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During Easter Week, when I was growing up in a small town in Guanajuato, Mexico, my cousins and I used to go to the jardin (downtown) and buy cascarones (cask-a-row-nehs). Cascarones are eggshells filled with confetti or flour that kids would break over each other’s heads. You never knew what would fall out of the egg and that was part of the fun. I thought you might want to find out how we make and decorate cascarones in Mexico.
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There are cascarones in Mexico and Easter eggs in the USA (I don’t quite understand why there are eggs during Easter, maybe somebody out there can explain it to me, please?).
My kids have learned how to paint and decorate Easter Eggs in past years, so this year it was time for them to learn how to make Mexican cascarones. Painting, decorating, and getting their hands wet was irresistible to them. I recommend trying it out; it’s a great activity for Easter Week. We invited a few friends over last Saturday and everyone had a great time making them. We did it outside and a couple got caught by the wind and ended up with dirt on them, but even those turned out looking interesting!
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Now let me show you how we made them.
For the past week, we have been eating a lot of eggs and saving the shells: we tried to crack the tops so as to make the smallest holes possible while still easily getting the insides out. Then we rinsed them out well under the faucet. Then we submerged them in soapy water for a few minutes to clean them up some more. And finally, we rinsed them again and let them dry.
While they were drying, we set out the decorating materials: colors, paints, brushes, confetti, glue, and a few pieces of tissue and crepe paper to cover the holes at the end.
Let kids be creative painting, dyeing, and decorating their eggs. When they are done, leave the eggs to dry while the kids go play– mine climbed our backyard tree!
After an hour or so, come back and fill the eggs with the confetti. Put a little glue all the way around the top of the egg near the hole and cover with a piece of colorful tissue or crepe paper.
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That’s it! In Mexico, we break them on Easter Sunday. Go break an egg!
Happy Easter.
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Quedan muy lindos decorados de esa manera, y lo mejor es que todos en casa pueden participar en su decoracion.
We use glitter an flour
I use to live in el paso texas but now live in iowa and still continue the tradition that my daughter grew up doing for easters in el paso yet i can never find the confetti anywhere to make my eggs we always have my daughters family send it from texas but it is kind of annoying waiting for it to come in the mail do you have any ideas on where i can order it on line.
You can make your own, you just need tissue paper in various colors 🙂
In South Texas we do this every year. There are always vendors by the side of the roads selling their beautiful eggs. I think eggs are a part of Easter because they deal with fertility. In Pagan times, rabbits and eggs were seen as symbols of fertility. Easter falls in springtime and this is when rabbits were more likely to reproduce.
Cascarones are so much fun! I really wish the U.S. as a whole would catch onto this. A lady from another state thought the idea of cascarones was the craziest thing she had ever heard of!