The Advantages of Jelly Beans

The jelly bean, that sweet oval confection that is the mainstay of Easter basket candies. Parents rely on the economical jelly bean to bulk up the basket and use more expensive chocolate bunnies and malted eggs as garnish. But Easter comes but once a year and there are so many other ways to use jelly beans throughout the year. Let me offer you 10 uses for jelly jeans beyond the Easter Basket.

1. Gourmet flavors such as those offered by Jelly Belly come in a variety of colors making wonderful favors at weddings. It is much easier to match your wedding colors with jelly beans than with the few colors available in Jordan almonds.
2. Add jelly beans to your usual trail mix for extra energy. For that sweet and salty mixture make your own trail mix with one cup each of jelly beans, peanuts, and pretzels.
3. Decorate frosted cakes and cupcakes with jelly beans. The assortment of colors makes decorating ideas unlimited. Jelly beans can create design and color without mixing batches of color frosting and working with messy decorating bags.
4. String red and green jelly beans along with popcorn for an old fashioned effect for Christmas tree garland. When the holidays are over, munch on the garland to keep your strength up as you pack away the holiday decorations.
5. Jelly beans make colorful “roof tiles” and “stones” for the fireplace on ginger bread houses. Think outside of food categories, jelly beans have diversity!
6. Use jelly beans instead of poker chips for penny ante poker. Jelly beans are much better than using matchsticks since you can assign values to different colored beans.
7. Running low in bingo chips? Grap a bag of jelly beans, they are just the right size to cover the squares of called numbers.
8. Even Martha Stewart would approve of using jelly beans to decorate a flower vase. Insert a flower vase into a slightly larger clear vase; fill in the space between the two vases with colorful jelly beans. Create layers of coordinating colors or other designs using the beans, add the flowers and water to the center vase when the creative work is done.
9. Jelly beans as art! Some serious artwork has been created using the bright beans. Try your own hand at this creative endeavor. Use a sturdy foam core board as a base and glue the jelly beans in place to maintain your masterpiece.
10. What five year old girl wouldn’t love to have bracelets made with jelly beans strung with nylon thread as party favors for her birthday party. Clasps can be purchased very reasonably at craft stores.

So there you have it. Some creative and some silly uses for jelly beans. Should you choose to amuse yourself with the colorful confection, you can find them available all year round through candy stores on the internet.