Easter eggs

With the rate this month is passing by at Easter will be here before I realize it.  This year Rob and I are trying to concentrate our efforts our efforts on celebrating Easter well. We do it up at Christmas and in our Christian calendar this is a huge time of year so why not now as well? This means turning our focus to Lent, which I'll admit has been tough for me and a challenge to think of celebration in terms of prayer, repentance and self-denial. But the feast is coming. 


Hope. 


It's always been our goal, to show our kids the true meaning of the things we celebrate. To filter out the commercial and replace it with the meaningful. But it's a balance and one we're working on and tweaking with each passing holiday. It doesn't mean we're maniacal about it - we don't ban Santa at Christmas and we don't consider chocolate contraband at Easter. 


We'll do an egg hunt Easter weekend and there will be a giant box of white chocolate in the form of some ridiculous cartoon character (that has nothing to do with bunnies, eggs, spring... hello, Captain America? Spongebob?). For me, that is. 


Anyone remember those giant chocolate eggs that they would open at the store and write your name on?? I miss those. 


Anyway, because Easter is on the horizon we tackled dying Easter eggs on the weekend. 


We mostly just went for it, but I did do a quick google search for the best foods to try using as natural dyes. We kept it to red cabbage, raspberry tea, turmeric, and spinach.

I threw a lug of vinegar into each pot and we boiled away a good part of the afternoon. It reminded me of Christmas, the smell of red cabbage bubbling on the stove, and that was nice. 

A few of the eggs we put inside a nylon and tucked some leaves Ephram had collected on his walk home from school in. To be honest, this was kind of a bust as the nylon took all the dye and made us think the egg was too, when really the egg was bare and the leaf barely visible. There was one that worked but it sat long after the other eggs were out of their dye baths. 

It took a LONG time in the pans for the color to soak in so the kids lost interest for a bit but Rob and I checked in on them (the eggs that is) excitedly until it was time for them to emerge.

And there it is. A tradition that works for us, without the commercial. And our tiny little (ceramic) nest of eggs serves as a reminder in the midst of this season of the feast that's to come. Soon.

What do you do to celebrate this season?