Tuesday, April 10

I don't think I mentioned in my last post that me and the kidlings planned on making homemade dyes for Easter eggs?  Well, more like I planned it and they glommed on to the idea.  Anyway, it was super fun and a huge success and I thought I would wow you with Before and After photos before I revealed the common household food items that contributed to our success.


Here are 2 dozen plain old, store-bought white eggs, full of hormones and chemicals and the sad tale of mothers kept confined while they became life-long egg donors:

And here, magically transformed, are the very same eggs 12 hours later, and suddenly no one really cares about what's inside because look how beautiful they turned out:

I know!  That's what we said!  Turmeric made yellow, onions skins made orange, beets made pink, red cabbage made pale blue, and grape juice made lavender.  I was skeptical before we started, thinking, come on, are they early going to turn out that great?  But I am such a fan of trying new things, and making Easter more than just a basket of candy and a mad race to find plastic eggs in the house and yard.

We started on Friday evening, after we had a cold stroll downtown to the end-of-season street dance, boiling each item (except the grape juice concentrate) for 30 minutes with some white vinegar and straining out the liquid into Mason jars:

We dropped the hard-boiled eggs into their natural dye baths on Saturday morning while we were filling time until the ski area opened, and allowed the 45 minutes to absorb their colors.

Waiting, waiting...

And look at the finished product!  I did the crackling effect with a couple of them too.

As they dried from glossy to matte the colors seemed to deepen while we watched.  It was magical and exciting and then we were able to proudly display a bowl of jewel-colored eggs that made our whole house smell like farts until I broke into the innards and made egg salad for my lunches this week.

The skiing was, of course, great all weekend.  True to form I had a miniature break-through on the last day, starting to more fluidly navigate bumps.  We took the kids up to the top of 9 to watch the crowd gather for the last chair ride up and the lift stop for the season, with a big cheer and roar and bellow from all, poles raised, as Himay climbed the tower to get his shot of all us hangers-on, then we took our time making turns to the bottom of the area and chalked up this ski season as a huge success for each of us individually and as a family.

JC has taken the kidlings out to our favorite Cedar Mesa camping spot for a few days for their Spring Break, and I am home with quiet and solitude, my soul sisters.  If the weather does what we want (ha ha) they will come back on Thursday to clean up, replenish, and collect me for a 3-day weekend of more desert camping.

My next short-term goal?  Tan lines.