Obligatory Egg-Decorating Photos

I didn't want to do the same-ol', same-ol' egg-dyeing techniques this year, because I get craftention deficit disorder. In other words, boooooring! (No offense. I'll probably get the Paas kit and do the same-ol' next year. But THIS year, I was ambitious.)

I've been wanting to blow out eggs for years, for whatever reason (I have no good one, other than just to say I did it and move on), so that's where I started out. Thanks to this article on Martha's site (hey, I like the woman, leave me alone), I succeeded on my second egg. And about every other egg thereafter, for about a dozen and a half eggs. I broke a lot!

 

But that's okay, breaking some, because I already had planned to do this with those eggs. (I saw this idea in either Family Fun or Martha Stewart Living magazine, because I am really not that creative.) So, no harm, no foul. The one thing I will say is that it's impossible to keep the blown-out eggs submerged in their dye baths without holding them down, so enlist the kids for help with that while you're busy blowing out (or breaking) the next egg or two. It works well when you have three eager kids wanting to help.

 

When my nasal syringe developed a rather alarmingly large hole in the side, I was forced to abandon egg-blowing and move on to silk tie-dyeing instead. (I tried to blow out the eggs myself, but I nearly gave myself an aneurysm or a brain embolism or something, so bad idea.) This is another technique I've been wanting to try for at least a handful of years, so I sent Rob out to the thrift store to grab a few ties, and being the smarty that he is, he chose four that he would actually wear if I didn't like them. (I did forget to tell him to get silk ties, which is key, but he managed to get four 100% silkies anyway. Yee-haw.)

I asked him to get flower pots and egg cups at the thrift store as well, but he was unlucky there. Darn. I'd love a cool collection of egg cups, but I only ever think of it every year on Easter Eve.

Anyway. Moving on...

This mottled look is what I got when I opened the silk packages of eggs, rather than the vivid, darkly-colored ones that I expected from the tie pattern I chose first. I thought maybe I didn't boil them long enough, or add enough vinegar, but it was pretty much the same with the second batch:

 

I guess, in retrospect, it's a pretty cool effect, but I live my life in living color, and I was disappointed by the muted hues at the time. Rob was underwhelmed by the results, too. We probably won't try this again, but at least I can say I've done it - and he's got two new ties for his troubles. (As you can see, I threw a few of the eggs in the dye baths, just to see how they would look. Meh.)

  

The third technique was to use rubber bands as a "mask," just to see if it would work. It did, and it was cool, but I only did one set of each color before I moved on from that. By the way, I did shine my eggs with vegetable oil, if you're wondering why they're so glossy. Works great.

{I just remembered and thought I'd share: Sophia was in charge of carrying in the silk- and cut-up curtain-wrapped eggs to the kitchen and bringing me fresh eggs to the craft room to wrap. Well, I gave her two at a time once, and en route to the kitchen, she got the bright idea to clap them together. Well, they weren't cooked. Ha. Um, she didn't do that again!} 

 

The kids had long since abandoned the egg-dyeing processes for Nova-produced documentaries on Netflix by that point, so left to my own devices, I didn't want to do much that would be exciting and have them miss it. Chloë and I did some resist technique using crayons, which you can see a little bit in the top middle, and I also tried using stickers for masks. That didn't come out too well. And finally, I used glitter and glue on a couple of eggs, just for kicks.

Another thing I did differently this year was use my Wilton gel food coloring instead of regular drops or pellets. The eggs were gorgeous, very vivid and bright. I'll definitely do that again.

So five dozen eggs later, we had some blown-out that I probably won't keep for next year anyway, some hard-boiled tie-dyed eggs, and some regular-dye raw eggs. Hopefully, we won't forget which are which out of the latter two!

 

I had all the egg innards from the blown-out eggs sitting in a bowl, so I decided to make a quiche. Well, two. Another run for Rob to the store for cheese (and toilet paper, 'cause we ran out and were stuck using paper towels, eek!), which I put Chloë happily to work grating for me. She enjoyed that job immensely, judging by her incessant chatter about what a good job she was doing. It was both eyeroll-inducing and chuckle-worthy at the same time, her patter.

Fortunately, I had a package of two rolled pie crusts in the freezer, so that hastened the dinner-making process. And we'd gotten a pound of ground turkey for me to brown in the skillet, along with some frozen spinach I quickly heated up, from our Angel Food Ministries package this morning (our first time ordering, and we'll probably do it again in future), so dinner was a snap.

Unfortunately, none of the kids liked the quiche. Jack doesn't like melted cheese on anything, so I knew he would be a complainer. The girls didn't like the spinach and refused to pick it out. Rob and I devoured ours, and he had seconds, so it was definitely good in my humble opinion! Later, Jack cracked three hard-boiled eggs in quick succession to fill his rumbly tumbly, and I scrambled some other prettily-dyed eggs for the lady-babies, so we're pretty egged-out at the moment!

After Rob so nicely cleaned up our egg-coloring mess for me, the kids and I got to work making Easter sugar cookies. They cut the shapes, and I baked and decorated them, since it was bedtime by the time they were cool. That didn't stop the girls from sneaking down to watch me anyway, and we let them. They oohed and ahhed over each new one I iced, although I didn't do anything terribly fancy for them. (Sorry for all the flash-y pictures, but it was late by then, and the pink came out looking far more red than it really should.)

 

These few didn't fit on the cutting board, but Chloë insisted I take and show a picture of these, too. Okay, girlfriend, here you go.

 

After that, I still had tons and tons of Jelly Belly beans to use up, so I decided to make cupcakes, too. Yes, I know. It's far too much junk. But I was in the zone, what can I say?

Just the thought of eating one of these, with all that sugar, makes me want to gag. I don't know how I used to be able to do it! (Although, truly, I never have liked jelly beans of any sort.)

 

Rob did a rare thing while I was decorating the made-from-scratch chocolate cupcakes: he picked up my camera and took pictures of ME doing something, without me asking. He says the reason he never does is because I always complain about how they turn out, which is true - I do - but I actually don't look terribly gross here, so guess what? Here I am, slouchiness notwithstanding.

I don't know about yummy, but they certainly are colorful, no?

I really do need to invest in a good cupcake stand or two! Chloë was so disappointed I stacked them and smushed the bottom ones. I wouldn't have done that if these were actually going for something and not just 'cause, but I wanted the stacky pictures.

Anyhoo, now it's 0530 on Easter morning, and I'm going to look at the paper a little before it's time to wakey-wakey-eggs-and-bakey the kiddos and get them in the shower before church. Usually we go on Saturday nights, even for Easter, but like I said, I was in the zone. So we'll brave the crowds in a few hours. Oy.

Happy Easter!

Fin.