A Tisket, A Tasket, I Made an Easter...Bucket

Happy Good Friday & Earth Day, everyone!

This has been quite the week!  Today I actually enjoyed a little nap so that I could recoup from the business of this week.  Can't complain about that!

Considering this weekend is Easter, last night I worked on a little gift project for my coworkers.  One of the most popular Easter traditions is that of the Easter Basket.  When I was growing up, the "Easter Bunny" would load a basket up with goodies and hide that basket somewhere  in the house. 

Well, I'm no Easter Bunny, and I didn't really think it would be appropriate to send my coworkers on a scavenger hunt around the building to find their baskets (though that would have been pretty entertaining, I'm sure), but I did want to put together a little something for them to show that I appreciate what they do.

I started this project with a trip to one of my favorite stores.  Can you guess which one?  If you guessed Target then you are absolutely right!

The thing I absolutely love about Target is the fact that every store has the $1.00 section up at the front when you walk in.  Granted, most of what is found in that section is primarily products for kids, I have found some serious deals there, and this spree was very rewarding. 

Since I already had a few buckets left over from the project I posted about here, I thought this would be a perfect application to use them up.  But, I did need to find a few more buckets so that I could make enough for all of my team members.

I also found these pots in the dollar section (though they were actually $2.00). I thought the green one would work out better for to give to one of the guys on my team (something about delivering a pink bucket to a guy who loves sports just didn't seem right), and the pink one would work for one of my co-workers who was moved to a different team.

This project was actually fairly simple, but I did take a few extra steps to add that "Kelli signature" and make the buckets more personalized.  You start this project just as you would any other Easter Basket...with that crazy, gets-all-over-the-place, plastic grass stuff (that's the technical term. haha.)

Then you fill the Easter Eggs with candy, and add tuck them into the grass.  I made a good find when I came across these sporty eggs in the candy isle.  They were a perfect fit for the buckets I planned to give to the boys, and to my sports-crazed co-worker Michelle!  Here's what the sports buckets started out like:

Another good find were these note pads and note cards (from the dollar section).  I thought the leaf note pads were Easterish, but also added that "Earth Day" vibe to the buckets.

I also used the leaf note pad to make the name tags for each of the buckets.

My favorite finds for this project were these little bird houses (dollar isle) and these metal birds to use to stick in potted plants ($1.00 for a set of three). 

I did have to trim down the stakes on the little bird houses, but that didn't take much effort.  I just used a little electric tool to start the cuts and then broke the extra portion off. 

Once everything was put together, this is what the buckets looked like:

So there you have it!  A simple, yet adorable little gift to wish everyone a happy Easter.  These buckets work well for all sorts of events, so put your own spin on this project and let me see the results!

What are some of the favorite things you have received in an Easter basket?  How did your family celebrate the holiday, and if you're family didn't celebrate Easter then what other traditions did you have?  I always love to hear everyone's personal experiences!

Hope you all had a great Earth Day, and are looking forward to the holiday weekend!

PS:  For more gift ideas, click here.