Naturally Dyed Easter Eggs

It’s hard to believe that Easter Sunday is right around the corner! As Edward gets older, I have found myself wanting to implement various holiday traditions, and Easter definitely doesn’t disappoint in that department! Easter may be one of my very favorite holidays, not necessarily because of the bunny pictures or the egg hunts, although those are so much fun and certainly have their time and place. Easter is, however, a favorite holiday of mine because it gives us time to intentionally celebrate and meditate on the death and resurrection of Jesus!

Here lately, my eyes have really been turned upon the fact that God is so holy – like…cannot even wrap my mind around, holy. For one, he doesn’t have a body like man. He wasn’t created like we are. He is perfect, all powerful, all knowing, infinite, eternal and unchanging. Can you believe that the creator of the world, before Christ, was practically unapproachable? Priests literally had to offer blood sacrifices once a year in the Most Holy Place to atone for the peoples sin. This is not a light matter. This is the hope of Jesus. Jesus walked perfectly for his entire life before this holy and righteous God, making his blood the sacrifice needed to atone for his peoples sins. When Christ breathed his last breath on the cross, the curtain that was guarding the Most Holy Place was torn in two. Then 3 days later, after Jesus was buried, he rose. Y’all. HE ROSE FROM THE DEAD (because God always keeps his promises!), he is seated at the right hand of God and he intercedes to God on the behalf of his people every single moment of every single day. This is earth shattering! Through Jesus, we have full access to this holy, righteous and perfect God if only we but put our trust in him. As I mentioned above, there is just so much to meditate on, and this barely touches the surface.

Ok, onto lighter matters. One of the traditions I’ve been wanting to implement with my boys is dying Easter eggs. I had been seeing these gorgeous, jewel tone eggs floating around on Instagram, and I told myself that this was the year we were going to try our hand at them! As it turns out, there is a way to naturally dye eggs by using vegetables and spices – we used purple cabbage, red onion peels, yellow onion peels, beets and turmeric. I don’t know about you, but I was totally amazed when I found out that these natural elements of the earth could create these gorgeous dyes/colors. Is it bad that I had more fun with this than Edward did?!

Below you will find a chart of what vegetable/spice as well as what type of egg was used to create each specific color. You can also find the ingredients and directions below. At a glance, it looks very tedious, but it was worth the time, work and wait in my opinion! While some of our eggs turned out to be different colors than I had planned, they, nonetheless, made some beautiful colors. What I would do different: add a lot more ingredients to my dye solution as they boiled/simmered, specifically the cabbage and onion peels. In my list of ingredients below, you will find exactly what I did to achieve the colors pictured here. Next time, I’m making sure our dye is much more concentrated!

Ingredients
5-6 Purple Cabbage leaves, chopped
3-4 Beets, chopped
2 Red Onions, peels only
2 Yellow Onions, peels only
2 tbsp Turmeric
Eggs (as many as you want, I only did 12)
Water
1 tbsp Vinegar/cup of dye solution
Mason Jars
Spoon

Directions
1. To boil eggs, place in pot of water on stove top, bring to a boil, turn heat off, cover and let sit for 10 minutes.
2. Transfer boiled eggs to a bowl of cold water and let sit until they reach room temperature.
3. As your eggs cool, you will want to start creating your dye solutions. Fill 4 pots with a few cups of water. (There is no perfect measurement. I honestly just winged it and hoped for the best.)
4. Add each ingredient to its designated pot, bring to a boil, turn the heat to low, simmer for 30 minutes – 1 hour. (I had to do a fifth pot for the turmeric once these finished. I only boiled it for 10ish minutes.)
5. Remove pots from heat, let sit until they reach room temperature.
6. Once cooled, strain dye solutions into mason jars, add 1 tbsp vinegar/1 cup of dye solution.
7. Add each egg to dye solution of choice and refrigerate overnight. The longer they soak, the darker they will be. Make sure to leave a note on your jar as to what ingredient was used.
8. Use a spoon to remove from jars and lay on paper towel or in egg crate.
9. Prepare to be amazed!

Happy Easter
xoxo
Audrey