Happy Easter!

Yeah, I know its early, but if you're going to make things for a specific day, you have to make it ahead of time, right?

Most of the kids I know now are basically adults, or at least too old for an Easter Basket. But there are still two young kids that I can make baskets for. I looked all of the typical stores looking for baskets, but they all looked cheesy to me for the prices they were asking. And all definitely throw-aways. So, I decided to make them myself.

I think most of us have seen the paint stick baskets on Pinterest. They all instruct you to use embroidery hoops for the rings. I wasn't overly fond of having the screw brackets as I'd never use that portion of the hoop for anything else, plus I couldn't find them in the sizes needed. So I went searching and found both the large and small wood rings without them. I also purchased a package of wood rounds to use for the bottom. Most of the instructions I found on Pinterest either used foam core board or had no bottom at all. I opted to stick with wood. Should I make these again, I'd use a slightly larger wood round though, and just not have it placed all the way at the bottom. I added wood cubes - one every other slat - to the inside so the round had something to sit on. These I already had as they were left over from another project.

I used hot glue to glue the slats to the smaller hoop and applied wood glue afterward. I stapled the slats to the larger hoop near the top and also applied wood glue afterward. Wood glue. again, to attach the round to the cubes.

That's pretty much it. It took 16 (sixteen) 1-gallon paint stir sticks to make it around the hoops. I added a jute rope handle and dangled a couple of carrots with some jute twine - all obtained from the Dollar Tree - and used some gold metallic heavyweight scrapbook paper I had on hand to wrap around the rope join to finish it off. Added 3 bags of green shred, some candy, and done!

I like these a whole lot better as mom can use the baskets afterward to put fruit in once the candy is gone.