Saturday 19 April 2014

Happy Easter to all!

A couple of weeks ago P's school put out a call for donations to the Easter raffle hampers. They asked for "items with an Easter theme". I'm not a religious person at all and so I immediately interpreted that to mean chocolate, but then I figured so might every other person and why not make something instead.

Once an atheist has ruled out chocolate there isn't much more to Easter than bunny rabbits, right? (please forgive the tongue in cheek tone, I do understand that for some people there's a lot more to Easter than that), so P and I hunted through my softies books. There are a couple of bunny patterns in there but P was taken with the Guardian Angel.


The kids helped me pick through the scraps buckets and we ended up making two Easter Angels.
I sewed the faces on during the day and then in the evening both kids helped stuff our angels.

 
And amused themselves turning the wings into funny big moustaches!
 
 
I finished them off after bedtime and the next morning we snapped a couple of (poorly focussed) pictures before taking them off to school, where we put them in the donations basket next to about a hundred chocolate rabbits. Had I got this totally wrong?.....
In case someone thought I'd got my religious holidays completely mixed up, or that I was re-gifting something someone else gave me for Christmas, I used  a fabric marker to write "{school name} Angel, Easter 2014" on the back of one leg of each angel. 
 
A few days later I saw another mum turn up with a couple of handmade bunnies under her arm and so thankfully my softies weren't the only non chocolate things in the raffle hampers.
 
Even better, P told me that each of the hampers with the angels in were won by kids in his prep class and that the kids were delighted.
 
Wishing you all a happy and safe long weekend, however you choose to celebrate it!
 
 
 



14 comments:

  1. We try very hard to keep Julia un-aware of the fact that there's a mythical Easter bunny who actually brings stuff to kids. She was in a Jewish pre-school up until we switched her to Montessori this year, so it's been pretty easy....but, now people are asking her what she wants the Easter bunny to bring her, and she just gives them a quizzical look.....although we do celebrate Christmas, I feel like it would be seriously hypocritical for us to give a kid an Easter basket when we seriously don't celebrate Easter. Anyway, cute guardian angels!

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    1. Well, given my love of a long weekend and chocolate I would hard pressed to "give up" Easter. P is a natural born rational thinker and worked out for himself that rabbits are not inclined to go around hiding chocolate eggs.
      I don't have to wonder much about where he gets that from: I recall from my childhood my mum stocking up on Easter eggs, then pointing out to us kids that the shops had now shut and we wouldn't have any eggs to give to her the next day. She then sold us some of the eggs she'd stockpiled. I'm sure she made a profit, and got given the eggs as gifts the next morning anyway! Anyway to "celebrate" Easter seems to be OK at our house.

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  2. I love the guardian angels! You're such a good sport and that's super cool that the kids were into it at school. Happy Easter. :)

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    1. Thanks Kristin. Hope you had a lovely Easter too.

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  3. Your angels are wonderful, and I'm sure will be much appreciated by the preppies (and older kids love softies too - K is nearly 10 and he still loves cuddly soft toys). I've always referred the children's questions regarding mythical gift-deliverers to my husband as he's the one who wishes to perpetuate such myths - I feel very uncomfortable with them, and am a Jewish atheist, besides! Fortunately only R still believes, and hopefully not for much longer. Today K and R got chocolates that were delivered by the 'Easter Mummy' :) Hope you all had a great day, and are enjoying the long weekend (and short week! hooray!).

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    1. It's funny, I try to moderate my lack of belief around the kids in case they "want" a bit of magic in their lives but once P worked out that there were lots of postal delivery workers to cover the whole country he quickly deduced that Santa couldn't possibly do it on his own. From that point he's gone on to declare the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny and others as not credible.

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  4. Brilliant, I love them.
    How clever are you? I really struggle with toys.

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    1. THanks. And that decides what your newborn might get for a gift!

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  5. They're gorgeous and such a great idea, so much better than chocolate. Hope you all had a lovely Easter.

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    1. Thanks, we did! I would argue nothing is better than chocolate but I guess a few soft toys amongst the piles of chocolate was a good idea after all.

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  6. I love the angels. I will have to remember them come Christmas time.

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    1. Thanks Christine. they are kind of Christmas-sy aren't they? you know they are also almost pillow size and would make a lovely travelling companion for anyone going on a long road journey or plane trip.

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  7. I love your angels! I especially love that your kids thought of mustachio-ing (the technical term) the wings!

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    1. Is there anything that isn't funny when it's held up to your top lip?
      (actually as soon as I type that I can think of a dozen things my kids might do which would be decidedly un-funny)
      Thanks Sanae

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