Easter Time
Egg Coloring
This is our first year experimenting with coloring
fresh eggs. We had a handful of friends waiting to
hear the results so we weren't the only ones anticipating
the outcome. I thought it would be difficult to change the
color of brown eggs (some darker brown) and bluish-green
eggs, but surprisingly, they turned out with the most rich,
dark colors that I've ever seen. Some of the eggs had
natural brown specks on them which looked like we purposely
added that. Here's our color recipe that we used
once our eggs were boiled and cooled.
For each color cup of 1 cup hot water add 1 tbsp white
vinegar:
Blue: 10 drops blue food coloring
Red: 10 drops of red
Purple: 6 drops of red and 5 drops of blue
Orange/Melon: 8 drops of orange and 2 drops of red
Green: 10 drops of green
Turquoise: 8 drops of blue and 2 drops of green
Here's what we started with:
Here's a small sample of what we ended up with:
We started playing around a bit with adding an additional drop of food coloring after the egg was dropped into the water without stirring around the color. We ended up with a neat looking, almost tie-dyed effect. Naturally, the longer we left the eggs in the solution, the darker they became. For us, it was the Great Easter Egg Experiment!
Easter Sunday 2012
Easter 2012 was a lot of fun at our house. About
three years ago, I tweaked the way we did things.
Rather than doing six (now seven) separate Easter baskets, I
kind of combined all the goodies into one big bundle so to
speak.
I wasn't sure how the kids would adjust to such a big
change, but surprisingly, it was a huge hit and because of
this, they say they can't wait till next year!
We now do what we call an Easter Treasure Hunt. First, I shop for various items that usually are outdoor-geared since Easter means Spring is here. This year the treasure box was filled with swim masks, snorkels, beach balls, floats, skim boards, Skylander characters (that company that has been robbing my bank account) and various favorite candies. I hide the treasure box at the last stop first. When the kids know what's coming, they tend to need to go into my usual hiding places like my closet, etc. more often than normal. Hubby and I spend time coming up with creative riddles that send the kids running to the next potential spot where the next riddle (clue) is waiting. That is IF they can come up with the answer. I love watching the kids work together like a true team, throwing out guesses and correcting each other.
After a big lunch and special desserts, we have an outside egg hunt with approximately 100 plastic eggs. A dozen are "golden eggs" that have money inside and a dozen are cupcake eggs filled with quarters. It's a "jackpot!", says my 10 year old.
To us, spending quality together with family is what
matters most. We looks forward to many years to come!
