My husband and I have a longstanding joke about Purim. Every year since we met, I say I want to throw a fancy Purim dinner party where everyone has to dress up like kings and queens. Then I totally forget about it until Mike reminds me a couple of days after Purim is over.

He gets such a kick out of my Purim mental block, I’m pretty sure the overdue reminder is intentional.

You see, growing up, Purim was never celebrated in my house like Passover or Hanukah, so with the exception of a Purim Project Playdate last year, we don’t really acknowledge it. But now that Mazzy and Harlow are both obsessed with Judaism, a Purim celebration suddenly seems necessary. Expected even.

This year, I realized Mazzy, Mike and I we would be in Utah during Purim so my fancy dinner party definitely wasn’t going to happen. As a sidenote, Harlow is at home and was supposed to go to school today in costume (Sophia the First, which works perfectly), but since she is still sick, she’ll have to sit her school Purim party out.

Thankfully, last Friday, before we left, Seri (aka Little Miss Party) and I decided to throw an impromptu Purim/Easter themed Project Play Date.

Since it was last minute, we had no groggers or puppets or Easter egg sets, but we were able to cobble something together to give the Super Jews a little taste of the fancy Purim Party that could have been and some Easter action in case they were feeling bunny deprived.

Let’s start with our Easter craft, since that blew up in our faces in hilarious proportions.

This craft found on Pinterest seemed simple enough. Seri bought bunny ear cookie cutters and baked the ears ahead of time. Then laid out cotton balls, glue, markers and icing in piping bags on the table.

This is the mug Seri made herself to show us how to put our bunny together.

You draw a face on the front, glue the cotton balls on the handle, decorate the bunny ears and then place them on the top of the mug. Then you fill up the mug with hot chocolate and everybody has a lovely handmade craft/treat.

Cute, right?

If you watched my snapchat (ilanawiles) last Friday, you know that was not exactly how it went down. It started out well enough. The kids busied themselves with drawing bunny faces on the mug.

Everyone was really impressed with Harlow’s.

She drew this face with no help whatsoever.

Then it came time to ice and decorate the bunny ears which was time consuming but a lot of fun. The kids took it very seriously.

And then this is where it all fell apart. Literally. The bunny ears were impossible to balance on the side of the mug. We tried to add lots of extra piping to fill in the gaps, but icing is not concrete and they kept falling over, causing broken bunny ears left and right.

As a result, we had lots of one-eared Easter bunnies.

Fallen bunnies.

And lopsided bunnies.

There were also lots of tears as the kids became frustrated with their Easter Bunny Fails, so we chalked it up to being Jewish and did a quick playdate transition to Purim.

Both my kids love the idea of Hamantaschen but hate the jelly, so we found a recipe for a savory version made with hot dogs. All Beef Kosher hot dogs ,of course.

If you buy or pre-make the dough, shaping the Hamantaschen can be a really fun activity for the kids.

We followed the recipe from Busy in Brooklyn.

Purim is all about costumes with an emphasis on royalty. We decided the easiest craft to do was decorate some capes and crowns.

All supplies can be found at Michaels (crowns, sticker jewels, glitter markers, fabric capes, fabric markers, cut out pieces of felt in shapes such as circles and lightening bolts), but Seri got everything pre-packed from Imagination Lane, which ships all over the country and is a pretty awesome resource for crafts and favors.

The kids ate their Hamantaschen and ran around in their costumes as Seri and I tried and failed to remember the story of Purim so we could tell it properly.

Since it was Friday and Shabbat, we ended the playdate with a Shabbat dinner.

In my heart of hearts, the kids would have kept their crowns on for dinner. But you can’t really make kids do anything they don’t want to do.

It was a week early but it was still a big a step towards making Purim one of our holiday traditions.

I promise I will remember to do it again next year on the real date.

I swear on my Hot Dog Hamantaschen.