Easter fun?

 

The commercialisation of Easter moves apace, with Holy Week now being called Easter Week and Good Friday beginning to morph into Easter Friday in the media. Apparently Easter decorations are now a thing, as are Easter crackers!

Okay they aren't marketed as Easter crackers, but the images of chicks. eggs, lambs, fluffy bunnies etc makes it clear what their purpose is.

C got this for 5-year-old D to colour in for his mum and dad. Which leaves 3 more for us to decorate and 5 to assemble. Apparently this activity is known as "crafting". Cue homework for C and me; I believe it is sold as a relaxing pass-time. The kit comes with cracker outer shell/card, snap, party hat, raffia ties, and joke slip (x8) and C has also sourced a pack of chocolate rabbits, one of which will just about fit in each cracker.

The colouring-in part is harmless enough, fun even. I'm actually quite pleased with my cute lamb and managed to largely stay within the lines(!).

Next: the assembly process. As C is still busy with the coloured pencils I dive right in. The cracker outside shells, which we've been colouring, are bendy cardboard with slots and tabs at three positions. When these are connected, which is actually quite a tricky manoeuvre, this results in a cylinder with perforations where the cylinder can be constricted and tied to form a cracker shape. I carefully insert a snap, making sure it's central, tie one end, insert joke, hat, bunny, and then seal them in by tying the other end. 

This process continues, albeit with sporadic surgery on the semi-assembled crackers when an unused hat or bunny is found, until 3 crackers are finished and 2 are almost complete. At this point C decides to look at ,and read out, the assembly instructions...

"Glue each end of the smaller to the before assembling."! Oh bollocks! Of course they aren't going to crack when you pull unless either both ends are squeezed or (more reliably) the ends are fixed to the shell. Are we going to have to disassemble all the crackers?!

(Answer: No. See slow for non-invasive solution to this problem.). 

Before that - the finished hand-crafted products. (And 3 left over for next Easter!)