Eggcellent

How is it crafts with kids always involve paints and dyes and all things that can stain? I had a heck of a time wrangling the 3.5 year old while the almost one year old had a bad day with teething. Poor girl. But we made it through with no major set backs. Honestly. How did not one dye cup get tipped over? The boy can't make it through dinner without an accidental spill of 1/4" of milk in his cup. I am shocked yet thrilled. And I do love him. But darnit. He's a klutz! But as I said, moot point. We survived. Nothing spilled and only one egg got cracked at the very end when my son was showing off the eggs to daddy. And baby girl sat in the high chair watching it all go down. She however, was not impressed she was not a part of it. Loaded up on infant Tylenol and a teething cookie in hand, she would screech out at us with her outstretched hands wanting to play. If I were a Montessori mom, I'm sure I would have found a way for her to be involved but I barely got by with the one kid handling eggs and dye!

On with it.

We used a kit from last year that hadn't gotten used. But then this year I found all these fabulous ways to naturally dye eggs and I so wanted to do that instead. The "wasteful" fairy on my shoulder made me use the kit though and I'm okay with that. Having said that, the box that turns into a tray for drying is USELESS. Look at this! Am I alone here? Why bother? There has got to be a better way.

I convinced my son to allow me to do 3 eggs.
I wanted to do more, of course, I LOVE dying eggs, but apparently its about the kids. Pffffttt.
I also convinced him to try things like striping with elastics. But explaining how to layer colours is another thing so some worked well and some came out solid colour in the end. And that's okay! It really was fun.

Some vinegar added to the colours helped the colour *pop* a bit more and I also added some food dye drops where I had a matching colour. And for some more *pop* we dyed eggs twice.

Our fancier eggs.

Our gorgeous solids. *sigh* I love Easter Eggs

And then the boy insisted on rubbing on the decals that came with the box and they were suddenly transformed to the trashiest ho-ed up eggs you've ever seen. No photos available. I find them offensive.

Now the eggs are all hiding in various nooks around the living space waiting for a little man's first Easter Bunny egg hunt. I love the moments having kids brings back into my life. I get to relive it all. Don't worry. I do remember. Its about the kids.