Category Archives: General Information

General information about Rooftop Post and the printables we create.

Easter, General Information, Spring

What Does the Easter Bunny Do?

Easter Bunny
The Easter Bunny

It’s a good question because around the world in different countries and even within different families in the same country, the answer varies quite a bit.

So, in our ever-growing global village, who is today’s Easter Bunny?

Here’s what we know…

Bunny Basics

Most of us, however, have the following rabbity experiences in common:

1. The Easter Bunny visits every Easter Eve.  (That’s the night before Easter rather than the day itself – like Christmas Eve.)

2. The Easter Bunny doesn’t visit grown-ups.  Sorry.

3. The Easter Bunny leaves presents.  Usually sweets or chocolate or both.

chocolate-easter-eggs

In some cultures, she also leaves toys, money, flowers and painted eggs.

money-flowers-easter-gifts

She doesn’t always leave his gifts in the same place.  In some houses he pops sweets into Easter baskets, boxes or bonnets (the ones your children made earlier, unless as in our family, you forgot to organise that one and had to rush out and buy the nearest thing the same night.  Easter flower pots were what we had last year.)

Fortunately if you haven’t had time to make a container of any kind,  he can also leave treats in a basket he made himself.  (Ours will definitely be doing that this time around.)

Easter-basket

Occasionally, the Easter Bunny also likes to leave her eggs in an Easter nest.

easter-nest

In other homes, she hides chocolate all around the house/garden so that the children wake up to an Easter egg hunt.  (A quick tip here – don’t let your Easter Bunny hide a cream egg anywhere it can be stepped into the carpet.  Cleaning up quite such a sticky mess does not put an Easter smile upon your face.  We speak from experience!)

4. The Easter Bunny can be male or female.  (In our house she’s always been female, as you might have gathered.)

5. The Easter Bunny is magical.  Obviously.  After all, she gets in without a key and manages to bring treats to all the good boys and girls in the world in one night.

6. Though often depicted as white, the Easter Bunny can be any colour.  She sometimes carries an Easter basket full of chocolate or painted eggs.  She isn’t generally depicted wearing an Easter Bonnet, which, when you think about it, is a bit of a pity.

easter-bunny-in-a-bonnet

Paws for Thought – Bunny Differences

There are of course, some ways in which Easter Bunny traditions differ wildly.  Here are a few examples:

In Australia, the Easter Bilby is sometimes the visitor of choice to deliver the children’s Easter eggs.  Due to the environmental impact of rabbits and the need to support the endangered (and very cute) bilby, many Australians would like to see it replace the Easter Bunny altogether.

Easter Bilby
Easter Bilby

In France the magical Flying Bells (les cloches volantes) deliver the eggs instead of a bunny.  The idea is that shortly before Easter, all the church bells fly away to Rome and then on their way back, they drop the eggs with which they have been blessed while in the holy city.  (We’ve never been in France over Easter but it seems as though if you’re out and about on Easter Eve, it may pay to take an umbrella.)

Easter in France: Flying Bells
Easter in France: Flying Bells

If you’re wondering how the Easter Bunny gets around the world on the night before Easter, there are different traditions about that too.  Some say that she has a secret network of tunnels running all around the world – even under the oceans.  If you like that idea, this free printable letter from her backs it up.

Easter Bunny on her way around the world
The Easter Bunny on her way around the world through his secret network of tunnels.

There are those who say that like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny travels in a sleigh but instead of reindeer, it is pulled by magical flying hedgehogs.

We’ve also heard tell that he travels on the back of an Easter dragon – which is a rather lovely idea – and on the more outlandish side, that she owns a giant magical flying carrot.  And after all, why not?  It could be quite useful.  No need to stop for snacks if you can simply take a bite out of your vehicle as you glide around the globe.

Easter-Bunny-riding-Magical-Carrot

However she gets around, you can be sure it’s the dead of night and that she doesn’t need a Rudolph-type helper to see in the dark.  Not with all those carrots she eats!

 

 

General Information, Popular

Latest Free Stuff

artist-drawingLooking for the latest free printables we’ve made? 

 Well, it’s it’s been a bit of a slow start this January as most of the artists who donate resources to this site tend to either be really busy at this time of year or off taking a holiday. 

 However, we do have a few new printables for you to kick of 2013.  We hope, as always that you’ll find them useful and if you want to know which ones we ourselves like best… well, probably those on our new dragon page.  (We also hope to add to these further very soon.)   Anyway, please find our latest printable resources in the list below:

  • Note from the Easter Bunny – This little note will be useful for those of you who are hiding your children’s Easter Bunny eggs around the house for the children to find in the morning. 

 

  • Under the Sea Envelope – We’re not quite sure how this one will be useful, but it’s pretty and we’re sure those of you who like it will come up with something.  It would be an ideal envelope for anything to do with mermaids of course… we don’t have any mermaid stuff on this site at the moment, but it’s definitely an idea to add some, so we’ll bear it in mind. 

 

  • The Alphabet in Dragonish – We love this one.  Just love it.  It’s such a lovely bit of magic  to get the children working out how to write their names in Dragonish and so on.  Great for a rainy afternoon when they’re fed up with colouring in.

 

  • Dragon Friend Certificates – There are two of these, a certificate for a girl and a certificate for a boy.  They’re another of our favourites, such fun for any child who loves dragons.  They look especially nice in a little frame on a child’s bedroom wall.  If you want to type (rather than hand write) the names of your children onto these certificates, make sure you scroll down to underneath the certificates and use the green download button to get an editable PDF.

 

Before we wind up this post, we also want to mention that sady, the Rooftop Post shop has not survived the recent recession.  We will therefore be closing it shortly.  This means that you will not be able to buy full-length story letters for Christmas 2013.  On the upside, we will continue to deliver as many free printables to you as we can.

Don’t forget that instead of having to check on our website all the time, you can find out what new printables we’ve added every couple of months by signing up for our newsletter.

 

General Information, Popular

2013 – Printables Planned for the New Year

Well, here we are, another new year.  Doesn’t time fly?  Christmas is over, the children are back in school and 2013 is well underway.  So, what new printables are we planning to add to the free area of our site next?  Well, between now and the end of March, we’ll be asking our artists for resources of the Easter kind.  As you may know, all the resources on this part of our website are supplied by volunteers… so we can never be quite sure what they’ll come up with and when, but we’ve definitely heard Easter Bunny Note noises from one or two, and Easter Colouring noises from another. 

What else?  Well, in case you haven’t noticed, we’ve already added “Dragon Friend” certificates and a printout of the Dragonish Alphabet this year.  We’re thinking that if dragony things turn out to be popular, (we can tell via our stats), we’ll look at creating more.  We also want to build up our fairy page, which hasn’t had our attention for a long time, so fingers crossed for that.  

Once Easter is over, we’ll be looking at expanding summer resources of all sorts of course, ready for the holidays.  (Apologies to those in the southern hemisphere for whom that time of year will be winter – we do tend to run to a UK season schedule!)  The most popular summer resources we have at the moment are our Keep Cleaning Your Teeth This Summer tooth fairy note and our Good Behaviour Over the Summer Holidays certificate from Santa, but we plan to add more.  It’s also the time of year we look at non-seasonals such as chore charts and party invitations, so we’ll do what we can there.  Finally, we’re very much hoping we’ll be able to introduce  few “birthday fairy” reources around August – one of our artists has said she will have a go at some – which for us will be a first.

By the time Hallowe’en rolls around we’re usually preparing for Christmas already, but if any of our volunteers send us some spooky resources over, we’ll be sure to add them for you to enjoy. 

And so to the subject of Christmas.  Goodness, at the time of writing (January) it feels like such a long way away!  Still, there’s no doubt that we’ll be adding new printables for Christmas from September onwards, (or indeed tidying up old ones), because we always do.  We hope by then you’ll have had a lovely year, along with your loved ones.

Wishing you all the best for 2013,

The Rooftop Post Team x

P.S.  Don’t forget that if you want to hear about our new free printables, you can subscribe to our newsletter.  We send it out roughly every four to six weeks, so it’s not too invasive.  Also, rest assured we  definitely won’t be passing your email address on to anyone else.