When I was nine years old my mother decided to put on a bumper Easter lunch. The family had scattered after the Christmas season so it would be the first gathering of the whole clan- our family of five and both sets of grandparents for a while.



Easter week was a perfect spring postcard. The blossoms were budding on the branches in our garden by the sea and a little snail of crocuses lined the path down to the Summerhouse. I was volunteered to pick some daises to sprinkle in painted eggcups, my reluctant brothers to fetch daffodils for the vases.

My mother, meanwhile, tied on an apron and set to work preparing an enormous leg of lamb and baking the traditional treats, a simnel cake and my favorite hot cross buns.

On Easter Saturday we all pitched in to lay a special table with yellow candles and napkins and tiny fluffy chicks perched on the flower centerpiece. But on the side plates, where usually an Easter egg wrapped in a colourful ribbon would sit, there was nothing!

After much earnest negotiation, I had been given license to mastermind the Easter gifts. They were hidden away awaiting the ?grand reveal? on Easter Sunday morning.

When my mother first gave me the money to execute my sweet-toothed plan, I struggled make a decision. The entire family had given up chocolate for Lent, thrilling and challenging for me, hideous and irritating to my brothers. So I was consumed with craving and, feeling the anticipation a 40-day abstinence would create.

What to do? Long-time favourites? Variations on a theme? Above all, I didn't want to be predictable. I wanted to create a memorable display.

Swinging from a huge branch at the end of our garden one day inspiration struck: I would make trees out of kitchen towel cardboard tubes to which I would attach egg-carton nests, filled with toffee candy and chocolate eggs.

I could make four or five for us all to share and embellish them with vines, leave and flowers. Which is exactly what I did.

Even though it took several painstaking sessions with coloured tissue card and paint brushes to complete the trees I was delighted to finally place the multi-coloured silver foil eggs on the shredded straw.

On Easter Saturday night I found the perfect corner to conceal them, covered with tea towels under a chair against the wall in the dining room. After which I went to bed and slept restlessly until the sun beamed through the curtains in my bedroom and awoke me early on Easter Sunday morning.

Following the service at our pretty local church, milk chocolate fantasies largely displacing prayers, I raced home eager to present the chocolate egg trees at the table in a moment of high drama.

When the lunch was ready my brothers congregated the family. Everyone was seated and patiently waiting as I announced a triumphant ?Ta-da? and whisked the cover off my goodies to transport to the table.

But the gasps were not the ones of admiration I had hoped for, the drama not the sort I had planned. The trees were in tatters, the leaves ripped off, the straw tumbling out and the eggs half unwrapped, half-eaten.

Whereupon Bedlam. Fearing them sabotaged I rounded on my brothers who each accused the other, before my father stepped in suggesting a mouse could be the culprit.

Which my hard-of-hearing grandpa took to be a call to arms, jumping to his feet brandishing a fork and my mother feared to be one of a number of rodents over-running her home, causing her to shriek and drop the gravy.

Followed, of course, by confusion, then reassurances, apologies and eventually the restoration of peace.

Once I had dried my tears and my father had searched in vain for a pink-nosed visitor with chocolate covered whiskers my mother tipped the untouched eggs into cocktail glasses and salvaged the surviving adornments to attach to them.

Only after a delicious meal and lots of sympathy did I recover, helped along by the first sweet taste of the much-missed chocolate.

These days I keep the chocolate out of temptations way, my children posing more of a threat, I think, than mice!

Representing re-birth and new beginnings, Easter is a time of joy to share with friends and family. Sending an Ecard is a fun, fresh way to celebrate this most hopeful of the calendar's holidays.

At www.katiescards.com I have created a collection of Easter ecards that are quick to preview and just as easy to send. It's as simple as choosing your favourite E card, personalizing and emailing it, with a low-cost membership to the site that allows you to send E-cards on other occasions also- from birthday e-cards to Christmas e-cards and every special day in-between.

The selection of 4 Easter e cards features a mixture of colourful painted eggs, adorable chicks and blossoming flowers, each e-card designed to be a heart-warming greeting to remind a loved one you care about them.

So why not be an early bloomer and choose a cheerful Ecard to send to your nearest and dearest this Easter season?