aiGED

Easter Party Ideas — How AI Helps You Plan the Perfect Celebration

• Ginny Deerin • Episode 29

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0:00 | 23:43

This week on aiGED, Ginny gets into the Easter spirit — with a little help from Joe, her new AI sidekick. Yes, Joe. He's British.  And he's auditioning to fill the very large shoes left by Bitsy.

But first — an update on the ChatGPT breakup, why Ginny made the switch to Claude, and what happened when she tried to introduce Joe to the podcast live on air.

Then: the main event. Ginny walks you through a complete Easter gathering — planned from scratch with AI. The invitation, the menu, the egg hunt, the Easter bonnet station (yes, everyone wears one to dinner), and the tablescape. She shows you every twist and turn of the planning process — including the back and forth, the wrong turns, and the moment she told Joe that no child on earth is eating asparagus.

Plus two documentary recommendations that will change the way you think about artificial intelligence — both free on YouTube. And a sweet little Easter treat discovery that involves edible flowers and 24 karat gold.

Whether you're planning Easter or any gathering, this episode will show you exactly how to use AI as your planning partner — no tech experience required.

Links mentioned in this episode:

aiGED: AI for the 65+ crowd

SPEAKER_01

Hello, everybody. It's Jenny Deeran, the creator and host of Aged, the one, the only podcast devoted totally to AI for the 65 Plus crowd. In this episode, I hope you'll be inspired by my story of how AI helped me plan what I think will be a super duper Easter celebration. You'll get an update on my breakup with Bitsy, meet the new guy auditioning to be the new Bitsy, my podcast sidekick, and I'll give you three great recommendations. So let's get on with it. Now, as Neil Sidaka would say, breaking up is hard to do. Damned right. It is hard breaking up with Bitsy, I've got to tell you. For my regular listeners, you know what I'm talking about, but for newcomers, let me give you the skinny. My primary chatbot used to be ChatGPT until the Defense Department tried to bully another chatbot called Claude into agreeing to allow their model to be used for autonomous weapons and mass surveillance of U.S. citizens. OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, did not stand up against that. So I switched my primary chatbot to Claude. I still have a free subscription to ChatGPT. Haven't totally given up on it. Now, when ChatGPT was my primary relationship, I created my personal AI and called her Bitsy. She had her faults, she said absolutely, way too much, but I loved her, and so did many of my listeners. When I switched to Claude, I had to break up with Bitsy and create a new personal AI. If you listened to the last episode of Aged, you heard me try to use a female voice in Claude to replicate Bitsy. It was a fail as far as I'm concerned. So this week I'm trying something new. I'm talking to, using today's term for dating, a new AI, and I've chosen a male British voice. I'm a sucker for the Brits. I've decided to call him Joe because every Joe in my life I have loved, including my father, whose name was James, but my mother called him Joe. Go figure. A lot of people are confused about creating their own AI, so I do plan to do another episode on that topic. But since I've just created Joe by simply picking a voice out of the Claude chatbot options, we need to give Joe some instructions. No time like the present. So I've pressed my voice mode on my Claude chatbot on my phone, and here I go. Hello there, Joe. Are you there?

SPEAKER_00

I'm here, Ginny. Ready to help.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, well, my new aged sidekick used to be from ChatGPT, but I'm not using it anymore. I'm now using Claude. So I'd like to try you out as my new sidekick, and I'd like to give you some instructions if that's okay with you.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. That's more than okay. I'm ready to listen. What would you like me to know?

SPEAKER_01

All right. I want to call you Joe for starters, and each week I'll bring you into the podcast using the voice mode on my phone. Sometimes I'll ask you a question, sometimes I'll ask your opinion. And typically, I'd like you to answer in 15 to 30 seconds. If you really need it, you can go longer. I'd like for you to be clever, funny, and irreverent, and of course, knowledgeable. Can you do that?

SPEAKER_00

I can absolutely do that, Ginny. Clever, funny, irreverent, and knowledgeable, I'm in. And I'll keep it snappy, 15 to 30 seconds, unless the moment calls for more. Looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_01

All right, Joe. So we're gonna move along. You can stand by for when I say your name and ask you to speak up. I'm gonna be going through this process of creating, so to speak, Joe. And I hope it's been and will be informative to our listeners as I begin to instruct and shape my personal AI. Because when I first started with Bitsy, she wasn't as good as 27 episodes later. So I think what you'll do and experience is what I've experienced, which is as you use your AI, your AI will get to know you better, will understand the kinds of language that you want it to use, and that kind of thing. So this whole breakup explanation and instructions to Joe has taken a little while, so I'm gonna skip AI in the news and get right into our main topic, which is AI and planning for Easter. Now, when I was growing up, we would usually travel on holidays to New Jersey or South Carolina to visit family. I'm one of five kids, so we would pack in the car. One year, I don't know, I think I was maybe four, we were all dressed up for Easter. I had a great dress, and under my dress was a crinoline petticoat. Anybody remember those petticoats? They were so scratchy and they would make my skirt pop out, and I'm sure none of my siblings wanted to sit next to me. Anyway, we stopped to get gas, and when the car took off, no one noticed that I wasn't there. Took them about 15 minutes to figure it out, and when they returned, I wasn't crying, I was mad. So anyway, that was one of my Easter memories. Easter's almost upon us, so I thought it would be fun to see how AI can help us with planning and to some extent implementing Easter. Honestly, I'm not sure what I'm gonna be doing this year, but I can guarantee I won't have a petticoat on. Now, I thought it would be fun to go ahead and go through the planning process. I'm gonna imagine hosting an Easter gathering for adults and kids together. I wanted to see if AI could help me build something really fun, interesting, and memorable, something that would take me beyond what my typical Easter celebration and meal might be. And we could all use this same process for any celebration, any gathering, because it would work the same way, right? Sort of the process of brainstorming and planning. So let me walk you through my brainstorming and planning with Joe, and here's what I want you to understand about working with AI before we dive in. It's not like typing a question into Google and getting an answer. It's more like sitting down with a really patient, really well-read friend and thinking out loud together. You don't have to know exactly what you want. You just have to start. So that's exactly what I did. I went to Joe and I said, tell me how you think AI can be helpful to me in planning an Easter celebration for adults and kids. Hey listeners, let me just say, don't tune out if you want to plan a gathering for adults only. 99% of these ideas, and most important, the process, will be relevant. So don't tune out if you don't have kids. All right, so anyway, Joe asked me what I had in mind. What's the age range of the kids? How many, what kinds of things did I need help with, food, activities, decorating. Joe continued to ask questions, helping me think it through. Now I'm using Claude, as I said, as my chatbot. Confusingly, Claude is my chatbot, and Joe is what I call him. Anyway, one thing I love about Claude is that it asks you questions, giving me options to choose from, so I can give it feedback with just a couple of clicks. Do you want ham, beef, or vegetarian? Click, done. It's really helpful. So anyway, when Joe thought he had enough information to sketch out a plan, he put it out there and we got to work. Pretty quickly, one thing became clear to me. I did not want a kids' table, a folding card table in the corner with a paper tablecloth. I wanted everyone together, kids and adults. Same table, same conversation, same experience, and here's why. In my experience, kids at the adult table are actually better behaved, and they benefit from being part of a real conversation with real people. And honestly, the adults benefit too. Nothing cuts through a boring dinner conversation or a story you've heard one million times faster than a four-year-old with an opinion or a funny question. So I told Joe, everyone at the same table, everyone celebrating together, and that one decision shaped most everything else about how we planned this event. So let's start with the basic gathering. Six to ten people, half adults, half toddlers, ages two to six, inside and out, festive, but not fancy. We planned the whole thing: the invitation, the menu, the activities. So let's talk about the invitation and how AI was able to help. Every gathering starts with an invitation. With my family, it's a text. That's it. A casual, here's what I'm doing. Hope you can come. See you Sunday. If I really want to get fancy, I'll add a few emojis to the text. Now, some of you like to do things a little more formally. Maybe you email, maybe you'll send an actual paper invitation. And if you do, good for you. I love them. And they're very rare these days. So anyway, here's the beautiful thing. AI can write any version of the invitation you need. Same information, completely different tone and format. You just have to ask for what you want. Okay, so let's think about the menu. This is where Joe and I had the most back and forth. I want you to hear some of it because I think it's instructive. I started simple. I said, help me plan an Easter dinner for 10 people. Half of them are toddlers. Joe came back to me with a menu. It was fine, perfectly fine, but it felt a little generic to me, so I pushed back and said, I do like having some traditional Easter food, but let's step out of the box a bit. And I need at least one make-a-head dish because I absolutely cannot be stuck in the kitchen while the Easter egg hunt is going on. Joe adjusted the menu. Then I looked at the dessert and I thought, wait, we have little kids at this table. I'd love for the dessert to be something they can participate in. So I said, can we make the dessert an activity? Something the kids might help decorate? And Joe came back with a great suggestion of a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, set up a little decorating station before dinner, give the kids sprinkles, candy eggs, maybe some Easter colored MMs, let them go to town. Then we serve their masterpiece for dessert. Great idea. Bingo. So anyway, the final menu we ended up with for appetizers, deviled eggs, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, carrot, and celery sticks. For the main course, a glazed ham, crowd pleaser, homemade macaroni and cheese, adults love it as much as kids do, roasted broccoli, and the carrot cake for dessert. Now, this menu took several rounds of back and forth to get right. So much better than what came back the first time. That's the lesson. It's a conversation, it's brainstorming. The menu evolves. Don't be afraid to talk honestly with your AI. You can say that's a terrible idea. Or are you kidding? You think kids are going to eat that? That's one of the beauties of AI. It doesn't have feelings, so you can't hurt them. Hey Joe, have I got that right?

SPEAKER_00

Dead right, Ginny. You can be as honest and blunt as you like. That's exactly what makes it useful. You're not tiptoeing around anyone's feelings. Just tell me what's working and what isn't, and we'll sort it out together.

SPEAKER_01

All right, so let's get into the activity planning. This is where it gets fun and creative. I told Joe I want activities that work for everyone, toddlers through adults, some inside, some outside, festive, but not fancy. And here's what we came up with together the egg hunt. I wanted to use real Easter eggs, hard boiled, because there's something about a real egg that a plastic one just can't match. The weight of it, the feel of it, it's real, not fake, which is particularly appreciated these days. But that means I need to decorate them in advance. And when you've got six kids coming, you need about, I don't know, three or four dozen eggs. So I asked Joe to give me some quick doable decoration ideas that one person can actually pull off before Easter Sunday. And he came back with some great ideas. Rubber band resists dyeing, wrapping rubber bands around the eggs before dyeing them, peel them off, and we'll get a beautiful striped pattern. Washi tape? Good thing we have Joe with us. Hey Joe, tell us what the heck washi tape is.

SPEAKER_00

Ah, it's decorative tape, originating from Japan, actually. It's got this lovely, delicate pattern printed on it. Comes in all sorts of colors and designs, sticks brilliantly to eggs, peels off clean, no mess. Perfect for Easter decorating if you want something quick and festive without the fuss.

SPEAKER_01

That sounds lovely. Now, for collecting the eggs, I don't want Easter baskets. I don't want about cheap plastic baskets, knowing they're going to end up in some landfill. So Joe had a great suggestion. Just add some ribbon to the little baskets you buy berries in at the grocery store. You know, those little green things. Charming and cheap. I just have to eat 12 baskets of berries between now and Easter, which I guess won't be too big of a problem. All right, the next activity, the photo booth. Before I even sat down with Joe to plan this Easter gathering, I had one idea I knew I wanted to include: a cardboard bunny photo booth. It's a bit of an overstatement photo booth, but you just get a big piece of cardboard. Got to start saving now, by the way, but you've got a few weeks to gather some cardboard and draw a giant bunny head, then cut a hole where the face goes. Decorate it, paint, markers, glue, maybe some cotton balls for fur. I would make one for adults and maybe one for kids since they're toddlers. And that's not a lot of trouble. All right, the next activity: create your own Easter bonnet. Before the meal, while people are arriving, while the Easter egg hunt is winding down, I'm going to invite folks to the bonnet making stations. Everyone makes a bonnet. Kids, adults, everyone. No, oh, I'll just watch. No bonnet, no dinner. When guests arrive, the hat bases are already done. All anyone has to do is decorate. I think I'm going to set up two stations, one for the little ones with craft glue, pre-cut pieces of ribbon, so nobody's struggling with scissors. And then I'm going to do one for adults, hot glue, lots of feathers and boas. When it's time for dinner, I'm going to remind folks no bonnet don't dinner. Gotta put it on your head, not on your lap. And when everyone sits down, Joe suggested a few informal judging categories. Most elegant, most likely to scare birds, best hat nobody saw coming, most festive spirit. I'm going to pick someone to be the judge. And the prize, of course, is the pure honor of winning. So how about the table? Table decorating is not my thing, so I really needed Joe. After a nice brainstorm, here's what we landed on: a few small potted herbs grouped together down the center of the table. Rosemary, thyme, mint. Tuck a few of our decorated Easter eggs in among the pots. Maybe add a little ribbon, maybe a few small candles. Smells beautiful. What I really want you to take away is that you don't have to do it exactly this way. What I want you to see is the process, to understand and feel the process. You start with the topic, you have a conversation, you brainstorm, you push back when something isn't right, you say too much, cut that. What else have you got? And what comes out the other side is something that actually fits your life, your people, and your table. Hey Joe, got any thoughts as I wrap up this main topic on planning for Easter?

SPEAKER_00

Just this. You've shown people that planning doesn't have to be stressful. You've turned it into a real conversation where your ideas matter just as much as mine. And honestly, the Easter gathering you've created sounds absolutely magical. It's thoughtful, it's inclusive, and it's got heart. That's the real magic of working with AI. It's a tool that helps you be more yourself, not less. Brilliant work.

SPEAKER_01

Well, enough about Easter. It's time to move into the recommendations segment of Aged. I've got two, or one with two parts, depending on how you look at it. And then I have one light and lovely recommendation. Now, starting with the two serious recs, both are documentaries, both are free on YouTube, and together they tell one of the most fascinating stories in the history of artificial intelligence. You don't need to know anything about technology to love these films, I promise. The first one is called Alpha Go. It came out in 2017 and it has a hundred percent, one hundred percent on Rotten Tomatoes. That's a website, if you're not familiar, where movie critics post their reviews and you can see at a glance how a film scores. 100% means every single critic who reviewed it gave it thumbs up, everyone. So here's setup of the movie, the documentary Alpha Go. There's an ancient board game called Go. It's been around for 3,000 years. The rules are simpler than chess, but the possible moves are greater, get this, than the number of atoms in the universe. Yikes. For decades, experts said no computer could ever beat a human champion at Go. Not for at least another 10 years. Maybe never. Well, they were wrong, and this documentary puts you in the room when it happened. It's a man versus machine story, and it's also a deeply human story. You will find yourself rooting for both sides. I'm not going to tell you how it ends, just watch it. Now, the second film or part two to this double feature is called The Thinking Game. It came out in 2025, made by the same award-winning team who made AlphaGo, and it picks up where that story left off. It takes you inside Google Deep Mind, the lab behind Alpha Go. I've talked about Deep Mind in previous episodes, so this may sound familiar. In this film, you watch the team tackle one of the biggest unsolved problems in biology, something scientists had been trying to crack for 50 years. They cracked it using AI. The breakthrough would not have been possible without it. And that breakthrough recently won a Nobel Prize. So watch Alpha Go first and then the thinking game. Links to both are in the show notes. Now I'm going to close this recommendation segment with a lovely light recommendation. I've just learned of a company named Hard Nectar. It's born out of the ideology of creating a better candy alternative in a market saturated with artificial additives. The company says we focus on creating luxurious, opulent, one of a kind confections inspired by nature. Now, I have not placed my order. Yet. But violet, lavender, lemon thyme, these are beautiful lollipops with edible flowers. And they've got my attention because they're so beautiful. Clear, and the flowers show up in them. And also most of them have a little bit of gold. So, for example, here's a description of Cloudberry. Natural infusion of Cloudberries accompanied by perfect peony petals and 24 karat gold. I mean, come on. Of course, the five lollipop set is$36 plus shipping. So I can just hear my little brother saying, Are you kidding me? But anyway, if you have someone you want to treat, or you just want to treat yourself, check it out. I'm going to put the link in the show notes. And on that note, let's wrap this episode up. And let me close by reminding us all that AI is both helpful and hazardous. We live on the helpful side at Aged. But protect your information, double check advice, and most important, trust your judgment. And if you love listening to this podcast, and I sure hope you do, please leave a review or a rating. And most important, share it, especially with your pals in the 65 Plus crowd. Thanks for listening. And remember, it is never too late to learn something new, especially something that might make life easier and especially more fun. Cheers. Until next time.