The Party Edit

Spring is the perfect time for creative activities and these fun printable games will keep kids busy over Easter.

Create little gingham paper baskets for an Easter egg hunt or to hold your springtime bakes with our easy printable templates!

Looking for Easter craft activities? This free downloadable template lets you create a beautiful egg hunt scene to sit on the table this Easter – providing hours of fun for children and adults alike!

Easter Bake and Make Looking for Easter cake decoration ideas? Our designers have created 6 delightful Easter cake toppers for you and your kids to craft. How to make Cake Toppers These 6 toppers include fantastic illustrations of a girl bunny with basket, a boy bunny, 2 pretty flowers with leaves, a carrot and a cute chick – ideal to transform cupcakes into Easter treats. You will need a printer, card (or print onto paper and stick onto card), cocktail sticks, scissors, tape or glue, ribbons (optional), and of course... cakes! Download Now Step 1 Print out the sheets and cut out the toppers with scissors. Step 2 Glue the front and back of each topper to a cocktail stick (for safety, you can cut the sharp ends off). Step 3 Add colorful ribbons, if you want. Step 4 Pop the toppers on to your cupcakes (or they will look wonderful on a large Easter cake too). An easy way to create sensational looking treats for your Easter family gathering. We love Easter –  the fun, the food, the gifts! Gifts don’t have to just be candy though… why not give a longer-lasting surprise? Like the beautiful Alice fabric doll who has a fun bunny headband, our little bunny doll in a mini suitcase, or Easter coloring posters. Discover More Easter Fun Time Make Easter fabulous fun with games the whole family will enjoy. Our Meri Meri designers have created an Easter Bingo game especially for you, just print it out and play. We’ve also got lots of other game ideas too. READ MORE >

Discover our guide to fun and easy Easter games, including piñatas, bowling, and our free, printable bingo activity.

Easter is all about yummy foods that look and taste sensational. So, we’ve created  beautiful bunny and flower cookies to delight you. They’re almost too lovely to eat – but we’re sure you’ll manage! Eggciting Easter bunny cookies Firstly, use a recipe that you know is great for making cookies that need cutting out. Check out the cookie recipe in one of our previous blogs – it’s perfect for Easter cookies. To get a bunny shape use our wonderful Floral Bunny Cutter Set. Once the cookies are baked, and cool, it’s time to decorate them. Here’s how, with tips from Anna Tyler, Afloral-bunny-cutter-setNNA Cake Couture, who made the cookies pictured here. Cover the bunnies in fondant (also known as sugar paste). Buy white ready-to-roll fondant and roll this out to around 4-5 mm thick. Let it dry for 30 minutes, then paint the back with water and gently drape over the bunny cookies. Now make the icing flowers to decorate the bunny with. Mix gum paste (also known as flower or floral paste) with food coloring to get the colors you want. Gels tend to give better colors, a good one to try is AmeriColor. Dip the tip of a cocktail stick into the food coloring, you only need a little bit at a time. Add to the gum paste, and roll it to get the color to blend in. Now, roll out the paste until it is 1mm thick, and cut the flowers out using the flower cutters in the set. These are very small, so the best way to get the flowers out of the cutters is to gently use the bristles of a thin paint brush. Use a blob of royal icing, or wet them slightly, to stick them onto the bunny cookie. To paint in the gold detail, mix an edible gold lustre with rejuvenator spirit (this is a clear food grade 99.9% proof edible alcohol, widely available from cake websites) and simply paint on with a small paintbrush. The rejuvenator spirit will evaporate very quickly leaving you with a shimmering gold color. To paint in the gold detail, mix an edible gold lustre with rejuvenator spirit (this is a clear food grade 99.9% proof edible alcohol, widely available from cake websites) and simply paint on with a small paintbrush. The rejuvenator spirit will evaporate very quickly leaving you with a shimmering gold color. Fabulous flower cookies Cut your cookie dough out with our Flower Cookie Cutters, bake then decorate. Here are Anna’s tips on how to get the same icing effects she created. To get the textured petal effect you'll need a flower petal piping decorating tip on the end of your piping bag. (Anna used the Wilton Flower Petal Piping Decorating tip 103). Fill the piping bag with stiff royal icing, and place the 'fat' end of the piping tip onto the flower and pipe a petal shape. Start on the outside of the flower and go around the whole of the outside. Now, layer petals over the whole of the flower, working inwards. Place each petal slightly on top of the one before so as not to leave any gaps. Place the cookies on a baking tray and bake for 15 minutes, in an oven on 86F, to dry the icing and give it a lovely shine. Paint the gold details on and stick on the edible gold balls, like you did with the bunny cookies.  Wishing you a wonderful Easter!  

Our top designers at Meri Meri have created two charming Easter bunny masks for you to download, print, color, and cut out - it's a great activity to do at home.

Interview with Twig Hutchinson We catch up with British design expert and mother of three, Twig Hutchinson on her cult online journal and how to celebrate Easter in style.  Elegant, understated and artfully undone, Twig Hutchinson’s style is the type you want to instantly emulate. Scroll through her lifestyle site Minford Journal and you enter a world of beautiful, eclectic finds. Whether it is a musing on the latest interiors trend or vintage-inspired sleepwear for children, every post reflects her inimitable aesthetic. Warning: you will want to buy everything featured.  Obsessed with fashion and design since she was a child growing up in rural England, Twig started her career doing work experience with an interior stylist. “From then I was hooked. I set about getting work experience at every magazine I could and carried on assisting lots of different stylists. Then I just got lucky. An editor contacted me about a test shoot I’d recently styled and it all sprang from there.” Now a renowned art director and prop and interior stylist, she spends her time sourcing items and overseeing the styling of shoots and events. “I love that I get to work and collaborate with so many talented, creative people.” “I really enjoy the crossover between interiors and fashion in my work - it means I get to indulge both my great passions!” Vintage items have become one of the hallmarks of her work. “I love the textures and things not looking too perfect. I’m equally as passionate about old French antiques as I am about 50’s and 60’s pieces and I love to mix them together, pairing distressed antique pieces with more modern shapes.”  At the same time as working on shoots and events, Twig also runs the Minford Journal, an online blog where she covers interiors, fashion and chic finds for children. Distilling her exquisite taste into conversational, shoppable posts, it is highly addictive reading. Home is in South London, where she is a mother to three (very well-dressed) children. (Aurelie 12, Benjamin 9 and Clementine, 5) Her advice when it comes to childrenswear? “I buy a few designer pieces for them but nearly always in the sale. I then mix in lots of high street pieces but try to spy out the ones that look more expensive than they are. Often that’s when the colour is muted or there’s a great subtle print. Hopefully that’s what I help to show people on Minford. My advice is: enjoy the time where you can dress them predominantly in what you love. In lightning speed the athleisure phase kicks in and then your opinion counts for nothing. Sob.” “I find the perspective of children a great leveler.” She says her children have taught her to appreciate the simple things in life. “It’s so easy to get bogged down in worrying or your adult concerns but I find the children’s perspectives a great leveler. Their excitement at nature. Their world of make believe and fantasy. Sometimes I really do think there is nothing more perfect than a walk in the sunshine with a little squishy hand held in yours.” With Easter soon approaching, we spoke to Twig about how to celebrate in style with children and her tops picks from Meri Meri. How will you be spending Easter? Easter is a really important time of year for me and my family. We go to church on Easter morning and then come home and have a big lunch, always with lots of family or friends depending on who is around. We crack open the champagne and cook a traditional roast lamb and have loads of puddings and then go into the garden for an Easter egg hunt. It really is one of my favourite times of year. How do you create a stylish children’s Easter party?  Incorporate some more grown up elements. A great example of this is using fresh flowers. Try to think of something a bit more unexpected than say daffodils and go for a selection of delicate seasonal flowers such as cowslips, hellebores or muscari in little vases dotted down the table. Also remember to mix in non-themed party ware. Meri Meri have such a great selection in their beautiful basics range. Mix that with the Easter pieces and it stops everything looking too matchy. The fun bit, let’s face it, comes from the chocolate! Ideas for easy activities with children? I think more so than any other time of the year, Easter is perfect for a good craft session at the kitchen table. If you’re hosting, it’s so easy to miss this bit. I’m really going to try and set aside some time this year where we can all sit down and just enjoy making some things together. Any creative activities are so good for you. We also will do lots of baking together. This year I’d like to nail the vegetable dyed egg thing. My eldest daughter has got really into calligraphy, so she has been tasked with writing all the place names for the table this year. How do you create a unique Easter gift? This year, rather than buying the standard big character eggs from the supermarket, I’m going to buy each of my children a vintage-style papier-mâché egg and fill them with tissue paper and mini foil wrapped eggs and tie it up with a big silk ribbon. Then we can use it again next year. Your three favourite Meri Meri pieces for Easter? The Bunny Hair Slides - I always like to keep a stash of Meri Meri hair clips in my present drawer for children’s parties. Last year I put them in Clementine’s party bags for her friends.  The Bunny Straw Bag - This was both the girls’ favourite piece from the little shoot we did. You just can’t beat a great basket. Blue Gingham Cups - I love that these are subtle and would be just as good for adults as children.   Blog: www.minford.co.uk Instagram: www.instagram.com/minford_journal   Photography by:  Caroline Irby www.carolineirby.comwww.instagram.com/carolineirby

From an egg hunt for little ones to a sophisticated spring soiree, party planning is easy with these three stylish themes Down the Rabbit Hole Bouncing rabbits and sweet pastels equal a classic Easter affair Set the Scene: Our pastel and wildflower bunny plates and cups are designed to be mixed and matched. Style them with eggs dyed into pastel colours and delicate wildflowers. Hang our playful ‘Hoppy Easter’ garland or give each guest a quirky bunny cracker to help get the party off to a lively start. Serve: Easter baking is made easy with our cute cookie cutters – just add icing for colorful appeal. Cupcakes will look extra sweet encased in striped cases and decorated with our bunny and honeycomb toppers. For a healthy party snack try small Chantenay carrots teamed with dips. Give: An egg hunt, where children fill up their bag with as many chocolates as they can find, not only provides entertainment, it also creates a memorable take-home treat. For a sugar-free activity our bunny egg decorating kit is sure to be a hit. Bunny pinata favors, filled with confetti and temporary tattoos (which can also be used as dainty egg transfers) are another winning way to skip a sugar rush. SHOP THE LOOK >     The Secret Garden Take your cues from spring for a celebration inspired by blossoming buds. Set the Scene: For a grown-up Easter get-together, look to our new range of floral decorations. Make our eye-catching chandelier the centerpiece of your table, then continue the theme with paper bunting fashioned into blooms and painterly flower plates. Touches of gold - like gilded foil straws and gold-rimmed glasses - will lend a glamorous edge. Serve: Start the party with drinks that echo the hues of spring blossoms such as gin mixed with pink-tinged aromatic tonic or rosé champagne. A dessert scattered with edible flowers is the perfect finish. Give: For a fun twist make flower arranging part of the event and send guests home with crowns or bouquets they have made themselves. Alternatively, tie posies of flowers with ribbon or twine for a pretty party favor. SHOP THE LOOK >     Once Upon a Time Who else but cheeky Peter Rabbit to enliven an Easter party? Set the Scene: A striped blue tablecloth is the ideal foil to our classic range of Peter Rabbit tableware. Plates, cups and napkins come illustrated with Beatrix Potter’s charming drawings of her much-loved and mischievous character. Partner them with clusters of small bud vases filled with dainty white and yellow blooms. A garland featuring Peter and his friends will lend a cheerful feel. For the final touch set each place with one of our fun surprise carrots. Serve: Take inspiration from Mr McGregor’s garden and serve fresh vegetable crudités. For a sweet indulgence, little guests will find mini carrot cakes or cupcakes decorated with Peter Rabbit toppers hard to resist. Give: A Peter Rabbit party bag will delight children of all ages. A sticker sheet of the famous fictional characters and mini bunny balloons make playful additions. SHOP THE LOOK >