It was a gorgeous day here in Northern Virginia! Alex and I took a break from our ongoing indoor projects to make a little headway on a few outdoor to dos we had lined up. I'm happy to say that our outdoor furniture is up from the basement and assembled, the ivy is trimmed and our garden beds are the proud new owners of a few transplanted plants from Cleveland. (Thanks Mom and Dad!)

My brother is also in town this weekend, and in true corny fashion, I was hoping to relive a bit of our childhood together by having an Easter egg decorating competition. My brother showed his enthusiasm for the task by taking a nap, but with or without him, I was determined to adorn the dozen eggs I had in the frig.

I began the project by hard boiling the eggs. A simple task, if you know the correct steps:

1. Place eggs in saucepan.
2. Cover eggs with cold tap water, filling to 1" above the tops of the eggs.
3. Bring water to a rolling boil over high heat.
   
   
   
4. Once boiling, reduce heat to medium and cook for ten minutes.
5. Remove pan from heat and replace hot water with ice water in saucepan over eggs.
   
   
   
6. Chill until cooled completely.

Now that I had my hard boiled eggs, I was ready to get started using the Paas Marble Magic kit I picked up at Target last week for $1.99. I first started out by dyeing the eggs their base coat of pink, orange or green. Smooth sailing.



Next I made four additional batches of dye for the top coat. According to the directions, you should add three tablespoons of vegetable oil to each of the color baths, vigorously mix the oil and dye together, and immediately place the egg in the mixture, "rapidly turning with egg dipper" for about 30 seconds.. Hmm. Didn't sound too difficult, but as you can see from the short video, I wasn't "eggactly" pleased with the results.



Frustrated with the process, I decided to kick it old school and do a 2-tone egg by hand, as well as try a technique I remember using with my grandma, which involves wrapping the egg in a small piece of cloth, tying it off tight at the top with a rubber band, and then submersing the bandaged egg in the dye.





The results of the cloth-wrapped egg were subtle and interesting.



Feeling like I shouldn't completely abandon the Paas kit though, I hopped to it and gave the marbling another try, this time vigorously stirring and rotating the egg with a plastic fork, not the egg dipper. The results were much better!

My only complaint is that the vegetable oil in the egg bath left an oily film on the surface of the eggs, which after completely dry, I wiped off with a paper towel.

All in all, it was a fun project that took less than an hour, brought me back to my childhood, and is providing my lunch of egg salad for the week. Not too shabby.



Did anyone else dye eggs this year? Any interesting techniques to share? In the meantime, enjoy the rest of your weekend (and, if you celebrate it, happy Easter).