Crafty Keys: Easter Eggs

Dyeing Easter eggs is messy. Frankly, it is not even that fun. To be honest, I do not even have a ton of fond egg dyeing memories from my childhood. But for some reason, I feel like it is my supreme Mommy duty to dye Easter eggs. Last year was the first year that I felt like they were both ready. We did it. They did enjoy it. So I decided to try it again. I tried to get clever and bought 2 new kinds. One was magic glitter eggs and the other was tye dye eggs - how can you tye dye a hard boiled egg you may ask? You can't. And frankly none of the eggs ended up looking remotely like the boxes. . .

My first gripe is this. These egg dye people are so helpful. They print all the instructions on the back of the box. How nice, right? These egg dye people are also efficient - the boxes can serve as egg holders to let them dry. The problem: the instructions are printed on the box where you punch out the holes to create the egg holder. Last year, I was so frustrated because I could not remember what to do when, and the instructions were all jumbled on the punched out circles. This year, I did make copies of the boxes with my scanner so that I could consult them throughout the process.

My second gripe was that only one box had the egg dipper holder thingy. This caused some trouble because there was waiting and turn taking involved. Not easy when you have 2 excited children!

The picture of impatience waiting in the dipper thngy
The glitter kit was iffy - we were supposed to have enough for a bunch of eggs, but it all get wet and clumpy. Oh well, we tried! Jessa claimed this kit and was disappointed that she could not do more eggs with it.

Not enough sparkles for more eggs. . .

Note the drying tray with incomplete instructions.

Tye Dyeing involved dyeing them one color and then dropping a few drops of another color on the already dyed egg. Then you rubbed the egg while it was in a bag. It worked out OK, I guess. Spencer enjoyed that part and did a good job.

They never actually looked tye dyed, but Spencer enjoyed the process!

I think this project was just OK. They were occupied, we were glad we did it, but I am not anxiously awaiting next year. . .

I saw a commercial the other day. You know the black and white ones where only the Rice Krispies are colored blue and it is a tender moment with a mommy or daddy and their children. Then the voice over lady says, "Childhood is calling." Well, this commercial had them making rice krispie treat eggs. Yum, right? So after the just OK egg dyeing day, I thought we'd try the new idea. Plus, wouldn't you rather eat rice krispies instead of pink hard boiled eggs?? I thought so.

We put the warm krispie and marshmallow mixture in plastic eggs - like a mold.

Then we dipped the ends in some melted chocolate.

Then we sprinkled the ends. Wow!

Molding the concoction into an egg and Jessa holding the molded treat

Dipping the ends in delicious melted chocolate

Adding sprinkles to our delicious, lovely eggs
This was way more fun! Our fingers were a little sticky, but they were still their natural color. I was not stressing about staining the army's house, and we got lots of delicious nibbles.

After the Crazy Key Family tried both, we if you are going to only do one Easter egg afternoon, I would recommend the updated version. It's not that I am against the old school dyeing method, but the rice krispies were more fun, less messy, and way more yummy!