Holidays and Seasonal

My children love this time of year when the Easter bunny comes to town. Part of the fun is celebrating spring and the Easter season with a traditional egg hunt. This year there are  Easter egg hunts scheduled at communities throughout Marin. We'll update this list as we find out about additional events. If we've left out your favorite Marin Easter egg hunt, please let us know and we'll add it to the roster.

Please visit the appropriate links or call organizers for more info, if available, and directions.

Belvedere:

• The Belvedere Community Center is hosting an Easter Bunny Brunch on Saturday, April 3 from 10 am-noon for $15 per person (3 and under free). There will be a brunch, Easter crafts, music, face painting, carnival games, and an Easter Egg Hunt. Easter Egg Hunt will take place in the playground after the brunch and the children will be grouped by ages. To purchase tickets, call the recreation office at (415) 435-4355. For more info, go to their website.

Corte Madera:

• Corte Madera Parks & Recreation's Children's Egg Hunt, Saturday, April 3 at 10 am sharp at the Corte Madera Town Park. Juggler to follow egg hunt. For more info, call (415) 927-5073.

Fairfax:

• Fairfax's annual Easter Egg Hunt will take place in Bolinas Park at 10:00 am-noon on Saturday, April 3. Music will be provided by James K. and will take place rain or shine.  For more information please call 456-5652.

Mill Valley:

• The Mill Valley Community Center will have a Teen Zone Flashlight Egg Hunt for 6th thru 8th grades on Friday, March 26, from 7–9 pm. The night will start with dinner and games, then we will take out our flashlights and we're off for the great hunt!! If you find Golden Eggs you will receive special prizes! You can register for the hunt at the Mill Valley Community Center or their online registration using course #18510. The deadline for registration is March 19. The cost is $15 for TZ members or $19 for non-TZ members.
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Easter is going to be here soon, and it always feels like we participate in at least half a dozen Easter egg hunts. This is probably because we actually do! Since it's a special occasion, I've made sure the children have nice, quality Easter baskets that they can use for a few years, and perhaps even keep as mementos of their childhoods. I really love the stuff offered by Pottery Barn Kids, (and who doesn't?), but I don’t always love the price tag that comes with it.

The other day, quite coincidentally, I received both the Pottery Barn Kids and the Lillian Vernon catalogues in the mail and noticed that they both offered very similar personalized Easter baskets at very different prices.

Gung hay fat choy! Sausalito's Bay Area Discovery Museum opens on a Monday (something that happens rarely) for its annual Chinese New Year Festival. The festivities take place on February 15 (President's Day) from 10 am to 5 pm. At the this celebration of the Year of the Tiger, the whole family can find something to do. Create a traditional lucky red envelope (li-cee), kite, or beautiful paper lantern, try your hand at calligraphy, or make your own traditional sweet wontons (they’ll even fry them up for you).

You can also learn about the Chinese zodiac and enjoy an exciting performance by the Dragon Horse lion dancers (10 am) and the lion dancers of the Marin Chinese Cultural Group (2 pm). Lion dance performances take place in the museum's Festival Plaza.

Get the kids into the kitchen and create these tasty heart-shaped pizzas for Valentine's Day! They're easy to make, reasonably healthy, and children can have fun customizing them to their taste. We made these in our kitchen and had a lot of fun. And we got to eat them for lunch, too. This recipe was inspired by the great ready-to-use pizza carried by Trader Joe's—you can get all the other ingredients there, too. You can of course make these any time (heart-shaped or just plain round).

Right around Valentine’s Day, I always make a special stop at perrenial favorite See’s Candy to pick up some of their marshmallow-caramel hearts for the kids. If you want to get out there now beat the rush, here are some places to pick up some sweet treats for your Valentines:

See’s Candy

See’s is the old California candy standby, with several locations in Marin. Their traditional stores haven’t changed in years, and they often hand out free samples, too. Their candy is definitely a few notches above your garden variety supermarket boxed chocolates.

Sees is also a great place to pick up your chocolate bunnies and other Easter candy. All their locations are open Monday through Friday 10 am–9 pm and 11 am to 6 pm on weekends. The long-standing location on Fourth Street in San Rafael is closed, but there are plenty of other locations in the county to choose from.

• The Mall at Northgate, San Rafael, (415) 491-9729
• Town Center Corte Madera, (415) 927-4430
• Vintage Oaks Shopping Center, Novato, next to Jennie Low’s Chinese restaurant, (415) 892-0381

February means that Valentine's Day is coming up, and along with it the classroom ritual of exchanging Valentine's Day cards. Since most of us are budget minded these days, you'll probably appreciate the free Valentine's Day cards available at numerous places online, especially since Valentine's Day often seems to be one of those holidays that exists mainly to suck your money right out of your wallet. Simply select the one your children want, download, and print. Pretty nifty.

This just in: Famous groundhog Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow, meaning that there will be six more weeks of winter. However, alternate groundhogs, such as Atlanta's General Beauregard Lee have predicted an early spring, so we're not sure what to believe. Groundhog Day has always been America's most underappreciated holiday, but not in our house! Our kids saw it on the calendar and have been eagerly anticipating the great day for weeks.

Apparently Groundhog Day is derived from an old German superstition brought to America by early immigrants. The groundhog (Marmota monax) is a large rodent common in central and eastern North America. We don't see groundhogs out here, but we have a close relative, the marmot, which lives in the Sierras. There aren't any groundhogs in Germany, either, but marmots are common in alpine areas, so perhaps that's the original groundhog.

Groundhog weather prediction accuracy has been estimated at 75–90%, although less optimistic sources put the overall reliability at 39%. Still, not bad for a rodent.

Tired of the same old boring, cookie-cutter Valentine's Day cards? Create and order custom cards online! As readers here know, one of our favorite places to order cards and invitations online is Tiny Prints.

Tiny Prints' cards feature sophisticated, modern designs, and of course they have a wide selection of Valentine's Day cards, including custom photo cards and really cool kids' Valentine's Day cards to hand out to friends and family. Their selection of kids' cards features cute original illustration as well as popular characters like the Backyardigans, Kai Lan, Spongebob Squarepants, and Dora the Explorer.

They also have Valentine's Day party invitations and stickers, so check them out. They also have quick turnaround and delivery times—we're always amazed at how fast our cards arrive. Take 15% off your order of $75 or more through January 28, 2010 with coupon code JAN2DAY.