On Saturday, we are invited to join the Easter egg hunt at the US Ambassador's residence. The kids are besides themselves with excitement. We are to bring a dessert to share, and Easter egg baskets.
Uuuhhh.... I cleverly left all my Easter decorations and my Easter baskets back in Germany. Those same baskets I had bought for the express purpose of being Easter egg baskets?
So, no baskets. I didn't feel like chasing down baskets here. We've already done quite some purchases and we have to curb ourselves - after all, it all has to fit into 14 20-inch boxes again come October.
I looked around the Internet but what I found wasn't for us - either we didn't have the supplies (like felt), or we didn't have the tools (like a stapler), or I thought it was too much work (although really the cutest thing on Earth but I have four kids, it has to go quickly). Oh, and most were not sturdy enough. I have three wild boys and a wild girl. Sturdiness is a big factor.
So I looked around and what I saw was a lot of 6-liter-water bottles. We buy our water and we use a lot of those bottles, they are clunky and fill up the trash really quickly and the kids use them for waterplay outside and... they irk me. I don't like them. So I destroyed four of them. We cut the tops off, leaving a round shape about 15 cm high. That was our basket. The first one we swathed in aluminum foil and decorated it with ribbons, then I sewed another ribbon to it as a handle. The outcome was... okay. I wasn't wowed, also the sewing through plastic is time-cosuming and painful.
So I donated some of my precious fabric stash, sewed three tunnel-like pieces, sewed them shut on the bottom, pulled them over the plastic water bottle bottoms and folded the fabric inside. We attached ribbons with some rivets I had in my sewing box, and voila! We were done. Sturdy, cute, and when Easter is over, I will remove the fabric and reuse it for its orginial purpose - sewing summer pants for the kids. But I am pleased, and most importantly, so are the kids.
Each kid has their own indivual type of handle, by the way, to keep the baskets apart. This one is Jacob's, who told me this skull-ribbon is "cool". Happy to be of service, my son.
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