Making Your Own Easter Basket

When you have just a small toddler, it's sometimes hard to decide what to give them for certain holidays. Easter is one of those holidays. It seems that almost everyone gives their children Easter baskets, but what should you put in one for a small toddler? They probably shouldn't eat all the candy that comes in the prepackaged ones. We decided to get creative with our son's Easter basket this year. This is the first one he will have, so we wanted to give him a good one, without giving him a bunch of junk food.

My son is 14 months old. The first thing we did when we started shopping for his Easter stuff was pick out an Easter basket. There are so many on the market today. The prices can run anywhere from around $1.00 for a little pop up one, to more than $10.00 for a fancier padded one. Since our son is so young, we opted for a cheaper pop up one that he picked out. He picked out a camouflage one, so when they had the optional camouflage eggs, we chose them as well.

Instead of putting candy in the plastic eggs, we are putting stickers inside. He loves looking at stickers. Change would be okay for older kids, but at 14 months, everything goes directly into his mouth, including change. Stickers usually aren't put in his mouth, so they make good choices.

We decided that a new box of crayons would be a good idea for his Easter basket. Along with the crayons, we bought a bunny coloring book, and two Easter story books. We decided these things would be nice learning tools for him. They also tie into Easter, so when we tell him the Easter story, he will have something to look at that goes along with it.

Another thing we put in his Easter basket, is a set of new dishes. He loves the Backyardigans, so we bought the bowl, plate, and silverware set with them on it. We also bought a new Backyardigans sippy cup for him to drink from. He loves his dishes with characters on them, so I'm sure he will love these. They don't really tie into the Easter theme, but then again, neither do a lot of the things that come in the prepackaged baskets.

One more thing that we included in his Easter basket is a bottle of bubbles. He is still too little to actually blow the bubbles himself, but he loves looking at them when someone else blows them. We are considering a bubble machine, but haven't decided on that yet. We decided just a bottle for Mommy or Daddy to blow for him would be good enough for Easter. We don't want to give him too many toys for this one holiday.

The last thing that we are putting in his Easter basket is a little stuffed animal. He loves bunnies, so we let him pick one out. He won't be sleeping with it or anything, but it will make a good companion when we are in the car.

The Easter basket we put together is very cute. It's as cute as the prepackaged ones. The items we used were almost all inexpensive. Other than the dishes, the most we paid for anything was the $3.00 for the small bunny. Even including his dishes, we only spent around $25. If we hadn't bought them, it would have been around $15. Many of the ones you see already put together cost $25 or even more. So we were able to put together a cheaper basket, with less junk in it, just by doing it ourselves.