Easter this year - Fairtrade and Home Made

This year I decided that our Easter, at least in terms of chocolate that we buy ourselves, would be slave-free. So we are going Fairtrade and/or home made for chocolate eggs. We have one each of the Cadbury Fairtrade Eggs, and for the 'Rabbit Hunt' we have on the way some Divine Dark Chocolate Mini Eggs and some Divine Milk Chocolate Praline eggs. Just in case the express post doesn't quite cut it (and the lovely folk at Heart of Chocolate are getting the eggs in the post first thing Monday, thankyou!), I'm borrowing some chocolate molds from a friend, have some coloured foil paper and will get two blocks of plain Fairtrade milk chocolate and melt and make my own hunting eggs.

It is just to think that each time we buy chocolate that's not slave-free, it really doesn't taste as good - not literally, but in your mind.

this little hand made felt dragon was a birthday gift for one of the children from their friend (handmade by the Mum)

Because you can be pretty sure, that it wasn't good for the people who made it... especially children. Yet here we are laughing and having Easter egg hunt fun with our children... doesn't seem right. I am hoping to follow Eilleen's example and choose slave-free chocolate from here on in when I buy chocolate. Eilleen's Easter egg post is here - it needs updating but it's a good start.

If I get to the making eggs stage, I'll post how it all goes. I'm sure there will be some tasting. We'll be making our own hot cross buns and probably some bread as well. It's the best aroma to have wafting through the house, teasing the nostrils of all who it finds - luring them to the kitchen! I have some spare beeswax and wick from my candle making kit, so a new candle for the table. I have a tea towel here I hope to turn into table napkins... and I have a 'to do' list a mile long and two UNI assessments due soon, so we'll see how far I get!

Of course this chocolate egg making will be a late-night stealth mission, as the 'Easter Bunny' still comes to this house... and of course, as with almost every Easter I can remember, there will be rain of some kind or other. I always think if there's a drought here, we just gotta wait for Easter!

Other bought eggs I found for hunting:
Oxfam - these have filled centres, not what I was looking for but maybe you are.
From this site (2011) they sell them here, but are sold out OR
something like these and wrap ourselves. They sell the wrap too.

Thanks to Bacon (the chook), we have some mini eggs all of our own for the nest in the picture above that was made last year at school... guarded of course by the 'Easter Dragon' lol. These little chook eggs are only fractionally bigger than a 'mini hunting egg' of the chocolate kind. They're very cute. We get these now and then alongside the giant eggs from the other chooks. The coloured egg is my attempt at a felt one last year, inspired by playgroup. It's wool, felted around a nut... from a sheoak (?) I think.

and these are two little handmade felt rabbits, the bigger one is one of a pair bought from the school shop
when Brooke and Jake were just little. Very well loved!

But back to Fairtrade... the sad thing is that even making my own eggs using Fairtrade chocolate... neither the egg molds, nor the foil, nor a lot of things we'll use on that specific day (and every day really, despite our good choices), are good for people or the environment.
And... on the rare occasions I eat out at a mainstream place, by the time you knock off the menu things like additives, colourings, flavours, probably not free range eggs/chicken, probably not GM-free, probably not slave-free... it really shows up the 'can't see don't care', or just ignorance of not knowing at all... or just how 'mainstream' doing things that way has become... so that it's normal.
So while I make positive change along the way, as much as I can, here is a long, long way to go. For me, and for the world in general. Which is a really sad thing.