I've been looking forward to making Ethan's Easter basket for quite some time now. I may have begun collecting things for his basket inappropriately early, but we'll just go with everyone has their own unique hobbies, right?
The first item I picked up for his basket was this cute t-shirt that I found on clearance for $3 at Target a couple of months ago. Something about the mom tattoo and the meerkat with a mustache caught my eye and made me laugh. Ethan's currently in a 2T, but since they only had a 3T left, I figured it would be okay to hang onto for a little bit -- I'm sure it won't be much longer before Ethan decides he wants to outgrow all of his current clothing.
I picked up a package of 3 matchbox cars for $1.00 at Deals, my favorite dollar store in the universe, and also picked up a package of three adorable fill-able carrots from their Easter section. The cars were a perfect fit!
I also found some more great deals at, well, Deals (I suppose it's an appropriately titled store, if nothing else): six egg-shaped sidewalk chalks, a balloon racer, an egg that you can "grow" into a duck, a Mickey mouse figure and a microphone filled with bubbles -- all for a dollar.
Ethan's favorite animal, if you ask him, is a duck, so I thought he'd really enjoy the egg that you can hatch into a duck. Since our trip to Disney in February, Ethan has been really into "Mimmy mouse," so I thought he'd enjoy the little figurine. Even though he refuses to do it in his Kindermusik class and saves it all for home or the car, Ethan loves to sing his "bum-bums" into the microphone as he learned in class so I thought the bubble-filled microphone would be perfect!
Because Ethan is still obsessed with Curious George, my husband and I have slowly been building up his own George books for his library at home. We managed to sneakily purchase these for Ethan during a family trip to Barnes & Noble -- somehow we pulled it off without him noticing.
Ethan also really loves Lush bombs and bubble bars. Gone are the days I'm ever browsing the Lush store for myself, but since their products are all natural and pure as it gets, I usually cave and let Ethan pick something out when we're at the mall. I picked up two of Lush's adorable Easter goodies for Ethan's basket: the carrot and the fluffy egg.
Even though one of the criteria for Ethan's basket would be that it was void of all candy he wasn't going to be allowed to eat anyway, I did temporarily give up my meanest mom ever status and pick up a tiny chocolate baby bunny for Ethan's basket. It's cute (it's a baby bunny!), he's never actually had chocolate before and I think he deserves a bite or two!
There are also little packages of Happy Times veggie pals tucked in around the basket. The carrot, apple and orange chews are Ethan's favorite snack these days! (The wooden car was also a score from Target's dollar spot!)
I didn't want everything to go stale before Easter, so I didn't fill the plastic eggs with anything just yet. They're still empty and waiting to be filled with these goodies the night before Easter:
Annie's organic Cheddar Bunnies, Happy Times Yummy Yogi's and organic yogurt raisins!
This year, Ethan also helped me make an Easter basket for his Aunt Megan. She might be sixteen, but I've been making her an Easter basket since she was Ethan's age and can't bring myself to stop now. (I fully admit that I'll probably still be making her an Easter basket when she's all grown up and making baskets for kids of her own.)
Some of the plastic eggs in Aunt Megan's basket are filled with peanut butter cups, but others are filled with some goodies we picked up at Sephora, like eyeshadows and hair accessories:
There is also some Lush soap, some haircare goodies from Shielo and make-up and nail accessories we found at the clearance bin at Sephora. Teenage girl win? I hope so!
Though the language of "teenage girl" is absolutely foreign to me at this point in my life, I still think Ethan and I nailed it.
I especially picked this chocolate bunny for her basket because just about every musical artist she listens to has "Li'l" in their name. It made me laugh but I'm fairly certain it'll go by unnoticed. (Still! It was clever!)
I love your ideas for both baskets! So creative and sweet!
ReplyDeleteWe put a few of those wooden cars from the One Spot in Liam's stocking, and he loves them.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you are not the meanest mom ever. When all of the other kids at daycare brought cupcakes and cake pops for the Christmas party at daycare, we took organic apple sauce, and when everyone else brought candy for Valentine's day, we took Goldfish crackers. One of these days I'll cave.
First of all - I love that you still make Easter basket's for your sister! Ethan's is great - so glad to see it's not overkill like all of the stores seem to be pushing. He will love it!
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