Five Tips for Saving Money on Easter Baskets When You Have Children

This year, I have earnestly tried to get a handle on what my husband and I consider unnecessary spending at holiday times. After holidays, our home is littered with stickers here and candy there and kids arguing over whose plastic egg is whose. We decided we are not spending half of a paycheck toward items that aren't important or lasting.

That said, I do want to create a sense of excitement and celebration in our household when celebration time is upon us. Here are some ways that I save money on Easter this year or start early for next year! (Please forgive my dreary photos for this post. I was snapping photos of the kids' already prepared baskets in the basement while my unsuspecting kids played nearby. They almost caught me! I would hate to ruin their Easter surprises!)

1. Reuse Baskets

Some families have traditions surrounding Easter Baskets, while others buy new ones based on yearly trends. Our kids have received baskets from us, their grandparents, aunts and even some friends from church. I save them from year to year, as long as they are in good condition. This year, I was really tempted to buy a super cute Paw Patrol bin for my daughter, but it was $15! No way. The plush was cute, but there's no way that it would hold up for years to come in storage in my basement, and I realize that just a couple of years from now, she will be too cool for Paw Patrol. This year, I am spending $0 on baskets for my kids. We only have three children... see our collection of baskets with experience?

2. Reuse Easter Grass

I remember as a kid, Easter grass was nothing more than an annoyance when I was trying to get the jelly beans out of the bottom of my basket. I would go to the living room with my basket, take out all the goodies, then I would promptly scatter the Easter grass all over the interior of the trash can. 

As a mom though, I see how pretty Easter grass makes my kids' baskets looks. It's festive and exciting. Last year, I had the forethought to scoop the kids' grass from their baskets and place it in zipper bags and store it with all of my Easter things. This year, I am spending $0 on Easter grass for my kids.

See how pretty the grass makes these baskets look, even in the darkness of my basement?

3. Skip the Giant Chocolate Items

Giant pieces of chocolate might create a sense of wonder in kids, but they do not support my efforts to teach my children that Easter is all about Jesus, not a creepy giant rabbit. I am not spending money on chocolate bunnies. In addition to not wanting my kids to fixate on a rabbit, I do not want them to have control over two pounds of chocolate. Instead, I purchased several bags of mixed yummy chocolates that look pretty and festive in their colorful packages. I gave each kid a handful of candies festively displayed in a large container in their Easter Basket, then I stuffed the rest into plastic eggs to hide later at large group family Easter gatherings. There were somewhere between 100 and 200 eggs, and I spent around $10 on candy for baskets and eggs.

Here's another basket.

And another basket...

4. Make Your Own Specialty Items

Pretty packaging sucks me in all the time. I like to buy items for gifts when they look nice, so colorful, bright packages are an excellent marketing tool. Since I am wanting to save money, I want to be smarter than good marketing, and use some of the pretty ideas to spur some of my own projects. The bright colored marshmallow birdies, the patterned colorful chocolates, and especially the orange colored foods that are packaged to look like carrots reel me in. I decided this year, I would try to make my own "Carrots" for Easter baskets. I gathered some clear sandwich bags, green ribbons and string, and orange cheese puffs; then I filled the bags with the cheese puffs, and tied the top at an angle with the green string or ribbon.

Ta DAAA! Carrots! Aren't they cute?

In addition to these beauties, I have attempted making some specialty chocolate covered Easter Egg treats. This recipe for Butterfinger Copycat Eggs is easier than you can imagine, and they are SO delicious! I also tried a very easy version of Mounds and Almond Joy Copycat Eggs with great success. Be creative on making your own items!

5. Skip the Expensive Egg Coloring Kits

Our family delights in coloring eggs. It is a tradition that we look forward to yearly, but those egg kits really pique the interest of my kids... and if I'm completely honest, I'd probably rather use the kit that has the pretty stickers inside too. Those kits are just so tempting! And the box is pretty! And they're not very expensive; they're only a couple bucks!

Seriously though, you probably have everything you need to color eggs in your house already. If you have cups, eggs, a box of the primary colors of food coloring and some kind of vinegar, you're set. The food coloring box probably even has a nice recipe for dying egg shells! If you've already bought yours for this year, don't despair. Use it, and save that cool little metal egg scooper, so your kids can use it again next year. I have kept these cool little cups from when I got sucked into buying this kit a few years ago. We have used them several years in a row now. We draw on the eggs with crayons to add pretty designs before dipping them in color, get our eggs colored nicely, find some stickers that we have lying around, and dress them up. Once we add them to the kids' baskets, the baskets look extra special!

Holidays are a time for celebration, but not for forgetting your budget. We should always be celebrating well within our means and never using holidays as an excuse to pull out a credit card and lose our self-control. What are you doing to save money this Easter?