Earth Day and Easter: Dying Eggs the Natural Way

Last year, Derek was too young to participate in the dying of Easter eggs.  This year, being less than a month from his second birthday, he had his first experience with Easter egg dying.  Although I know he doesn’t understand the true meaning of Easter, or anything about the tradition of dying eggs and egg hunting, it was still a fun activity to do with him.

Since Easter was late this year and near Earth Day, I was looking for a way to dye eggs using natural ingredients instead of using the dye packs that you buy in the store.  I found this website that gave me a lot of ingredient options to create the colors I wanted for the eggs.

http://whatscookingamerica.net/Eggs/EasterEggDye.htm

I chose to make orange (carrots did not work for me, I used paprika), yellow (green tea-I used 4 bags and a cup of water), green (spinach), and purple (a can of beets).  I wanted to make blue, but it was hard to track down canned blueberries and the grape juice did not work for blue.  Four colors was really enough for an almost 2 year old anyway!

The eggs turned out pale. That was because Derek didn’t want to leave them in the dye very long!