Friday, April 02, 2010

It's Time to Color Easter Eggs!

PhotobucketIt's that time again, it's time to pull out the baskets, put the eggs on to boil and make a mess show your creativity with some hard boiled egg coloring!  The kiddos and I are headed to the big city tomorrow to make an appearance with the awesome folks over at local ABC Affiliate, Good Morning Arkansas.  For those of you visiting here for the first time, if you watched the show...WELCOME!  Kick your shoes off, grab you a glass of sweet tea and take a look around. Now lets get down to business.

When coloring Easter Eggs, it's best to do it at someone else's home with lots of help.  We have three children, so usually Grandma and Grandpa come over and help out.  At least one adult per child works best.  Mine are ages 7, 4, & 18 months.  We colored eggs tonight and had great fun.  In order to test out products for the show I purchased several different egg dying kits.

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We tried: PAAS' Mini-Monster decorating kit.  The kit contains pipe cleaners, fun stickers and fuzzy hair along with the traditional coloring tablets.

A Tie Dye Egg Coloring Kit that contains 5 liquid color packets, 6 color droppers, 6 coloring bags, 1 work station/coloring palette and 6 egg stands.

Dudley's Coloring Cups containing 5 coloring Cups, 1 "magic" crayon, 5 coloring tablets, and one egg dipper.

Dudley's Tattoo Fun which contains 38 tattoos, 1 applicator, 9 paper egg stands, 5 coloring tablets, and 1 egg dipper.

Spin an Egg Egg Coloring Kit with 1 Egg Spinner, 1 Hand Puppet, 1 Filler Egg, 10 Color Packets

PhotobucketWe have found over time that the traditional egg coloring works best for our family. We fill up the cups with several different colors and put them in the middle of the table. This allows the children the opportunity to use whichever colors they like. We have many different "dippers" but for the most part, they sit in the egg cups or lay on the table. They are rarely ever used. It's much easier for my children to just dive in head first use their hands. Of course everyone has their own little tips and tricks, I'm sure for vibrant or pastel colors. I've always just used warm water and vinegar. This seems to work best. Food coloring is another option, but keep in mind when using this option that the food coloring tends to stain quicker, easier, and longer.

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The Tie Dye Kits are a very neat idea, in theory. I think that for younger children, it is NOT a good idea. First of all, you have to squeeze the colors out of the packets onto a work station/color palette. You put the egg in a plastic bag and then squeeze the color up into a color dropper and squeeze it onto the egg. The next step is to rub the plastic bag over the egg to achieve a multi-colored tie dye look. I feel like this would be enjoyable for parents of older children, tweens/teens who still enjoy coloring eggs or doing so with younger siblings, etc.


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PhotobucketIf you want to achieve this Tie Dye look then Dudley's Spin an Egg coloring kit is a wonderful alternative to the above mentioned Tie Dye kit. You simply place a dry, room temperature egg into the spinner, add a few drops of your choice of color, and place the lid onto the top and begin to spin! You spin it around by pressing the top much like a child's toy. My kids LOVED this contraption. It was great fun and not that messy either! This item was only $5 at my local Wal-Mart. It's significantly higher than the 99 cent kits with just the color tablets, "magic" crayon, and egg dipper, but this kit is fun and it does come with a Dudley hand puppet to take out the egg.

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Shelby loved the Tattoo Kit. Both of my kids love to apply tattoos on themselves and when given the opportunity to do so on their Easter Eggs, it was quite fun! The application is a bit tricky being that the eggs are, well...egg shaped! Ba-da-dum! You simply put the tattoo over the egg and use the applicator to press the tattoo onto the egg. Once applied to the egg, it really does look as though the picture was painted on the egg!
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The Pass Mini-Monster Kit was also a cute idea. The stickers were quite small and seemed to be a bit difficult for my children to remove, but they loved making egg faces. The adhesive didn't seem to stick very well either, so we had a hard time getting the hair and pipe cleaners to stick to it. But even without those, the stickers were fun to make the faces.
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The coloring cups are a nice thing to have because the cups are re-useable. We've managed to obtain several of them over the last few years, so if you need a few give me a shout! We've also got a lifetime supply of egg dippers in a variety of shapes and sizes. No matter how you plan on decorating eggs for this holiday, just remember the reason for the holiday! Have fun and enjoy your time with the kiddos. Take lots of pictures because some day you will look back on these days and miss them!!

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Of course if you don't want to invest the money in a kit, you can pull out the food coloring, a white crayon, and a spoon. It works just as well. But, as mentioned above, remember that the food coloring tends to stain the hands a bit easier than the tablets. A trick we've learned is that you can use baking soda to remove some of the excess color.

5 comments, add yours here:

LAC said...

Who knew there were so many cool options for dying eggs these days. I cannot remember the last time I did it, though I love experimenting with different methods. Good luck on the show today, you'll do great.

Anonymous said...

Fun, fun, fun! Who cares how long the stain lasts as long as they fun!

Empress Bee (of the high sea) said...

i remember the way that stuff smelled so many years ago. i wonder if it still has that smell? they are so cute!

smiles, bee
xoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Akelamalu said...

The mini monster egg is so funny - I bet the kids loved that didn't they?

Maggie Moo said...

What a neat contraption that is! I wonder if I can find that here. I'm excited to color eggs tomorrow. We do it every year, even before Rye Bread was alive. :)

Do you get recognized out and about now?