Quality Family Time and Great Eats! It's Definitely a #HoneyBakedEaster !

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post. All opinions stated are genuine and my own.

There are a lot of great Easter baskets/buckets for sale.
We get ours on clearance after the holiday and use them next year.
These baskets would have cost $50 retail during the holiday season.
We got them for right around $5 the year before (after-season clearance sales)

Easter is a big deal at our house, and one of the holidays the kids love most, quite simply because they like the Easter Egg Hunt. We go all out hiding the eggs in the yard, and the kids run around inside waiting for us to give the okay to head on out.

The tradition of filling the eggs with candy is not lost on us, we know that is part of what makes the kiddos happy, but we keep the candy to a bare minimum and take care to fill the baskets with other items we know the kids are going to like. We do add one chocolate bunny and fill some of the eggs with jelly beans, and that's about it for the sugar. ;) It's okay though, because the other items more than make up for it.

Tips for having a happy (but minimum - candy) Easter!

• Get a cool basket/bucket for the kids. This is a great way to add to the festivity of the day, make the kids happy, and give them something fun that they can use later, over and over again.
• Shop the after-holiday sales to get basket/buckets dirt cheap. Put them aside for next year. This will save you a good deal of money!
• Put cash in some of the eggs before you hide them. You can get creative and use silver dollars, half-a-dollars, $2 bills, etc., or you can just put in coins or dollar bills. Kids love tallying up their finds when the hunt is said and done.
• Add a movie to the Easter Basket. This will serve the purpose of extending the happy feel of the holiday and give you a good excuse for some together time later that night or sometime in the near future. We try to find an Easter theme for ours, but any DVD the kids will like will do.

We got him a plush and grandma got him one too.
These take up a lot of room and make the baskets big gifts.
Kids like big gifts. ;)

• Add a plush bunny or other holiday-related stuffed animal. The kids love them, and they take up a lot of room, making the basket delivery look bigger (bigger is better when you're a kid). 
• Shop the after-Easter sales to get those plush bunnies cheap too! Take a look at the clearance shelves after the holiday is over. You can literally find a $19.99 stuffed animal for under two bucks...pick one or two up, bag 'em and put them away for next year. It's a small easy thing you can do that you will thank yourself for next year.

The kids really enjoy the baskets, the egg hunt, the festive atmosphere, etc. They also love the Easter Feast (as our youngest son calls it), and the adults certainly do too!! One way I make my family happy during the holidays is to serve them a dinner purchased from HoneyBaked Ham. Not much makes my family as happy as that big beautiful ham getting placed on the dining room table. HoneyBaked Hams are hand-selected for leanness, smoked for up to 24-hours, and then spiral-sliced to the bone. All of the hard work is done, and to serve you simply heat and eat. It's really just that easy. This year we bought a bone-in ham that really got the ooh's and ah's when it was placed on the table. The signature sweet, crunchy glaze on the top of the ham adds to the delight, as it's one-of-a-kind flavor signifies holiday happy. 

I like HoneyBaked because everything is already done for you. You simply heat and eat, but it's a premium quality heat-and-eat. The side dishes like the macaroni & cheese or potatoes au gratin taste like I took my good sweet time making them, and they are absolutely comfort food at its finest.

We had a cool surprise when we walked into our local HoneyBaked Ham store...a display table with high quality Red Raspberry Preserves on it! We've got a kiddo in the house who just loves it and could literally eat it on most anything. As soon as we saw it, I knew that was going right on the holiday menu. :)

He loves to have the Easter 'feast!' as he likes to call it. :)

My favorite thing about a HoneyBaked Ham dinner (or turkey, they've got fabulous turkey options too!) is it saves me time. Instead of spending an entire day prepping and getting dinner ready, everything is already done for me. I simply unwrap and heat. The results are always flawless, and I don't have to run around frantically trying to create a meal from scratch, on a day that I really want to be spending it with my family instead. It's an easy way to make my family happy, serve a special meal, and get in some good quality holiday time together too.

When it's time for dessert, HoneyBaked Ham has got you covered there too. This year we let our youngest select from the assorted offerings and it took him about two seconds to choose pumpkin pie. This pie had a true pumpkin flavor and I cannot deny, it was amazing. I topped a fresh-out-of-the-oven slice with Vanilla Bean ice cream for my husband, and he was a very happy man. :)

Great news if you're looking to purchase a HoneyBaked Ham (or turkey!) dinner for your holiday too; everyone gets a high value coupon! Click here to instantly claim your $5.00-off savings. Offer good through April 4, 2015.