Good morning my friends and happy Tuesday!
I want to apologize for not having a post ready last Friday, but I planned to write it and then the snowstorm came, the kids were home for two days, the following day I had a lot of work, so I wasn`t able to set aside some time to write. But today I want to talk to you about Easter baskets! I love this tradition especially because in Italy we don`t do Easter baskets, neither do we have the Easter bunny. What happens is that we buy big chocolate eggs for all the kids in the family and we open them on Easter morning. Each egg has a little toy surprise inside, so the fun thing is to collect as many chocolate eggs as possible and then open them hoping that there will be a fun toy to play with! I remember as a kid receiving eggs from my grandparents and aunts and uncles, eating a lot of chocolate, but having so much chocolate left overs that my mom didn`t even know what to do with them! She usually ended up making chocolate cakes or chocolate budino (something like a pudding).
Since we moved to the US and I found out about Easter baskets, I started giving my husband first and then my kids little presents. What I usually like to do is to find little presents that are also useful for the kids. I also buy them some candies, but I try to limit them because they eat enough sugar during the year! I want to share with you some ideas for the Easter baskets, so if you haven`t thought about them yet, hopefully you will be able to get some inspiration.
First of all I wanted to say that one nice thing would be to think about an upcoming trip or activities that you have planned for your kids, if you are planning a trip to the beach for example, you could buy the kids some bathing suits, so they will have a cute little present and something useful for the trip. Or you could get the kids something for spring, like a t shirt or a lightweight raincoat with rain boots and umbrella (my kids love to have their own umbrella when it rains outside! I think it makes them feel older!).
(Most of the links below will take you to affiliate links, which means that if you purchase something from Amazon following them I will get a small percentage):
As for candies I always like to buy them the Lindt bunnies, but this year I got them the little frogs and ladybugs. I also bought some Lindor (from Lindt) which are their favorites and I found some necklaces and bracelets made of candies (at Michael`s): they reminded me of when I was a kid and used to go to the farmers market with my babysitter, she would always get me those and I had lots of fun eating candies straight from my neck and arm!!
1-BUBBLES:
My kids literally love bubbles! They also always spill half of the soapy water every time they open the bubbles, so I always buy them in bulk when I see them in stores! This year I bought a pink bubble wand for Aurora, a green one for Leonardo and a blue one for Alessandro, they will be very happy!
2-CRAYOLA SIDEWALK CHALK:
This is another big classic for Spring and Summer time, but I like to buy them for the kids because I like the feeling of getting ready for the warmer temperatures and thinking that soon we will be able to spend time outside (by soon I mean in a couple of months, of course!!). I found some fun packages with 4 chalks by Crayola at Michael`s, but you can find them anywhere. I also found some Peeps shaped chalk, which I thought were very cute and I will give one each to the kids.
3-DINNER WINNER PLATES AND PLASTIC PLACEMATS:
I found these dinner plates at Babies R us in major sale, so I thought I would give them a try. They have a little road on them which is divided into compartments where I can put small portions of food. My kids love this kind of plates because they like to put different kind of foods in each little spot and hopefully they will have more fun and stay at the dinner table for longer (the challenge has been to keep them at the table, especially Leonardo, who likes to eat, but he likes to move and run at the same time, so he finds it very hard to sit still and finish his meal without moving around!). I also got some new placemats for the three of them: the boys will have an alphabet one because I noticed that they are starting to recognize the letters, especially the ones in their names and Aurora will have a pink one with the Shpkins characters.
4-ULTIMATE STICKER COLLECTION (AMAZON, $ 11.99):
I got some sticker books for the boys (Star wars for Leonardo and Ninjago for Alessandro), where they will have to place the stickers in a precise spot in a page, they love stickers, but this will be the next level, I am curious to see if they are going to enjoy these books, I remember that Aurora did! I am planning on getting a book about unicorns for Aurora, because she already got one and she loved the story.
5-MELISSA AND DOUG SCISSOR SKILLS AND TAPE ACTIVITY BOOK SET (AMAZON, $ 9.99):
I saw these little activity set on Amazon and I thought that it would be perfect because the boys love to cut and they are getting better at it. The set contains a cutting book with scissors and also a book with tape, which I am sure they will love too! For Aurora I got a little book with plain white paper because she loves to draw and she never has enough paper.
This is it for today, I hope you found some good ideas if you were looking for some inspiration! I will meet you here on Friday to talk a little more about Spring! Have a great week,
Anna