Bunny Business

When I was a kid, the EB came to our house every year. I have fond memories of coming into the living room and finding five baskets, filled with what seemed to be a one month's supply of sugary goodness, all lined up neatly in a row on the couch every year until I was possibly ten (I'm not sure exactly). I LOVED how the EB would leave my favorite Easter treats in a cute little basket with fake plastic grass. I especially loved finding little jelly beans hidden deep in the grass, but it did bug me that the Peeps marshmallow treats always had the plastic grass stuck to them. This Easter morning tradition made a lot of yummy, sticky, then sickly memories for me. I was not the type of child to savor my spoils over the next week or two. I was usually done with my entire basket of goodies by the close of the day. I think I even found a way to snitch goodies from my sibling's baskets.(Shhhh!) I was able to hide this fact until I developed an allergy to chocolate. Carob bunnies were not on my list of acceptable treats! SO when I broke out in hives after eating someone else's chocolate rabbit, my bad habit of snitching was discovered. Subsequently, Benedryl is another thing I associate with EASTER.

My husband's family didn't celebrate Easter in the same way. His mother is French and the EB didn't exist there. Easter was purely a religious holiday in their home. So, no baskets of candy and no easter egg hunts.

Fast forward to 2000 when our first child was old enough (2) to truly appreciate any holidays... we decided against giving large baskets of candy from the EB, but we did think it would be alright to do a little egg hunt. Living in Wisconsin, an outdoor egg-hunt was not logical for a two year old, so we hid eggs throughout our two bedroom apartment. It started out small and became a pretty fun activity and tradition. And it seemed to be endless because the kids would find the eggs, put them in their very small baskets until they were full, then give them to us to put in a bigger pot. Then we would re-hide the eggs for the kids to re-find. We would play our game for about 45 minutes, or until they wanted to open the eggs and see what was inside. Sometimes, it was just chocolate chips and mini marshmallows. Other times, it was jelly beans and m&ms.

Once we moved to CA, the egg hunts moved outside. That made it even more of a challenge for us to hide them while they were hunting, without them seeing us. This endless egg hunt worked really well until the kids were about six and realized we were recycling the same 30 (or so) eggs, then they helped to hide the eggs.

This year, we will have four hiders and one hunter. It makes me a little sad that the kids are getting so old and outgrowing these little traditions. Now, they just want the candies from inside the eggs. So, this year we are starting a new tradition. We are going to make some baskets for some of the elderly ladies in our church congregation. We will continue our tradition of watching the Ten Commandments on Good Friday. And maybe we will have a family Easter party with some Gluten Free goodies for all.


Looking for Gluten Free Easter candy, I found several blogs about/for celiacs that had an abundance of information that I found extremely useful. This one seemed especially good:



I am so glad to see that Dove chocolates are GF...I looooooove all of their yummy milk and dark chocolates! We will definitely buy more of those!