Slaying the Plastic Dragon - Day 34 - Plastic Free Easter

(I visited the art gallery yesterday.  Something I only do about once a year.  The exhibit of Florentine Renaissance Della Robbia art was exquisite!  A fine thing to see as Easter approaches.  So I am going to post photos just because the artwork was so lovely.)

Just stunning!

I've been meaning to post about preparing for Easter without plastic.  I am on an email list for my parish's newly formed Care for Our Common Home Ministry and someone sent out some suggestions for Easter.  So here are some ideas:

• We reuse our baskets every year and I have always been partial to the wicker variety, so no plastic there for us.  I think these non-plastic baskets are pretty easy to find.

The colors are gorgeous!

• Avoid those now ubiquitous plastic eggs.  I personally have never gotten into using them.  We've always dyed real eggs and hidden them for our Easter morning egg hunt.  So use real eggs!  My mother always hid them the night before and not one of us ever got any sort of food poisoning. But if you are nervous, just get up early and hide the eggs before the kids come down!
• A store near me sells jelly beans in bulk!  That's where I'm planning to get ours.  So look for jelly beans in bulk!

John the Baptist

• I plan on putting a foil wrapped chocolate bunny in each basket.  Not sure of the plastic content here, but at least it is a small amount of packaging as opposed to other chocolate Easter candy.
• Each basket will also get a small, pretty notebook (my kids are older, so they'll appreciate this)
• For the little toddler in the house, I got him a little board book, a little cloth bag of wooden blocks and a little cardboard tube of crayons.  Everything looks fairly plastic free, methinks.

The Visitation

• I probably am going to put more trinkets in the baskets, but I haven't come up what else, yet.  I had planned to order stuff on line from the plastic free place but I fear I've waited too long on that.

• As for the dye for the eggs, I wish I was the type of person who made dye  from beets or red cabbage, etc.  Maybe next year!  I bought a dyeing kit from Whole Foods but honestly, probably the regular Paas kits have just as much plastic in them.

• Pysanky eggs - I also aspire to do these one day!  I think if you concentrate on these kinds of activities, you can forgo the abominable plastic wrapped marshmallow peeps and the other creeping, consumerist tchotchkes that are creeping into our Easter celebration.

• Replacing the plastic grass for the Easter baskets might take some ingenuity.  I always hated that stuff anyway.  It gets everywhere and clogs up the vacuum!  The email I received suggested shredded paper, but I don't have a shredder and if you buy already shredded paper, it always comes in plastic wrappers!  But I was thinking of getting green yarn and using that.  Or even pretty scarves or any kind of floral cloth (wash clothes, tea towels, dish towels).  I could use the cloth later for other things and the eggs might look pretty nestled in the basket.  I also got
•  the idea of giving each person a t-shirt and having the t-shirt serve as the 'grass' in the basket.  Stilling working on this one.

Other plastic free things to do for Easter:

• Go to Easter vigil - my absolute favorite Mass of the year!
• Go for a family walk -either through the neighborhood or maybe at a park somewhere.
• listen to Handel's Messiah (people always think this is a Christmas piece but it works for Easter too!)
• Watch the movie Ben Hur - this is annual thing for me.  I haven't seen the newer version.  I'll stick with Charlton Heston (though this is actually the only movie of his I like!)
• For dinner, we'll have our annual leg of lamb or maybe just lamb chops.  It might be easier to get the latter not wrapped in plastic, but just over the counter at the butcher section of the grocery store.  Along with that will be scalloped potatoes, asparagus, a tossed green salad, maybe some kind of dessert.