Egg Dyeing -- not for the faint of heart

I have romantic notions of various childhood experiences. Taking care of some super cute baby ducks and/or geese, making 'recipes' of sand and mud in the backyard, and reading my Pocahontas book during a July rainstorm with the windows open.

I want to pass on these experiences to my own children. And as I've done so with other experiences, I all too quickly realize that I am remembering the experience from MY (child) perspective. I don't ever recall cleaning off the back porch duck poop (though I remember my mom doing it every morning as I left for school). I don't recall what happened to those sandy mud pies, but I know I never had to wash my clothes at such a young age (though I did grumble a lot when I had to help put clothes away with my mom). And I know I never even thought about wiping those window sills after a rainstorm.

Another such romantic notion I have is dyeing Easter eggs. Oh, it was a magical time! My mom would mix up a lovely concoction of food dye, vinegar, & water in her cute little blue-flowered tea cups. She would carefully drop the hard boiled eggs in her little tea cup, wait, raise it back up & leave it to dry. In as little as 30 minutes I had everything I needed to have one awesome egg hunt.

So, the time had come to pass on this tradition of dyeing eggs with my children. And, as an added bonus, one of my good friends brought her daughter, Scamp, over. I did several things wonderfully and some not so wonderfully.

Wonderful decisions:
1. Eggs were boiled ahead of time. (How boring is THAT to a 5yo or pre-schooler?!)
2. Purchasing enough eggs for each child to have a dozen.
3. Providing some simply irresistible sparkly glitter & tacky glue for added decoration. (Oh, and markers for the artsy Addie.)
4. EVERYTHING was moved outside. The cups filled with dye, all eggs, glitter especially, and some towels for drying.

Not-so-wonderful decisions:
1. Dyeing the eggs as part of the decorating process. Each egg needs a good 5-minute soak. So, dyeing 48 eggs with 8 cups of dye took, um, some time. And who --really -- wants to sit around on the front porch waiting for eggs to soak in some dye when it is a sunny, comfortable 70 degrees & power wheels that have been hibernating in the garage for the past 4 months?!? Oh, AND a friend comes over?!?!
2. Putting all of the dyeing & decorating necessities at foot-level on the porch. (Somehow we didn't have any spills though.)
3. Having all 4 children decorate the eggs together. Addie poured out two tubes of glitter while I was helping Scamp. There were a few scuffles over who got THAT purple egg.
4. Allowing them to peel & throw out an egg that had been unintentionally cracked. Suddenly 3 more eggs had cracks (that I hadn't noticed before) in them & "needed" to be peeled & effectively destroyed. I had to change my position on the matter at that point.

All-in-all we had a great time. I'm not sure how -- or if-- they'll remember it. And if they do remember it, I hope they remember it as a fun, creative time with mom (or a friend's mom) who let them make a mess (albeit outside).