What is your favorite way to decorate eggs for Easter baskets? Do you hard boil them or do you prefer to hollow them out and use the empty shell?
Recently I was given some eggs freshly gathered from the chicken coop. (I have a story about fresh-from-the- chicken-eggs also, but will save it for another time.) These are nature’s decorated eggs. I like the variety in the shells, their colors and slight patterns. They do not show up as well as I would like them to in the photos. The greenish ones have a slightly speckled shell as does one of the cream color ones. Even the brown ones are different shades. They are beautiful!
Many years ago one of the grand kids gave me these decorated eggs. They are hollowed out and dyed in the usual egg dye bath. To finish them, they were placed in a plastic sleeve and dipped in hot water causing the sleeve to shrink tightly against the egg. These are the only ones of the non-plastic eggs that has survived over the years, most likely from the protection of the sleeve as it gets packed away each year.
When my kids were young we lived in an apartment complex. One year we moms decided to have an Easter egg hunt for all the kids. The moms boiled a dozen eggs each and I was the one to hide them all. It started out perfectly, all the moms kept their drapes closed so the kids would not see me and I was able to scatter them all over our side of the complex without being caught.
The egg hunt was off to a great start, all the kids running around with their baskets gathering eggs. Until… tears and crying. In the area further away from the buildings, by the time the kids arrived there the squirrels had already found the eggs. Then it was a battle. There was an especially eager child that was not going to let his egg go to the squirrels and his mom was pulling him back to keep him safe. By then the squirrel was eating the egg and won the battle.
That was our first and last egg hunt using real eggs. Safer for the kids, disappointing for the squirrels.
However you choose to spend your weekend, I hope you make lots of happy memories to look back on.
