On Thursday our friends Jolene and Kelson came over for a springtime celebration. We dyed eggs in all sorts of colors with things we had right in the kitchen. It was the first time I had ever done that and it was so fun. We used turmeric, onion skins, beets, nettles, and marigolds. We even made a dye pot with a few freezer burned raspberries I dug out of the freezer and a few concord grapes too, just to see what it would be like (oh yeah, and Jeff threw in some alkanet root too.) Then we decorated the eggs by coloring on them. Some with crayons and some with beeswax (which was fun because it was invisible and would be a surprise when the design appeared after dipping it in the dye.) After all our decorating and dipping was completed, Jeff and I took turns going outside to hide the eggs around the yard. I had found a little basket for each of the boys at the thrift store and they headed out to the yard, baskets in hand. They squealed with delight every time they found an egg! It was so cute to see how excited they got about it all. Then they would place eggs in each others baskets. They weren’t concerned the least bit with putting the eggs in their own baskets, they just enjoyed finding the eggs, which we thought was great. Jeff had also hidden two little minneolas (tangerines) for each boy.

Bracken plopped down right in the middle of the egg finding to eat his, which didn’t surprise us one bit.

Then, after the egg hunt, they wanted to start eating the eggs.

Our favorite dye was turmeric. It gave the prettiest yellow color!

 Onion skin dye and some crayon doodles.

Also onion skin dye. I loved this sweet one Jolene made. 

(The adults had just as much fun decorating as the boys did!)

Dyed with marigolds. Egg by Jeff.

Dyed with nettles. 

Dyed with beets. 

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The dyeing part was a good learning experience for us. If we would have left them in the dye longer, the colors would have come out richer on many of them. Some we hardboiled first and then dyed and others we hardboiled as we dyed. It was so fun to experiment. Our yard was sort of a mess with all the projects going on, but the egg hunt was lots of fun regardless. I grew up doing Easter egg hunts every year and really loved it. Our family is not religious and we celebrate each holiday in our own way, taking bits and pieces from traditions we’ve enjoyed and blending them with new ones of our own. This was a celebration of spring and watching the earth awaken. We’re looking forward to doing it again next year!