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!

Plan B

This past weekend I made it to Grand Rapids to check out Art Prize.  Art Prize made it's debut last year and was a hugh hit.  What a genius idea!  Gather artists and their work from around the world and set up different venues around the city to draw in masses of people.  Businesses benefit, the artists show their work, and thousands upon thousands of people experience a free art exhibit as big as a city.  The people vote on their favorites and the winning artist gets a fat check.

I've placed my vote for "Plan B"-- a collaborative project that several of my best friends have been involved with.  It is in Ah-Nab-Awen park near the Gerald R. Ford museum (seen on the left side of the photo below).

So what is it?  We are currently living in Plan A -- a world driven by oil and coal -- non-renewable resources.  Plan B explores the "post peak oil world where electricity is only intermittent and almost everything used to keep daily life humming along has been made out of preexisting products and materials. A combination of very old technologies with what can be patched together out of the rubble of what has been made before, fallen apart and left behind".

They have a functional kitchen, tents made of recycled billboards, a stage that runs by bicycle power, water filtration (also pumped by a bike), chickens, rabbits, a garden, and the Wonder Wagon.

People are living in Plan B Town for the entirety of the Art Prize exhibit.  My good friends have been spending most of their free time down there.

Here is a photo of my best guy friend (besides my husband of course) starting a fire to make tea.  

I wanted to stay longer, but had to make it home the same day.  Anyway, if you are anywhere near Grand Rapids right now -- you gotta check it out! 

Easy compost bins

I put together a couple of compost bins last weekend and managed to fill them up this weekend.  They were really easy to make too.  I just bought some wire fencing from the tractor supply store and some zip ties.  I formed two round bins -- about 3 feet in diameter.  I used the zip ties to keep the bin closed.  I can easily snip those off to open it up and get the compost out.  

I placed them on the side of our property -- because compost piles are not exactly pretty to look at.  Last Fall when we moved into the home, we raked a HUGE pile of leaves into this area.  I stacked it up the best I could, but the wind and snow flattened my pile out over the winter.  Some of it has decomposed, but a bunch of the leaves look like they did last fall.  I'm hoping these compost bins help speed things up.  I also need more nitrogen to get things going faster (I don't have a good source for manure yet).  I may need to make another one to hold this year's leaves.  Anyway, I'm happy with how they turned out.  I'm looking forward to having all that gorgeous compost to use in my garden next year.