Even if you don’t celebrate Easter, now is a great time to hit the stores and stock up on supplies that you can use and enjoy long after this spring holiday has come and gone. Here are 6 tips to make the most of any money you might spend at an after-Easter sale.

1. Pick Up Pink and Purple Everything. There was a long time when my daughter Jane favored anything pink and my daughter Annie loved everything purple. During that period I would take advantage of after-Easter sales to get them clothing and accessories in pink and purple, since store aisles always seem to be bursting with items in these hues at Easter.
2. Get a Sweet Deal on Candy. Halloween may be six months away, but if you can get individually wrapped candies now for dirt cheap prices, who cares if they come in Easter colors instead of Halloween colors? Throw the bags in your freezer and fuggedaboutit until October! Your budget will thank you.
3. Bag Some Bargain Baskets. Sometimes I like to bring housewarming or hostess gifts in a clever container, and that container of choice is often a basket. Now is a great time to find bargains on baskets that stores stocked up but never sold for Easter.
4. Buy Next Year’s Dress-Up Clothes. When my daughters were little, I always stocked up on dress up clothes for the next year’s holiday right after the current year’s holiday had passed. I would buy pretty dresses in a couple of sizes, and then come the next year, whatever didn’t fit, I would sell on eBay. Of course, this stocking up makes sense only if you can get these fancy clothes at deeply discounted prices.
5. What’s Good for the Easter Bunny Is Good for a Baby. Have you ever looked closely at the kinds of decorations that stores market for nurseries–baby bunnies, chicks and cute little lambs? Well, these are the same iconic animals you’ll often find at Easter time. So if you’ve got a baby on the way–or know someone who does–you can stock up on stuff that was designed for Easter but would work equally well as a gift for a baby or new parent.
6. Stock Up On Stuffed Animals. Keeping with the kiddie theme, a great favor to give at a child’s birthday party is a stuffed animal. Right about now you should find plenty of stuffed animals on sale–especially if they are of the aforementioned chick, bunny and lamb persuasion.

My apologies to all of my subscribers who have been wondering where their Suddenly Frugal subscription has gone to. For some reason for the past week Feedburner had been a day late in sending my blog out.

When I publish the blog on a Monday or whichever day of the week it is, Feedburner doesn’t pick it up to email to my subscribers–you!–until 24 hours later. For example, today’s blog posting on newspaper coupons went live at 12:15 a.m. Eastern time (yes, I pre-write them so I’m not up at midnight working on my blog) yet when I logged on at 6:35 a.m., my emailed version of the blog was not there. It’s there on the Feedburner website, showing my feed is up to date, yet Feedburner, which is supposed to email the blog between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. Eastern, isn’t doing its job.

So what’s the deal?

I’m posting this missive live at 7:04 a.m. Eastern on Monday, April 5th. I wonder when it will show up in your in box.

If anyone else is having this problem or has figured out a solution, please let me know. There is no actual live help at Feedburner (aka Google), and posting on the support forums does nothing either.