Natural Easter Eggs

Last Spring, we were patiently waiting for our cute little chicks to grow up and lay eggs. This Spring is a different story. Each day we are treated to three fresh eggs, all laid in the same very hard to reach corner.

I love how each of our hens lays a different colored egg (my trendy little ombré inspired hens). But I am slightly disappointed that I don’t have a blue egg laying hen (a Teal Bird). Maybe next year. Back to this year, the kids and I decided to spend the afternoon decorating Easter eggs. I will admit that I am just now learning the proper way to make hard boiled eggs (ones without the strong sulfur-like smell and green ring around a not so fluffy yolk). Apparently you place them in a pot of cold water, gently bring them to a low boil, then turn the heat off and cover them with a pot lid for about 10 minutes. Who knew?

Although our fresh eggs are pretty enough as is, we brightened them up a bit with natural dye made from the beets in our garden. With beets this big, we figured this was the best ingredient for dye.

I placed the sliced beet in a pot containing three cups of water and boiled on high for about 20 minutes. I have read many suggestions to peel and grate the beets, but I figured that given the short attention span of my little ones, I better speed this process up.

I ended up with 1.5 cups of beet dye. To that I added 2 tablespoons of white vinegar (I have yet to find a resource that explains why, but my educated guess is to make the dye stick to the egg).

To give my oldest son a little spelling lesson while decorating. We formed words with alphabet stickers on the hard boiled eggs before placing them in the dye bath and peeled the stickers off afterwards. The two younger kids used a white crayon to scribble on their eggs before getting a bath to get the same “unexposed” effect. Again, time was of the essence here, so our eggs didn’t bathe in the dye for longer than 5 minutes. I am sure the longer they stay in there, the more intense the color.

While waiting for our eggs to finish bathing, we snacked on the cute carrots from the garden and discuss the true beauty of Easter, and I don’t mean bunnies and candy.

Mission complete for today.