Easter Gifts On A Frugal Budget

Easter gifts ummm? It seems to come so soon after Christmas that just the thought of spending more money on gifts brings me out in a cold sweat.

Luckily during my years of living a more frugal lifestyle I have discovered ways of giving Easter gifts that cost me only time and a little effort rather than wads of cash.

Easter can be an over looked celebration but I think that it serves a double purpose and should be celebrated with gusto. After all not only does it remind us of the sacrifice Jesus made for us all but it also celebrates the coming of new life with all the new plants and baby animals.

So don't just think that by buying someone a chocolate egg surrounded in copious amounts of useless plastic and paper is good enough.

Decorate the house

picture by butterflysha

Spring is in the air so why not bring some of it inside to add to the frugal Easter celebrations.

Unfortunately flowers are expensive to buy and unless you have a garden planted with spring daffodils or crocuses, real flowers are not really an option. However splashes of colour can be added to the home with homemade abstract flowers.

Hand made Daffodils

• Cover some drinking straws with green paper that you have either found or have coloured yourself.
• Either use yellow tissue paper or yellow squares of hand coloured paper.
• Cut into 6-inch squares and lay three sheets on top of each other each at a different angle.
• Hold paper in hand and push pen down into the middle of the paper to push the side of the paper up into a cone shape.
• Twist bottom to secure sheet and turn over tips of each piece of paper to form petals.
• Push paper into straw.

picture by paper by Design

Easter Egg Candles

Candles are always lovely to have around the home at any time of year so why not make your own with an frugal Easter feel.

• Crack the top off of a raw egg and empty the contents out.
• Wash eggshell and decorate the shell if desired, coloured glitter or dyed sugar is lovely for these.
• Melt leftover candles in a tin can and use left over wicks for your new candle.
• Place wick into eggshell and pour melted wax around it. (You may have to hold wick until wax solidifies slightly)

Frugal Easter baskets

Rather than just giving the kids large chocolate eggs, give them an original Easter basket full of things to do and eat during the Easter holidays.

Easter baskets

Any box can be decorated with cutout flower pictures and old saved bits of ribbon etc. Some Easter gifts ideas to fill your Easter basket are:

• Mini chocolate eggs (cheap bags of chocolate eggs can be shared out amongst several children)

  picture by Katrinket

• Home made cookies cut into bunny feet shapes.

• Print off Easter pictures for colouring in. Colouring pens

• Skipping ropes or kites (to encourage your kids to go outside)

• Seed packets and some cheap gardening tools

Organise an Easter egg hunt

When I was a child one of my fondest memories was hunting around the garden at Easter looking for hidden mini sweets and chocolate eggs, with my little beach bucket.

This is so easy to do and hardly costs a thing, definately a frugal fun idea to remember every Easter.. To make it a little more challenging you could actually bury the sweets and draw out a treasure map for your kids to try and follow.

If you don't want to give your kids more sweets, you could make some coloured eggs yourself. Children still love the fun of the hunt to see how many they can find; they could be rewarded with a treat at the end.

To colour your own eggs

• Hard-boil some eggs. Then wash the shell in some warm soapy water.
• Boil some water with 2 tsp of vinegar
  • Add the following to for different colours
  • Pink - beetroot juice
  • Yellow - ground turmeric
  • Green - boil some dandelion leaves and use the water
  • Lilac - grape juice
  • Blue - boil red cabbage and use the cooled juice.

Easter gifts are best enjoyed when the whole family are involved and makes the whole celebration frugal and more fun. As you can see keeping it simple means keeping the costs down both financially and environmentally.

P.S. don't forget to use your hard-boiled eggs afterwards as sandwich fillings or as part of a salad. What could be nicer on an early spring evening?