A tisket, a tasket, I made my Easter basket.

I was 35 when my husband and I got married.

I had been living in my cute little condo before that.

All alone.

It was really nicely decorated.

Almost magazine-worthy.

In my spare time on the weekends I did things like paint furniture.

You know, Martha Stewart-y kind of stuff.

So when we got married I still had those Better Homes & Gardens visions in my head.

Number 1 and 2 would mess up the house and it would send me into a frenzy.

Maintaining the magazine-esque house was proving to be very difficult.

It took about a year into Number 4 when I realized it was impossible.

And, as far as I was concerned, not that important…

We never found out the sex of any of the kids before they were born.

So when Number 4 was born and we actually had a girl, I went out and bought a shitload of dresses.

And tights.

And shoes.

I had visions of the perfectly dressed and accessorized little girl.

Too bad she refused to wear any of the dresses.

Or the hair accessories.

I never even took the tags off half of the clothes.

I finally gave up on the picture perfect family and home and switched my focus to just keeping the children alive and the house standing.

Which brings me to my point…

Easter baskets.

I used to buy nice baskets for the kids.

And all the grass and crap to put inside them.

Plus enough candy and junk to guarantee my dentist and his entire family could take a really nice vacation.

Then there were presents.

Because somewhere along the way, Easter had turned into a Christmas-like extravaganza.

Those baskets definitely looked magazine-worthy.

But by the time I was done, I had spent well over $200 on Easter garbage.

Literally.

About half of it was going to go directly into the garbage can about an hour after the kids ripped through their baskets.

Then the kids would want to use their baskets forever.

Until, like, the 4th of July.

So they would get destroyed.

And every year I would need to get new ones.

About 3 years ago, it was the day before Easter, and I realized I had forgotten to get Easter baskets.

So we got creative.

And we made some.

And that has become our new tradition.

The kids look forward to it every year.

Yesterday at Costco I got some boxes.

I printed out a few pictures,

And then the kids did their thing.

We cut up one box to make strips of cardboard to make handles.

Would Martha Stewart approve?

Probably not.

Would I have approved 10 years ago?

No way.

Are these going to be featured on the cover of a magazine?

Doubtful.

But are the kids happy?

And proud of their creations?

Absolutely.

And they don’t really care if there is a bunch of fake plastic grass in the bottom of their basket.

The only ones who really care about that crap are the adults.

So our Easter baskets look like this.

They were free.

And green.

And when they start to fall apart, we’ll put them right into the recycling bin.

And next year on Easter, we’ll do it all over again.

Happy Easter

 

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