If you’re anything like me, you’re pretty much determined to stick to all of the holiday traditions that you had as a kid. For me, that means I can’t skip coloring Easter eggs! But let’s be real here…we have these visions of how it will go, and then we add the toddler into the equation and all heck breaks loose. (Pumpkin carving for example. That’s why we skipped the knives on our pumpkins this year.)
Dying Easter eggs is no exception. I don’t know about your kiddos, but I can’t picture our daughter sitting still to stare at an egg in a bowl full of dye for five minutes waiting for something to happen. I wanted to use some techniques that would nix some of the mess, (OK, a lot of the mess) and keep her interested for more than thirteen seconds.
I found these awesome faux eggs at Walmart this year. We were able to skip the boiling, the risks of cracks, refrigeration, and Reagan can even play with them afterwards! (And they were only $1.98. That’s less than a carton of real eggs at the grocery store!) Using these, we used three different (and pretty clean!) methods for coloring our eggs this year.
Speckled Eggs using Rice
The look of these eggs was my favorite. Look at those pretty speckled colors! All you’ll need for these is your eggs, some Tupperware containers, uncooked rice, and liquid food coloring. Add some nice fat drops of food coloring to the rice and mix it around.
Make sure the cover is on tightly, and shake it up! If the colors aren’t coming out as bold as you’d like, you can add some more coloring to the rice, or even pop the egg into another color for a multi-colored effect. (One thing to note is that if you go with real hard boiled eggs, you’ll have to be more gentle to not crack the shell. We were really able to go to town with this one since the eggs are fake.)
Pastel eggs using Ziplock baggies
This method gives the same look as you would get from traditional methods of just dipping eggs in dye, but with WAY fewer risks of spills. All we used for this one was ziplock snack baggies, food coloring, water, and a splash of vinegar.
To the ziplock bags, we added four or five drops of food coloring, a splash of water, and a splash of vinegar. (There’s no need to get too precise with measurements here.) Throw in the egg and make sure the whole seal is snapped tightly. Let your babe shake, swish, and swirl the egg around in the bag until the whole egg is colored.
Paintbrush Method
This method definitely provided the most faint color of the three methods, and it also posed the most opportunity for spills. However, our daughter LOVES to paint, so this process was her favorite. I mixed up the food coloring, water, and splash of vinegar in small glass jars and let her use paint brushes to apply the color. (One helpful tip about using the dye in open containers like this: while plastic seems like a better idea because it can’t be broken, a heavier container like glass or ceramic is actually a little harder to tip because of the weight.)
Do you color eggs with your family or little ones? What are your favorite methods?
little green pear 