I thought I would share some of our favorite Easter basket candy and non-candy goodies. Holidays can be more difficult to manage with food allergies than every other day of the year. We food allergy parents have to stick together and share our ideas!
As the kids get older, it becomes more difficult to find *useful* things to add to there Easter baskets. I highlight useful here because I just can’t bring myself to add another chintzy plastic doo-hicky to their Easter baskets! Those things were great when they were younger and easily entertained, but once you start finding plastic bugs, bracelets, and bouncy balls in every nook and cranny, you start to dread bringing any more home for fear they will multiply. A few of my ideas, I got from my own awesome, yet practical, Mom. 🙂
Here are some practical, non-candy ideas:
- Cool new hairbrush or hair accessories
- Battery operated toothbrush (I figure, what they hey, it’s a holiday! Splurge!)
- Books!
- CD’s or movies
- Craft supplies. The sky’s the limit here. Markers, colored pencils, chalk, paints, loom bands, play dough…
- Perfume, lotion, bubble bath, etc.
- Wall or window decals
- itunes gift card
- Headphones
- Lego packs
- Jewelry
- Gardening gear like gloves and seed packets.
- Nail polish
- Baseball cards, Pokemon cards, Garbage Pail Kids cards…
With candy, you have to be very careful and always read labels. From year to year, we see changes in “may contain” labeling statements that are important to take note of. We make it a rule to not trust off-label candies, especially the ones that are made outside of the U.S., where the same labeling laws and quality may not apply. Also, be careful even with the candies you’ve known to be safe in the past. Sometimes a different package size, different store, or even a different lot of the same thing may NOT be safe from your allergens.
Candies we like:
- Skittles
- Airheads
- Cotton Candy
- Starburst original candies and jelly beans
- Laffy Taffy
- Jolly Rancher
- Dum-Dums
- Yummy Earth organic lollipops
- Surf Sweets gummy worms, Trolli Crawlers gummy worms
- Swedish Fish
- Big League Chew
- Sour Patch Kids
- Twizzlers
- Lifesavers orginal, mints, and Big Ring Gummies
- Peeps
- Dots
- Mentos
- Fun Dip
- Dubble Bubble gum
- Saf-T-Pops
- Fluffy Stuff Cotton Tails cotton candy
feedthemsafely♥ 