April Showers

It has been a beautiful dreary morning at our little house nestled in the pines.  Here is a photo tour of our yard this morning:

Easter Eggs Made with Natural Dyes

I dyed Easter eggs using natural dyes recently after seeing the process here.  I found it on Pinterest originally.  If you've noticed I haven't posted many blog posts lately, you can blame it on Pinterest.  I spend way too much time looking around.  If you are on Pinterest and wish to "follow" my pins, my boards are at http://pinterest.com/shari3139/.  

Thought I'd show you my 4th burner pot I first saw on "Food In Jars" -- linked on the left side of my blog.  The pot comes with a handy wire basket -- great for steaming veggies or boiling eggs.  I also intend to use this pot to process small batches of canned jam this year.

Anyway,I got some unusually results with the dyes.  I think I may have had some uniques chemical reactions because of the method I used to hard boil the eggs.  The recipe I used for the perfect boiled egg called for salt and vinegar in the boiling water.  I got a bit of a salty coating on my eggs and had to scrub it off (which also took off some of the brown tint too.  So odd!).  I think if I had boiled the eggs in just water, my results may have been different.  

I made dye baths with red onion peel, grape juice, red cabbage, beets and paprika.  I found it funny that they are all kind of the same color at the beginning, but create such different colored eggs.
The instructions are different for each color, but none of them were hard to make or took any exotic ingredients -- just boiling water, white vinegar, and the item that contains the color.

I found the red cabbage to have the most interesting result.  I got dark teal and pale teal all in the same batch.  The beets gave a nice mottled pink color.  The red onion was supposed to create jade green, but mine look more like a burgundy with a green patina instead.  The paprika made a nice pale orange and the grape juice made a dark lavender color.

I think they turned out quite lovely.  This is what I have left over after giving my friend, Cristin, some of them.  She contributed some of the red onion skins and she assisted me with making the dyes.  She made a fun creative project even more fun -- and the good music and a great bottle of Concord Wine helped too.  Good times!