fill the eggs with little candies or trinkets. If you are planning an indoor hunt, you can prepare your own chocolate eggs, and wrap them in plastic before hiding them. With an indoor hunt, hide the eggs in a different room than your main entertaining area so that your eggs aren't discovered before the hunt begins.
Keep the event casual by serving brunch buffet style. Decorate with lush bouquets of spring flowers such as tulips, daffodils or hyacinths. Fill a beautiful Easter basket with colored eggs and use that as your centerpiece. Sprinkle colorful jellybeans across your table as edible confetti. Or use one of the beautiful spring centerpiece ideas suggested by Coral Nafie, About.com Guide to Interior Decorating.
Let the Hunt Begin
Once everyone has had a chance to nibble on some food, and the children are bouncing off the walls like baby bunnies, it's time to set them loose on the hunt. If there's a wide disparity in the children's ages, let the youngest ones have the first crack at finding the eggs. If you know that some of your little guests will be very young, 'hide' some eggs out in the open so that they can have the thrill of finding them before they lose interest in the activity. Once the little bunnies have had a couple of minutes to look around, you can set the bigger ones loose.
If most of the kids at your brunch will be older and not requiring supervision, you can make the hunt more challenging. Hide a large quantity of eggs throughout your home or yard, and let them hunt to see who can find the greatest number of eggs. Have prizes to award to the first, second and third place winners. But also have prizes for all guests ( chocolate bunnies spring to my mind!)
An alternative for the older kids is to have an Easter egg treasure hunt. Divide the children into teams and assign a color to each team. Let them hunt for their color eggs. After the eggs have been found, have each team crack them open to discover clues to find a hidden treasure. Obviously, each color set of eggs needs to have a complete set of clues. Have a different treasure location for each color, so that each team gets its own stash.
Next page: The Brunch Menu
