navygreen | Dyeing eggs. (Reply)

This afternoon we dyed Easter eggs outside on the picnic table.

Heather came over for the fun, and she brought even more egg-dyeing kits with her (I already had two sets myself). We set to work dissolving the tablets for the colors in clear cups. At one point, Heather let go of her green cup, and a gust of wind blew then, knocking the cup over and turning a large section of the picnic table green. A.J. and I jumped out of the way in time, but it was still funny. We decided we'd dump out the extra dye at the end and make the table look really "pretty."

We dyed all of the eggs first, and then we set to work tie-dyeing them with the Scooby Doo kit. I sucked at this part, but the boys did great. I spent several minutes on a red egg, only to unwrap it and find just ONE tiny gray spot. I named him "Cyclops," and he and I became great friends. Next, I dyed a pale yellow egg, but I only managed to give it a handful of purple spots. I named her "Speckles," and I loved her in spite of the laughter she and I endured. ;-)

Before we actually began the tie-dyeing process, however, we dumped out the coloring water and made fresh batches with just a little vinegar (the watered down versions for coloring the eggs just wouldn't work well with the tie-dyeing). Since the dye didn't weigh much, we couldn't put it in clear cups alone, or they'd fall over (we'd learned our lesson earlier *wink*). Heather had a great idea, and we put a little vinegar in the bottom of the egg wells in one of the egg cartons. It worked fabulously until she added the color tablets - then the FIZZ took over and bubbled out into all of the other egg cups! Soon we had a bunch of colors, though none of them were precisely the color that we'd intended - hehe.

While we'd been dyeing the eggs, A.J. was watching over a new cup of green color, and he and Heather got into a discussion about what kind of drink it could look like. They ran through a couple of juice ideas, and then A.J. popped in with, "Or it could be egg nog. Get it? EGG. NOG." Oh my goodness, Heather absolutely cracked up! I thought she might cry from laughing so hard for a minute there. It was just a really funny moment, though you might have had to be there. ;-)

Later on, Jack finished his first tie-dyed egg, and it turned out really, really well. Heather complimented Jack on this, and Jack didn't even pause before saying, "It's because I'm a popular guy," as his reason for the egg looking so great. We laughed at that out-of-the-blue comment, too.

When we were finished, we painted the table with all the leftover color. It looked beatiful as it dried - a rainbow! The boys lined up all of our decorated eggs down the table so that we could see all our hard work. I'm so glad we did this activity outside this year!