If you caught my segment on Talk of the Town on March 26, 2013, then you heard me give my top 7 tips for creating cheap, yet meaningful, Easter baskets that you’ll be proud to present to your family!

In case you missed my Easter Basket TV segment, I’ve broken down my tips for you here:

1. Use a Homemade Easter Basket
-Have fun making an Easter basket with your kids or even covering up whatever bucket they used for Halloween with paper they’ve colored. Look around your house for plastic beach buckets, tin pails, even old Build A Bear boxes!

2. Invest in an Heirloom Easter Basket
-Even before our first child was born, my husband had a certain type of Easter basket he envisioned for our kids: white wicker with gingham basket liners. So before our firstborn could hold a basket, she already owned said trinket with her name embroidered on it from Pottery Barn Kids. When #2 came along, it wasn’t before we ordered his in green gingham. It might not be as cheap as making your own, but if it’s something you’ll keep and re-use year to year (as we have for the past 8 years), the cost definitely evens out.

3. Re-Use Raw Materials from Year to Year
-You can’t tell me it’s that hard to throw all those plastic eggs and Easter grass in the same box you keep your Easter baskets and other seasonal decorations. Nothing pains me more than watching people pay out their nose for those plastic eggs in March only to realize they’ll be 25 cents in a couple weeks and that it would have been so easy for them to save for next year!

4. Decorate Your Own Easter Eggs (both real & plastic!)
-For most kids, the egg hunt is more highly anticipated than the actual eggs themselves. Take the eggs mentioned in tip #3 along with some paint pens and let your kids have at it! For the hunt, you can add a coin to each or even a Bible verse on a small strip of paper if you want to have something inside them. Or just skip the plastic eggs altogether and dye your own hard-boiled eggs…but if you do go that route, make sure you don’t forget where in the house you hide them! (Or better yet, opt for an outdoor egg hunt

5. More is not Always Better
-When you consider all the candy and tchotchkes (which is essentially a Yiddish term for ‘junk’) kids will be receiving from school, relatives and community events, the burden is truly off of us as parents to be the sole source of Easter Basket wonder. If your kids are used to getting presents in their Easter baskets, try to opt for one ‘meaningful’ gift instead of a bunch of trinkets that will be easily forgotten about.

6. If you’re going to give candy, go for the good stuff you know they’ll love
-Skip the generic, pastel foil wrapped solid mini chocolate eggs. They’ll just end up melted in your car’s backseat floor mat. If you’re going to buy your kids Easter candy, go with something you know they’ll love (or at least something you’ll love since they’ll most likely be sugared out before they even get to Easter morning!). I’m very partial to Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs – I’d argue that they are the best candy of ALL time…not just amongst its Easter candy cohorts.

7. Look around you
-We’ve learned that our kids are just as excited to receive ‘momentos’ from us or small objects we, as their loving parents, assign meaning to just as much (if not more) than another dollar store stuffed animal that will just end up in a garbage bag during your next move.

Make sure to check out my Easter Resurrection Buns recipe and my 32 Cheap Kids Easter Basket Ideas too!