Today I’m going to focus on the “fun-tivity” part of Easter. Dying eggs, Easter baskets, Easter egg hunt, etc.

Although I do consider myself an “easygoing” frugal mom, I have found ways to make things nice for all 6 of my kids on less than we used to spend when the oldest two were little. Not by taking extreme measures…it’s in all the little choices made along the way (could be said for much of life actually).

When we only had one, money didn’t feel so tight and it was easy to give him a nice Easter basket, but as our family grew there were many times where spending $15 or more was simply not in the budget.  So, I had to find creative ways to give each of them a fun basket of their very own that cost less than $10 each.

That amount is down to $5 each now though.  Here’s some basics:

• Find fun spring plastic buckets to reuse year after year…if you don’t have enough storage to keep an Easter box, then donate your items to Goodwill when you’re done with them each year, or see if a grandparent would be willing to store them for you.
• Be sure to use these buckets for all Easter activities and Hunts that are planned.
• Shop at the dollar store…sure, be picky in what you actually purchase or it’s a waste, but there are many things to be found there.
• As your children get older you can consider giving them alternative Easter gifts like kites or yard games.
• Choose products to fill the baskets with carefully.  Simply filling it with toys that are unsafe or will have to be thrown away later that day doesn’t usually work well.

Our children usually get a plastic easter bucket with a small amount of tissue paper (or shredded paper) at the bottom.  Then there is the traditional chocolate Bunny, a couple plastic eggs with candy, and sometimes even Peeps, though I detest the taste of them LOL.  Overall though, there are usually several other things like pencils, fun erasers, maybe a dollar calculator (they love these) and a toy car or two.

Kids don’t care if their basket is absolutely stuffed to the gills, just be creative in how you pack it so it doesn’t look empty.  Of course these are all great ideas for boys, but it can be just as simple to fill for a girl…hair things, nail polish, etc.

Every year as part of our Easter celebration we do plan a big Easter egg hunt for the kiddos in my family.  This requires a ton of plastic eggs and candy, but we try to be creative with that too.  Plastic eggs are fine as long as you plan to reuse them over and over for many years.

We usually make up about 18 eggs or so per child.  We have even purchased sets of eggs filled with Easter toys like stickers, spring animal toys and wacky balls (you can find these at Oriental Trading).  It all really just depends on what you are able to do… how much you want to spend, what you have on hand already and what stores you’re willing/able to shop at.

Not purchasing a premade basket is a great place to start for many families.  If you already make them yourself but need to save a bit in the process, think outside the box a bit and look for creative, less expensive fillers for the baskets and egg hunt.

I hope to have time to post a bit more about Easter traditions, and maybe some craft ideas and recipes over the next week or so.  In the meantime, what Easter “Fun-tivities” does your family do each year?

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This entry was written by Shera on Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 8:18 am and is filed under Events and Holidays, Frugal Living, Going Green, easter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.