Make A Dollar Tree Easter Basket Filled With Good Things

The best Easter baskets are the ones you make yourself. Don’t buy those overpriced baskets at the store that are stuffed with really cheap toys and yucky candy. Make Dollar Tree Easter Baskets for your kids or grandkids and stuff them with their favorite candies and fun toys. 

After I show you how to make the best Easter baskets, I have Arkansas stories about my Dad and past Easter holidays at my Grandparents’ house.

You can use any basket or bucket with a handle to make an Easter basket. A plain pail is great, too, and you can reuse it as a mop bucket or for just about anything. I’m old school, so I prefer the typical woven basket. 

I bought a bag of “grass” with three colors: pink, green, and yellow. 

Adding a few toys is a must. I buy items that are not gender-specific and that even an adult would enjoy. Goofy String, Modeling Dough, a Bubble Blower Gun, colorful Markers, and a light-up squeezy are fun things kids of all ages would enjoy. 

I try to scale back on the candy. Three or four favorites will do the trick. You can also add Pringles, Goldfish, or similar items and cut down on the sweet treats. Even though our son is 40, it’s a tradition to buy Peeps for him every year.

Now that we have all the goodies, it’s time to put the basket together. I filled the basket with colorful “grasses.” If you don’t have a lot of grass, pad the bottom of the basket with newspaper or whatever you have on hand. 

After you remove the packaging from your items, add them to the basket along with your candy or other food items. Arrange and rearrange all of the things until your Easter basket is perfect.

I bought too much stuff for the basket, so I either need a larger basket, or I should have bought two cute green baskets instead of one. 

I think my amount of goodies would have been perfect for two baskets. The cost of the basket and all the stuffings from Dollar Tree was right at $15. So I could buy one more basket and have two awesome Easter baskets the kids or adults would love for $8 each. (I think I did the math right!)

Now, isn’t my basket much better than the cheapo put-together basket at the local discount store that costs $20+? If the cellophane wrap is important, you can buy clear or colored cellophane at Dollar Tree, too. 

It’s time to make an Easter gift basket for your kids, grandkids, significant other, or yourself! Fill it with your favorite candies and toys.

Arkansas Story……

In the old days, we all gathered at my grandparents’ home after church on Easter morning, had a big meal, and hunted Easter eggs. It was the holiday highlight of my year—even better than Christmas at Grandma’s house. 

These old photos from the Easter egg hunts in Arkansas are not very good. I haven’t had time to go through my unorganized photos at home. These photos were in Dad’s albums, and I was in Arkansas at Dad’s this past week. 

Usually, some of the men grilled chicken, we had ham, and each family brought a dish or two. We had more food than we could eat, and it was delicious. We ate on the lawn, sitting at homemade wood picnic tables. 

Then, after lunch, we gathered all the dyed eggs everyone brought from home. We always had a lot of eggs…probably a couple hundred. We also passed a basket for donations and filled several plastic eggs with money…..these were the prize eggs.

Some of those eggs contained $10 or $15, a lot of money for a kid back then. The big kids and even some of the adults hunted for the prize eggs, too. 

The eggs were hidden in “the family park” across the road from my grandparents’ home. The prize eggs were hidden in crazy places: holes in the ground, high up in a tree, or any place that was difficult to get to. There was a lot of friendly wrangling for some of those prize eggs.

I had 18 cousins and there was a bunch of us when I was young. Then, the cousins got married, so there were spouses and more kids. Our holiday gatherings were huge and we gathered at Grandma’s house for every holiday.

My grandparents passed away several years ago, and I miss them and the family gatherings. Things never stay the same. The photo above of my grandparents’ house was taken several years after they passed away. The house is still in our family.

One of the buildings behind the house contained a ringer washing machine. I still remember Grandma using that machine. One of the other buildings was a smokehouse, and another was for a farmhand. 

I always loved to dye Easter eggs, and my dad used to help with the decorative transfers. Do you remember dampening those designs so they would transfer to the eggs? 

And this is Sofi hunting Easter eggs at our house a few years ago. I have no idea what she was examining or why she was wearing the glove, lol. I don’t remember. So far, Sofi hasn’t had a problem with photo sharing.

This photo of Dad and the JTS was taken just a few years ago. Dad was diagnosed with Cancer back in November. At 93, he couldn’t have surgery, so he is receiving immunotherapy (Keytruda) and only has one treatment every six weeks and only three treatments! The treatments do not make him sick and seem to be working miracles. 

I hope I didn’t bore you with my family stories. Do you have any family Easter or holiday stories to share? I would love to hear them. Have a great day, Kathy

Kathy Owen

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Author: Kathy Owen
Kathy Owen is the founder of the home decor blog Petticoat Junktion where she shares tutorials on painting furniture and upcycling thrifty finds into unique home décor. Her DIY projects have been featured on the Home Depot Blog, Plaid Crafts, Behr Designer Series, and in numerous magazines. Kathy’s newest website is HappyHomeDIY.com