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Non-Sugar Easter Egg Ideas

April 1, 2015 | Leave a Comment

Looking for some Easter egg ideas? Here are nine of them that aren't candy!I love Easter. Whatever reason you celebrate the season, it’s a fun time. It’s often less busy than Christmas and I look forward to the slower pace. To me it’s pure innocence. Kids have fun with the Easter bunny, churches are beautifully decorated, flowers make their appearance and usually, spring is here.

It’s a time for family which I always look forward to. We get a long weekend to be with each other and have a feast with our extended family to celebrate. Having kids put a whole new element of fun into it. Though I’ve always enjoyed the holiday, having fun with my daughter and watching her explore everything has been super enjoyable.

Since my husband and I started playing the role of the Easter bunny (something we’ve already failed at since our almost three-year-old found our stash), I’ve become more aware of sugar and treats. Don’t get me wrong, I love candy and chocolate, and I certainly allow my daughter to have some too, but when we as her parents do an Easter basket for her, and I know other friends and family will also have treats for her, I try to control what I can on our end. No three-year-old needs as much candy as I know is coming to her in the upcoming week.

We bought her very little candy and chocolate full-well expecting the rest of the family (grandparents and aunts mostly) to act out on their need to buy treats for her 😉 Instead we opted to focus on some non-sugary treats to put inside the eggs for her Easter egg hunt and I thought I would share my list of ideas:

  • Tattoos. I don’t know about all kids but my daughter thinks they are the coolest thing ever.
  • Stickers. The local dollar store has small baggies of loose stickers making them easy to put in her eggs.
  • Jewelry. Again dollar store to the rescue for cheap plastic play jewelry.
  • Hair stuff for girls.
  • Playdough. You could fill the egg with playdough and keep the original container to place back in.
  • Money. Who wouldn’t love few extra dollars? My grandparents put money in some of our eggs at Easter with the expectation we’d put some extra on the collection plate later that day at church.
  • Toys. We found some extra-large eggs this year, something like a hotwheels car would be able to fit easily.
  • A Prayer. If you follow a religious aspect of Easter placing a sweet Easter prayer inside is a nice way of passing it along.
  • Gift certificate (or alike). Depending on how much you spend it might be an idea.

Again, I’m not a candy hater. In fact I look forward to Easter candy more than any other treat in the rest of the year, but kids tend to get so much sugar it is nice to have other options. The less candy she gets, the less I eat so there’s an added bonus too 😉

What sort of Easter treats will you put in your kids eggs?

Also read:

  • The Family Easter Tree
  • Frugal Easter Fun for Kids
Catherine
Catherine

Catherine is a first time momma to a rambunctious toddler. When she isn’t soaking up all that motherhood has to offer, you can find her blogging over at Plunged in Debt where she chronicles her and her husbands journey out of debt. You can also follow her on Twitter.

plungedindebt.com

Filed Under: Holidays Tagged With: Easter, non-sugar Easter treats

The Family Easter Tree

March 20, 2013 | 1 Comment

Make Your Own Easter TreeI finally dug out my Easter decorations this week in preparation for the holiday. This will be our first Easter with the kiddo so everything will be new and exciting for us again. Other than the obvious decoration-clad holiday of Christmas, I don’t normally decorate the house. One of the decorations that my husband’s family introduced me to many years ago though was the Easter tree.

 

Easter Tree History

I had never seen or even heard of an Easter tree prior to my husband’s family introducing it to me. They started decorating their Easter tree when my mother-in-law was a young girl and her father had established some temporary German roots from the Canadian Air Force.  According to Wikipedia, the Easter tree is a centuries old German tradition but the original origins have been lost.

Our family will traditionally cut the branch of a tree in our back yard, bring it inside and hang small handmade wooden Easter decorations on it. If Easter is late enough in the year we may be lucky to bring in a flowering branch such as forsythia but it is usually bare branches from our birch or maple tree.

 

Easter Tree Variation

Since my first introduction to the Easter tree, I have come across many variations. I’m thinking my eyes just weren’t open before, acknowledging what I have come to know as an Easter tree.

There is a local neighborhood garden that decorates a very large maple tree on their property every year for people to observe. I wish I had a picture to show you since it’s pretty spectacular to see a 30+ foot tree with hundreds of plastic eggs hanging from it.It is similar to this family in Germany who elaborately decorate an apple tree on their property with upwards of 10,000 decorated eggs every year. You can see a short video of the beautiful tree here:

I’ve seen many decoration and craft magazines such as Martha Stewart offering their play on Easter tree decorations as well. Maybe I was just living in a hole my entire childhood missing this beautiful decoration.

 

Make Your Own Easter Tree

Making your own Easter tree is too easy. You can now buy pre-made trees at craft stores or, like us, you can simply cut a branch (or a few small branches) from a tree in your yard and secure it in a flower pot or vase.

Decorating the tree is up to your imagination! You can also buy pre-made decorations at craft or dollar stores or you may choose to make your own. Decorations can be made out of anything you want. Cutting Easter shapes out of scrapbook paper, decorate real or plastic eggs, or for a yummy tree, decorate with Easter candy. There is no wrong way to decorate your Easter tree!

The Easter tree is a fun and easy craft your family can do together today a establish a tradition for the tomorrows. Change it up every year. Make themes; bunnies one year, eggs the next. Just have fun with it and enjoy!

How do you celebrate Easter? Do you make an Easter tree?  

Catherine
Catherine

Catherine is a first time momma to a rambunctious toddler. When she isn’t soaking up all that motherhood has to offer, you can find her blogging over at Plunged in Debt where she chronicles her and her husbands journey out of debt. You can also follow her on Twitter.

plungedindebt.com

Filed Under: Holidays Tagged With: Celebrate Easter, Easter, Easter tree, Easter Tree Decorations, The Easter

How to Have a Healthier Easter

March 1, 2012 | 1 Comment

Easter Egg HuntMy son happens to be one of those lucky people who can eat whatever he wants and never gain weight, something he certainly didn’t get from me. Although he constantly reminds me of that fact around Easter each time he grabs another jelly bean, I remind him that not being overweight doesn’t mean you can eat whatever you want.

Candy is fine in moderation, but you have to resist temptation around holidays, especially Easter. Of course, like most kids, whatever I say goes in one ear and out of the other, so I learned that distracting him from the candy using Easter activities was the best bet to avoid a sugar frenzy.

 

Easter Egg Animals

I’ve personally done chicks and dinosaurs, but you can make nearly any animal out of dyed eggs. Simply dye the eggs according to the color of the animals your kids want to make. Get some modeling clay that dries in the air and non-toxic glue and paint.

Use the modeling clay to make the animal’s feet and other features, such as beaks and ears and attach the pieces to the egg with the glue. Once the glue dries, have your kids paint other parts on the eggs to complete the look, such as eyes or color patterns.

 

Basket Decorating

Baskets can be decorated using whatever theme your kids chose. My son loves cars, so we went out and bought foam shapes. We painted the shapes and made cars by cutting pieces to sizes we needed and gluing the pieces together. Once the glue dried, we painted each one. After the paint set, we glued the cars all over his basket.

Foam shapes will work for most projects. You can make a princess theme and flowers for girls and dinosaurs and cars for boys using foam shapes. Talk to your kids to get other ideas for basket additions, such as stickers and glitter.

The baskets can be used around the house for holding different things; we keep an especially good one by the front door as a key dump, and there’s another in the bathroom which holds fruity soaps.

You could also decorate an Easter tree, which is another craft variation that is popular in many places, especially Canada.

 

Easter Savings

A lot of family members give my son money at Easter. Putting change in a plastic Easter egg or at the bottom of the basket in the grass is considered good luck. However,  I prefer to use these Easter windfalls  to teach my son about saving money.

Get a plain, unfinished piggy bank or other coin bank from a crafts store. Use stickers or glue on foam shapes representing items he wants to buy onto the bank and have your child put all his Easter money into that bank. Talk to him about saving for items he wants instead of spending his money all at once.

Since Easter happens right around the ISA season, it’s a good time to think about opening a junior ISA for your kid and it fits with the saving theme. Even though your child may not understand the reason behind a tax-free savings account, they will understand you’re using a junior ISA to save money for them for the future.

A junior ISA allows you to save money tax-free and invest the money in the stock market if you want to do so, so you can help your child pay for their education and other life necessities later.

What other tips do you have for a healthier Easter?

Brian
Brian

Brian is the founder of Kids Ain’t Cheap and is now sharing his journey through parenthood.

 
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Filed Under: Family Time, Healthy Living & Eating Tagged With: Decorating, Easter, Easter Basket, Eggs, Healthy, Junior ISA

Happy Easter!

April 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment

I thought I would take a quick break from Easter and wish you all a very Happy Easter.  Hopefully the Easter Bunny visited your house and you had a day full of reflection and watching little kids hunt eggs, eat more candy than they should and just have fun.

Hand Made Easter Card with Tulip Die Cuts

Brian
Brian

Brian is the founder of Kids Ain’t Cheap and is now sharing his journey through parenthood.

 
Email • Google + • Facebook • Twitter

Filed Under: Holidays Tagged With: Easter

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Basic Principles Of Good Parenting

Here some basic principles for good parenting:

  1. What You Do Matters: Your kids are watching you. So, be purposeful about what you want to accomplish.
  2. You Can’t be Too Loving: Don’t replace love with material possessions, lowered expectations or leniency.
  3. Be Involved Your Kids Life: Arrange your priorities to focus on what your kid’s needs. Be there mentally and physically.
  4. Adapt Your Parenting: Children grow quickly, so keep pace with your child’s development.
  5. Establish and Set Rules: The rules you set for children will establish the rules they set for themselves later.  Avoid harsh discipline and be consistent.
  6. Explain Your Decisions: What is obvious to you may not be evident to your child. They don’t have the experience you do.
  7. Be Respectful To Your Child: How you treat your child is how they will treat others.  Be polite, respectful and make an effort to pay attention.
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