Easter Eggs

This was the first year that I felt the kids were old enough to dye Easter eggs. To have done it before now would have been chaos, I think. It was a little chaotic even now, but the kids LOVED it!

Also, as luck would have it, the day that Gammy, Granny Kat, and Aunt Jayne all came to visit, it was raining and therefore the perfect opportunity to dye eggs! Lots of children and lots of helpers!

I was a little nervous about the eggs because I didn't boil them. I BAKED them! It was Alton Brown's (I'm Just Here for the Food) recommendation for hard cooking a large quantity of eggs at once. It was super-easy, and they turned out great! I wish I had taken a picture of all the eggs on the rack in the oven! It looked really strange! (In case you're interested: put eggs straight onto rack in middle of cold oven, 30 minutes at 325, remove eggs to ice water bath until chilled, done! But be warned, the baking process does cause the eggs to exude some sort of moisture droplets which then burn on the egg's surface like polka dots, so if you want pristinely white eggs, don't bake them!)

The set up: 2 old towels, 1 old t-shirt, 9 plastic cups filled with dye, 5 excited toddlers, 1 large bowl of eggs, 5 large plastic bibs, 5 excited adults (all female, of course!), 2 cameras

The kids enjoyed every part of the experience. They liked choosing their own eggs from the bowl. They liked choosing their own dye color and dropping the egg into the cup. They liked spooning the egg out to see the color. They were so disappointed when we ran out of eggs!

Zachary chooses the perfect egg

Reagan checks out the progress of her egg





Jonathan drops his egg into the dye (the kids particularly enjoyed it when the dropping egg splashed dye everywhere! Hooray for old towels and big bibs!)



Cousin Tyler checks out his egg's progress

Look at Thomas' face! He is so proud of himself!

Here are the kids with some of the finished eggs. They wouldn't all fit on the little drying rack. They were so proud of themselves and their beautiful eggs! And I was so proud of them too! I had no idea they would enjoy it so much! And I'm so grateful for all the help! I can't imaging trying to do that without all the extra adults! Not at this age, anyway!

If only they had eaten the eggs with as much enthusiasm as they dyed them! They were all about wanting to have an egg on their plates and pick out the color they wanted and watch me peel it, but not so much on the actual egg consumption. Jonathan ate best, a shock to us all! Oh, well! More for me!