Turning Your Kid’s Easter Gifts To Gift Basket Status
Putting together Easter baskets for your children to find on Easter morning is a long held tradition. The typical Easter basket usually includes one hollow chocolate bunny, a few marshmallow peeps, a decorated egg or two and some jelly beans. The whole concoction is placed in one of those multicolored plastic baskets that have been filled with pink or green plastic “grass”. These are the same grass pieces that you will find still embedded in the carpet months later along with last year's Christmas tree needles.
If you are feeling that your Easter traditions are a bit stale and that your family is in a rut, consider purchasing or making Easter gift baskets for everyone in the family, including yourself. Everyone will definitely notice the upgrade and because gift baskets are so versatile, you won’t have to ever repeat the same Gift Basket every year.
Let’s begin with the option of purchasing a ready made gift basket. There are hundreds of websites of companies and small businesses that create and sell specialty gift baskets. Investigate a few sites since they all offer different selections and have different pricing and delivery terms. Some sites are more comprehensive than others are and will have gift baskets based on different themes and for different age groups and interests.
Before you purchase anything from any unknown site, always do a little investigating first. The Better Business Bureau has a website http://search.bbb.org/ that keeps track of online businesses as well as regular businesses. Even if the website company is not a member of the BBB, more than likely it may still have some information on the business. The BBB can let you know how many complaints have been reported to them about the company and finally, how many of those complaints were resolved. They will also break down the complaints into categories like delivery or customer service issues. The BBB site can search for the company by their physical address or even by their URL address or email address. You can usually find the online companies physical address by clicking where it says something like “contact us”, which is usually found in small type at the very top or very bottom of the website’s home page.
Once you find a gift basket retailer that you like and one that has either good reviews from the Better Business Bureau or the few bad reviews it had were all resolved, feel free to shop for all of the unique Easter baskets. When you begin the process of checking out and paying for your selections take extra care to make sure that the site has become secure. Never give out any of your personal information, most especially credit or debit card numbers unless it is secure. Your web browser will display a symbol or change color when the website is secure.
The company will pack and ship your orders to you as soon as possible, especially if there are food items in the gift basket. Some sites will go a step further and will offer free shipping with orders over a specified amount. Again, it pays to shop around a little.
You may be lucky and have a few gift basket retailers in your own town. Many florist shops have added this service to their operation. Or, you may know one or two individuals who do this as a home business. Purchasing a gift basket locally may prove to be less expensive because there are no delivery charges and the other benefit to buying gift baskets locally is that you will get to see the quality of the items that will be packed into the basket. Time may also be an issue. You may be able to get your baskets sooner using a local retailer as opposed to waiting for your online order to be arranged and then shipped from somewhere else in the country.
You may look at all of the ideas for gift baskets online and decide that you could do this and that you would rather put the gift baskets together yourself. This option allows you to purchase the exact baskets or containers you wish to use. From there, it is just a matter of finding perfect items to fill the baskets with.
Don’t limit yourself. Look for gifts in every section of the store and be sure to visit other types of stores. You may be surprised at the number of interesting items that can be found at drug stores, dollar stores and even hardware stores. You can decide to use the same baskets every year or you may like the idea of a brand new basket every year to keep the gift fresh. With the old baskets, you can put together gift baskets to give to other relatives and friend on their birthdays or at Christmas or any gift-giving occasion.
Remember to vary the contents of the Easter basket. Keep the traditional chocolate bunny, but unless anything else is a must have traditional item, feel free to disregard those and try something else. Instead of the cheap, waxy tasting chocolate pieces that are wrapped in foil, consider delicious chocolate truffles from a candy shop.
Shop in categories. Try to include something in each child’s basket from the food or sweets category and also from the toy or stuffed animal category. These items include small puzzles, small electronic pocket games and playing card. You can also add the wearable category. That would be an item that the child could wear. It could be a piece of jewelry, a watch, a hat, some frilly spring socks, etc. Also consider an arts and crafts category. Many department stores, drug stores and craft stores sell little kits for the child to do. Pick something that would interest the child and include it in the gift basket. Still another category is books or magazines. This could also include puzzle books.
An Easter gift basket actually has a lot in common with the Christmas stocking stuffers. Including a large variety of items means that there is less candy and more of other interesting items, which is much better for your child’s health and your dental bills. Remember to arrange them attractively and you could even wrap them in cellophane and a huge bow. This Easter gift basket is definitely an upgrade.