Easter is on its way

Keeping costs down at Easter time can be frustrating. Those big, beautiful and pricey Easter baskets and popular retailers seem to make fun of smaller efforts, but you can create an Easter basket that looks just as good (or better!) for much less.

The Basket

Start at your local dollar store or low cost outlet. I have seem some intricately designed wire woven baskets for a dollar bill that would thrill a girl of any age. The baskets could be used later to hold things on a dresser or in the bathroom.

Traditional woven baskets are cheap at dollar stores, too, but the ones I have seen are not sturdy enough for a day's worth of egg hunts. Try thrift stores, and go now before the Easter rush is on. Check thrift store baskets for stains or worn areas that could mean a candy and egg disaster.

Are You Ready for Easter?

Easter baskets ready for the kids? Big dinner planned and bought? Family coming?

Whether you do these things or not, Easter can punch a hole in your budget if you're not careful. Planning ahead is important, as always, but even at that, it's easy to spend a lot of money on chocolate bunnies, new clothes and special food.

Okay, so that much we know. What to do about it is the question, right? You probably don't want to return that big, beautiful basket of goodies, but for future reference, you can make one just as nice, or nicer, yourself for at least half the cost.

If you are like many who think that a new Easter outfit is part of it all, for next year, look for that special clothing on sale right after Easter. You could even find it second hand and maybe in time for this year.

Dinner, too, can be bought on sale and not necessarily just before Easter. Keep your eyes open all year for specials that can be frozen or stored otherwise.

Stay alert to savings all the time and you'll be able to keep more money in your pocket.

Here Comes Peter Cottontail! It's Nearly Easter

Hopping down the bunny trail...
Hippety, hoppety, Easter's on its way!

And so it is. Easter is early this year, so if you'd like to do something a little different, it's time to get started. I'm making Easter baskets and remembering those nights before Easter when the kids were little when we used to color eggs. What a mess it made! It was fun, though. I didn't realize at the time how much more fun dying eggs with natural foods could be. 


If you want to try dying Easter eggs without having to buy the dye, here is what I finally figured out. First, you have to start now to save the various foodstuffs in time.

• Get your Easter eggs ready to dye by washing in mild soap and warm water to remove any 'sealer' or residue.
  Longer boiling or soaking will make the color deeper.
• Eggs keep better the longer they're boiled, anyway, and a half hour won't hurt them, texture or taste wise.
• Use a teaspoon of vinegar to help set the dye in these. Add it at the same time you add the egg.
• Make designs on eggs with plain crayons before coloring. You don't need a special clear wax crayon to decorate Easter eggs.

Easter egg colors and how to get them:

• Light green - Save the water from canned or fresh cooked spinach and boil eggs in it, or pick a few dandelion leaves to boil them in.
• Pale Yellow - Add carrot tops, celery seed or orange peel to water for boiling eggs.
• Deep Yellow - Put ground turmeric in the water with boiling eggs, or use yellow onion skins to dye them a deep yellow.
• Orange - Yellow onion skins, at least two cups full. Boil them for a half hour, then add eggs and boil until the eggs are done. If you don't have many, boil what you have in a small pan, with just enough water to cover an egg.
• Tan - Coffee or tea.
• Blue - Red cabbage leaves will dye eggs blue. Boil leaves in water, then use the cool liquid to dye boiled eggs. Or let the eggs set in juice drained from canned blueberries.
• Pink - Use the liquid from canned or pickled beets, or boil along with a fresh beet, or chopped rhubarb stalks, red onion skins. Beets make an especially pretty Easter color.
• Lavendar - Purple grape juice makes a good dye for a pretty Easter color.
• Red - Red onion skins. This takes at least three cups full to a quart of water and you have to soak the eggs in it for a half hour or so after boiling. Red is a hard color to create with natural dyes.
• Bright Yellow - Inner bark of apple tree bark. Scrape the bark into a pot of water and boil for a half hour or so. Don't use vinegar in this, but add a half teaspoon of alum to each quart when cool, to bring out the color. 

Experiment and have fun. As long as it's a food or food safe product, you don't have to worry about it hurting the Easter egg or the eater thereof!

What do do with leftover Easter candy

Still got a few chocolate Easter eggs around, or a fluffy marshmallow chick? Don't toss them or give them away, use them for other things.

Those cute little peeps are sugar covered marshmallows, so you can use them wherever you'd use marshmallows. Hot chocolate comes to mind! Use them in any recipe that calls for marshmallows.

Chocolate is chocolate, no matter how it's formed. Chop up a chocolate bunny and make chocolate chip cookies, or use a peeler and cut curls from it to top a cake or other dessert. Melt and dip strawberries or other fruit in it. Whatever comes to mind... just don't buy chocolate for awhile.

Malted eggs? Stick them in the blender and use as malt for... what else? Malted milk. Or any recipe that calls for malt.

We got some peanut butter filled eggs this year, so I sliced them with a hot knife and "iced" some plain cookies with them.

Get creative and use up the Easter candy... or not. It will keep for a long time. You don't have to refrigerate or freeze it - not even the chocolate, as long as you can keep the temperature below around 75 degrees. Above that, it will melt and make a mess, but it still won't spoil, so put it in a bowl or other container if your kitchen gets hotter than that.

Hunting for a Frugal Easter

Celebrating Easter can be expensive! But you know what a cheapskate I am, already, so I don't have to go through the homemade (excuse me, hand crafted) baskets and homemade candy and the lack of bright shiny plastic toys my kids got.

I'm happy they're older now and I don't worry so much about Easter baskets, but still, I enjoy giving them containers with a little special candy in it and they've come to expect it. (The oldest is... well, I'd better not say, but she lives out of state with her family and I don't make a "basket" for her any more.)

Anyway, for the two that I still do Easter up for, I try to find containers they can use after the holiday. In the past, these have been colored glass baking pans, boxes meant for dresser top storage and funky, plastic storage cubes. This year I'm visiting the local Goodwill, Salvation Army and ARK in search of appropriate containers.

Just for fun, I'm setting a limit of one dollar each. The hunt ought to be fun.