I have many fond memories of my brother and I dyeing eggs every Easter at my grandmother’s house.  We were true artists, with egg shells for canvases.  I recall trying various techniques, like dipping in multiple colors, wrapping them with rubber bands or sticking stickers on them before dipping them, dripping or even rubbing food coloring on them.  True, some of them we took a step or two (or three or four) too far and they ended up awful shades of mottled brown, but some of them were quite beautiful.  My grandmother was sweet enough to humor us well into our teenage years, always making a big batch of hard boiled eggs and glorious shades of dye each Easter for our yearly experiment, even though she firmly declared that the most gorgeous eggs where the ones you put into only one color and just left there!

But where’s the fun in that?!

So, this year, with much excitement, I prepared for my girls’ first annual egg dyeing event.  Being the mess-a-phobe that I am, I was a little concerned about the project, but then I found a terrific tip on Pinterest – instead of using spoons to move the eggs in and out of the dye, put the egg into a wire whisk.  The whisk forms a little protective cage around the egg so that your toddler can swish and dip and take the egg in and out to their heart’s content!

Thanks to that little tip, Alethea absolutely loved egg dyeing, because she could do it all by herself.  She kept saying, “Another egg, please!”

As you can see, she took her task quite seriously…

I think we’ll probably use the wire whisk technique for years to come.  It’s virtually fool-proof, as long as your child understands that the goal is to keep the egg in the water.  If, however, your child for some reason thinks that it is more fun to dip the egg into purple dye and then madly wave the dye covered egg/whisk combo around in the air, the egg will still be unharmed, but be prepared to wash purple spots out of your husband’s favorite blue jeans.

Poor Lydia had her egg dyeing privileges revoked after just one egg and was downgraded to an empty plastic cup with eggless whisk.  Oh well, there’s always next year, Sweetheart!

In the end we had a dozen pretty eggs to complete my Easter centerpiece.  And yes, I did a bit of experimenting with the food coloring, but I think my favorite egg of the day was Alethea’s first yellow one that she worked on for a long time.

I guess maybe Grandma was right after all… the plain bright ones are the best!