We tried this last year and and had so much fun with it, you can see the picture here.

This year as we all shelter in place, we are grateful and lucky to have a yard full of plants, ourselves still in good health and with a lot of time, and paper! And with nature starting to bloom all around us, we couldn’t help but be inspired by her lovely hues. We are so happy to revisit another Easter with wood, paper, glass and nature, and spread some cheer!

We started with paper! We’ve always been huge origami fans because its so much fun and completely sustainable! Only paper folds and no glue, can be done anywhere with any kind of light weight paper, even paper napkins! Enjoy or gift and then recycle or compost.

The internet is full of wonderful tutorials on origami and this year we’re using this delightful video for making balloon bunnies. We also found another set of instructions for a slightly different balloon bunny here. They use the same initial set of folds and are quite simple and fun. And they’re blown like a balloon, quite amazing and wonderfully satisfying, if you’ve never done it before!

We used wooden clips and yarn to hang them. The clips thread very easily, just tie a knot on one end and hang them anywhere. Or just place the origami bunnies anywhere for a little “bunny hunting”, hide candy near them!

We are lucky to have many sets of lovely origami paper that we’ve collected over the years, and this lovely cherry blossom paper seemed to match the plants in our backyard perfectly. If you don’t have origami paper, just plain white or kraft paper, or wrapping paper works wonderfully too, we made some of our balloon bunnies with printer paper cut to size! Also see our Wrappily wrapping paper as origami boats here.

Remember paper napkins work! Usually a 6 inch by 6 inch of paper is the ideal size, but any medium size square paper will work, not too heavy weight

We always love using fresh leaves and flowers for decorating and we are so blessed to have some lovely plants in our yard at this time of year.

We reused our jars and mini glass bottles from past fun projects. If there are no flowers around, use leaves, twigs, branches, even grasses and weeds, they all look lovely, because nature is so lovely. Or make origami leaves and flowers! Email us for any help on that! There’s beauty in the simplest things, and it never fails to bring lightness and cheer.

We had wooden eggs left over from last year (on the left), and we washed off the water color and repainted them with our new color palette (on the right) and sprinkled them with some gold biodegradable glitter for a bit of sparkle!

Here’s our Easter tree!

Of course you don’t need our ReTreeJoy trees to have a sustainable and fun Easter. Indoor plants, a backyard garden, even fruits and vegetables can be an inspiration and can be used to decorate. Wooden eggs can be painted with any water color, reused over many years. Use glass jars from sauces and spices for vases. Use origami activities to occupy the little ones, use any light weight paper you have!

We hope this inspires and cheers in these challenging days. Happy Easter and good tidings, be safe and well.