A Work in Progress: A Fourish Days Late Post about Madison's DIY Easter Basket

Since I tend to struggle a bit with wordiness, I thought I'd try getting it all out of my system in the title. We'll see how that goes.

I've been trying to write this post since Saturday, but between Madison walking (?!) and our internet being S-L-O-W for the last couple of days, my every attempt up 'til now has been thwarted. I thought about letting it go and not sharing, because who wants to read about an Easter basket five days after the fact? Then I decided that this post is not late, it's actually about 360 days early.

I wanted Madison to have a cute Easter basket, but I didn't want to spend much money, so I decided to ~~make~~ trick out a basket myself. Here's what I started with:

It was about $2 at Walmart. I probably could have found something cheaper, but I didn't feel it was worth the effort (and gas) to drive around town looking for a bargain. There was pretty much nothing right about it. the handle was almost as tall as Madison, and the colors don't relate to our Easter ensemble (fancy, no?) at all.

In a (fruitless) effort to make the basket more wield-able for Madi, I cut off the too-long handle, trimmed it, and wove it back into the basket, securing it with Liquid Nails.

The handle ended up looking kind of wonky, but that didn't bother me. I was going for a handmade feel, anyway. At least that's what I decided once I saw the wonky handle. : )

Once I had the proportion issue resolved, it was time to get to work on the color. Madison's Easter dress was a golden yellow (btw, thanks Christie!), so I picked...

that's right. I picked golden yellow, in a special solution of spray paint that not only changes the color of any object, but also the size! Size 4 jeans, here I come. Just kidding; it hasn't been approved for use on humans yet.

Once the paint dried and the basket was back to its regular size (I guess it works kind of like Cinderella and goes back to normal at midnight), I got to work adding the fabric. I chose my fabric from four options, all purchased for $1.50/yd for Madison's weekly photo project. I put them all up next to our ensemble (everyone together now: oooh, aaahhh) and picked what I thought was the best option of the four. I'm now having second thoughts, for reasons I'll share later on.

I used craft glue liberally to attach the fabric to the basket. As you can see, I chose the blue, red, lavender, and white floral fabric.

I used some thin rope that I had laying around to secure the flaps of the fabric to the basket. I tied the ends together with jewelry wire leftover from making Madison's crib mobiles, then secured both sides to the handles of the basket to keep the rope from sliding off the bottom.