Homemade Easter Baskets

by Neeta Lind

Easter baskets filled with eggs, chocolate, toys and jelly beans line the shelves of many stores doing the Easter holiday season.  As children shop with their parents, they point out the basket they hope to receive on Easter morning.  While buying a pre-made basket for Easter can be exciting, I’ve always been fond of Easter baskets made at home.

When I was a child, my parents didn’t buy pre-made baskets for my sister and me.  In fact, we had one large multi-colored wicker basket we used every Easter.  It was stored in our attic with all the other holiday staple items:  Christmas lights, Christmas tree, Christmas stockings, and Halloween costumes.  When my mother pulled it out of the attic, we knew we would be decorating eggs soon.

Using the copper colored utensil that came with the egg dying kit, we dipped hard boiled eggs into the colorful dye in the clear plastic cups.  Earlier we had plopped red, blue, and yellow dye tablets into the vinegar and water mixture that filled the cups.  Sometimes, we even wrote mystery words or designs on the eggs using the white wax crayon.  As soon as the eggs were dropped into the dye and lifted up, the words appeared like magic.

While the Easter eggs dried, we placed the chocolate shaped eggs, jelly beans, Peeps, bubble gum eggs, and any other edible treat my parents had purchased on top of the green or pink grass pushed down in the basket.  There weren’t any basketballs or baby dolls in our basket, just candy and Easter eggs, which we devoured after Easter morning church service.

Now that I am a mother, I don’t buy the pre-made baskets for my daughters, either.  I carry on the tradition that my mother started with me and my sister of creating our own Easter baskets.

July 28th, 2009 by Yolanda D. Young | Posted in Gift ideas, Holiday Celebrations, Holiday Stories | Comments (0)