Last year we didn’t do much for Easter – we took Miss H to see the Easter Bunny and I bought an Easter basket from the $1 aisle at Target, which I filled with a few new books. It was cute and worked out perfectly for our almost-1-year-old.
This year, Miss H will be just turning 2 and old enough to get excited about celebrating the non-religious side of Easter: a bunny! A basket filled with goodies! An egg hunt! Exciting stuff for a little one. I upgraded her Easter basket to a nicer one that should hold up well over the years, and have bought some fun stuff to put in it: a new book, sunglasses, bunny ears, and a new sunhat. She’ll love all of it and I can’t wait for the, umm, Easter bunny to give it to her! But I also wanted to incorporate a little Easter egg hunt for her around our house for Easter morning. I know she’ll get a kick out of looking for the eggs and putting them in her basket! I’m really looking forward to it.
So while I was at Target a couple of weeks ago, I picked up this cute set of fillable eggs (it’s much cuter in person!).
Once I’d picked out the eggs to fill, I realized that I had nothing to fill them with! As I looked around the Easter aisles at the store, it was candy, candy, and more candy! We don’t give Miss H candy. She doesn’t know the word or that it exists, and I’d like to keep it this way for awhile longer! I know that this will eventually be a battle that we’ll lose as she gets older, but for the time being I am happy with keeping her oblivious to its existence.
But without candy, what is one to put into these little eggs, all while being conscious of not giving my little toddler a lot of small, easy to swallow items? After some brainstorming I’ve found the following awesome options for filling Miss H’s Easter eggs.
Hair Bows & Clips – Obviously this won’t be an option if you’re filling eggs for a little boy, but at Target I found a lot of adorable little clips and bows that Miss H will just love to have us put in her hair! They’re relatively inexpensive and you can easily put 1 clip/bow per egg if you have a lot of eggs to fill. I especially love these polka dot clips I picked up!
Cracker/Cookies
If you have an approved cracker or cookie that your little one enjoys, these can easily fill up some eggs! Miss H loves Annie’s Bunny Graham cookies – they’re one of her only sweet treats – so she’ll love finding a few of these in some of her eggs.
Stickers – Miss H loves stickers, like a lot of little kids, and she can easily occupy herself for a long time decorating pieces of paper! And stickers, like everything else on my list, are inexpensive and easy to include just 1 or 2 in each egg if you have a lot of eggs you need to fill.
Socks – We can never have enough socks in our house, and I have always loved having a wide variety so that I can match them perfectly with Miss H’s outfits. So what better to stuff into an egg than socks? They’re cheap to purchase, you always need them, and if your toddler is like mine, he or she probably gets really exited by having new pairs to choose from! I had been eyeing some from Old Navy that are super adorable, including these bunny socks!
I can’t wait to fill all of Miss H’s eggs this weekend with all of these fun little treats and hide them around the house – she’s going to have so much fun finding them all!
What’s your favorite non-candy treat for Easter eggs?
GOLD / wonderful coconut / 33402 posts
We can’t do stickers cause R will just eat them. She doesn’t need any new hair clips, I already have too many for her! So I am going to fill some eggs with Annie’s bunny crackers, Goldfish, puffs, and animal crackers. Probably will just put like 2 or 3 in each egg.
kiwi / 511 posts
Right now we don’t do much, we do an egg hung (plastic eggs) and we won’t be coloring eggs either (egg allergy with anaphylaxis reaction). In their baskets they will get a book each, and a fun small-ish toy. (The grandparents give them toys or clothes.). So much of my previous go to candy has nut warnings on it and therefore no longer safe in our house, and stuff that is safe (it is nut free) is expensive so I am holding off as long as I can when it comes to filling the basket with edible goodies. My personal preference is not to fill the eggs just to hide them and let the kids find them. (Random side note, York Peppermint patties have egg in the filling, grrrr).
Aside from the lack of eggs our family meal time traditions are largely in tact. Since I have Good Friday off I plan on preparing my ham and cheese pie (which is loaded with eggs) for my personal consumption at lunch outside of the house (yes I have a bit of a paranoia about the eggs) prior to the boys coming home from daycare. The ham and cheese pie is the one thing that brought me to tears when I thought about not having it, so I will have it for me.
grapefruit / 4049 posts
Cute list!
We are hosting an egg hunt, so everything will have to be gender neutral. We are doing stickers, goldfish, erasers, and just a few candies/chocolate so far. Maybe a few dollar bills and little car toys too. The kids range from 2 yo – 6 yo and have different interests, so it’s kind of tough. I was also thinking of melting down some old crayons into cute shapes also.
pomegranate / 3858 posts
I got the same set of fillable eggs! For our 16 mo We’re doing finger puppets from Ikea, bunny stamps (those could be fun, not sure how they’ll work out!), stickers, and this weird rubbery chick thing that you can squeeze and squish. I also got her a book, some hair clips, and bunny mac n cheese
I think we’ll just put the eggs around the living room/play area and ask her to put them in her basket. No hiding, no chocolate.
GOLD / nectarine / 2884 posts
@SAHM0811: love these ideas! We are also doing an all-ages hunt. Stickers and erasers is smart! Car toys as well. I’m worried about melting and not having food wrapped (since it is a group hunt), so I’ll probably stick to non-perishables.
pomegranate / 3272 posts
Pretty sure that my mom will just be filling all of the easter eggs for our hunt with candy so that will be for Mommy and Daddy! We are just putting books and some packages of bunnies in his Easter basket. At 17 mo, I don’t think he’ll care too much.
blogger / nectarine / 2600 posts
We did a egg hunt with Drake since he was 10 months old Its funny to look back We fill ours with Goldfish to the point that now he knows and when we went to an egg hunt when he opened it to see stickers he went Where are the Goldfish? Luckily every kid loves stickers too heehee Love those socks too!
guest
Cute ideas, and I LOVE the socks!
Random question: How do you avoid letting Miss H know that candy exists? I think this is a great idea, but I’m wondering how it works? We’re expecting our first baby and will be able to control what we feed her at our house, but when she’s with my in-laws I know they’ll want to fill her with sugar. How do you do it?
apricot / 457 posts
I got those same eggs! They really are so so cute. Just curious, what are you planning on putting in the golden egg? I was tempted to put a pack of Annie’s gummy bunnies in there but I’m afraid my LO will flip out after he finishes the pack and realizes when there’s no more. He hates hearing the words “all gone/no more” when he’s not ready for it to be done.
blogger / apricot / 366 posts
@Bethany: great question! If we don’t have it in the house (which we don’t) then she’s just unlikely to be around it. We’re not (geographically) super close to my parents so she’s not there very often without us, and even if she is, they are very careful to just have on hand what we typically feed her. They’d never give her anything new/different without asking! Of course, she’s had the occasional ice cream or cupcake but that stuff is not a part of our regular, daily life so she never expects it. And she’s equally as happy with strawberries or blueberries anyway!
@lisa1783: Ooh I don’t know! In all honesty I probably have enough other stuff to fill the rest of the eggs, so maybe the golden egg will be the Amy’s Graham cookies!
blogger / persimmon / 1398 posts
I love this! The only candy in our LO’s baskets is the chocolate bunny. We fill the eggs with little packets of pretzels or goldfish crackers, temporary tattoos, rubber stamps and mini stamp pads, mini bubble vials… Not only are they healthier – they last longer! Win-win.
GOLD / wonderful pomegranate / 28905 posts
Easter Egg hunt around the house is a family tradition for DH so we started that last year when LO wasn’t even 1! She had SO much fun when she realized it had puffs in them! Hahah
This year we’re filling the eggs with bunny crackers, dehydrated fruits and stickers. I am LOVING the basket I put together for her and can’t wait for her to get it!
We don’t do candy/sweets either and it’s refreshing to see!
blogger / clementine / 998 posts
those socks are so cute!
blogger / pomegranate / 3491 posts
Very cute!!
GOLD / nectarine / 2884 posts
@lisa1783: a finger puppet would be great for the golden egg! In my family, the golden egg is always filled with cold hard cash, lol! But it is more intended for the older kids! Not my preference!
blogger / honeydew / 7081 posts
Love this idea! LO is too little this year for an egg hunt, but I’ll keep these ideas in mind for next year!
blogger / nectarine / 2687 posts
Socks! What a great idea!!! Love candy-less eggs — we’ve done tattoos before and might try Lego guys!
blogger / nectarine / 2010 posts
I bought goldfish and mini graham crackers at the grocery store this week to put in eggs. They’re treats M never gets so he’ll go nuts for them! When he’s a little older I think a Lego set split among eggs would be really cool!
blogger / pomegranate / 3201 posts
Great ideas! Liam doesn’t know what candy is, but he has had chocolate before. I’m sure he will get lots of candy this Easter, though, because we are going to my in law’s and they go over the top with treats. Oh well! We won’t bring any home.
blogger / pomelo / 5361 posts
We’ve been trying to figure out what all to put in the boys’ eggs, and so far we have yogurt melts, puffs, and goldfish. They love stickers, so that’s a great idea!
guest
This is obviously a little late, but since Easter is coming around the bend again – last year we bought a small duplo set and put one piece in each of our 2 year old daughter’s Easter eggs. She had fun discovering each individual piece and then putting them all together!