Guest Author - Susan Thompson



Hippety, hoppety, Easter’s on its way… One of my favorite things about Easter is the promise of spring. Easter also means lots of candy right? Not necessarily. There are plenty of things you can fill your child’s basket with that aren’t candy and won’t break the bank.

Always trying to make my kids baskets a little more interesting, I have done several theme baskets for them in the past. The beach theme was a great one, I bought inexpensive pail and shovel sets and filled the pail with a beach towel, sunglasses, sunscreen, pool toys, and a small amount of candy.

For kids who love to be outdoors, you could create a basket filled with sidewalk chalk, a butterfly net, a critter catcher, jump rope, and bike decorations such as streamers or a horn.

Arts and crafts baskets are easy and inexpensive. Fill with crayons, colored pencils, markers, child scissors, construction paper, coloring books, play dough, stickers, and paint.

For the sports enthusiast, try Sports Illustrated for Kids Magazine, add in some baseball or football cards and maybe a sports DVD.

More items that are great additions to any basket are word search books, playing cards, flash lights, silly putty, a jacks game, small puzzles, posters, activity books (the ones with the invisible marker are always popular), army men, toy cars, waffle ball set, and just about anything you can find at the dollar store.

There are also other food items you can put in your child’s basket such as sugar free gum and candy, goldfish crackers, small packets of trail mix, and small packets of cookies just to name a few.

Enough on baskets, if you would like to make a fun Easter dessert with your kids, try the following bunny cake recipe.

You will need:
1 box of cake mix in your favorite flavor
2 round cake pans
1 can of icing in your favorite flavor
String licorice
1 Large bag of M&M’s
One candy kiss

Bake cake as directed for two 8 or 9 inch pans. When cake is cooled, turn one out onto a cookie sheet about ¾ of the way down the sheet. Turn the other out onto a cutting board. On the cake you put on the cutting board, make a cut like this ) on the left side and a cut like this ( on the right side, the two outside pieces become the rabbit ears, and the center piece is his bow tie. The cake already on the cookie sheet is the bunny's face. Attach ears and bow tie to the face.

Decorate the cake with icing, using the candy kiss for the nose, the eyes can be made of M&M’s, the whiskers can be made of string licorice, and the ears and bow tie can also be decorated with M&M’s. Don’t forget to take pictures of the process and your finished dessert.

Have fun and enjoy!