Natural Egg Dying

My sister-in-law and I gave our first attempt at natural egg dying on Friday. It was a fun experiment, and some of the dyes worked really well and relatively fast. Check it out!

We let the kids dye eggs with store-bought artificial dye kits while we got started on our natural dyes (which take a lot longer to prepare and dye than the pop a tablet of dye into vinegar kind). -- Don't worry, the little one on the left has juice in his cup, not dye. :)

We looked at several different natural egg dying blog posts to get ideas for ingredients to make our dyes. Here's what we ended up trying:

Back Row: beets, red onion skins, yellow onion skins, turmeric, turmeric + blueberries

Front Row: blueberries, red cabbage, grape juice concentrate, strawberry puree

OUR METHOD was to boil all the dye ingredients (separately of course) to extract the color from the food/spice. Then we strained the liquid from the food bits, poured the dye solution into mason jars, added a little vinegar, then dropped in an egg. The only exception to this method was the grape juice concentrate, which we just thawed and added the egg directly to it, and the strawberries which for some reason we tried to puree them in the blender instead of boiling them. As you'll see in the photos below, that didn't work. At all. If I ever try using strawberries again, I'll definitely boil them instead.

After a few hours of letting the eggs sit in our natural dyes, here's what we got:

beets, red onion skins, yellow onion skins

turmeric, turmeric + blueberries, blueberries

red cabbage, grape juice concentrate, strawberry puree

Like I said above, the strawberry puree did absolutely nothing. If you attempt strawberries, try boiling them instead. And actually, just try boiling raspberries instead of strawberries, because that is what all the websites recommended. We just happened to have strawberries on hand so we tried them, but messed up on the method. Oh well. :) 

The beets and red onion skins were the last dyes we made, so their eggs didn't sit in the dye bath as long as the others. I think they would have produced a better color had they sat longer. Also, we didn't have as many red onion skins as we did yellow onion skins, which accounts for the drastic difference in color saturation between the red and yellow onion eggs. The turmeric worked great! As did the blueberries, and the interesting combination of turmeric plus blueberries (a suggestion on one of the blogs we found) which produced a beautiful green. But next time I would try straining the blueberry solution through something finer like cheesecloth to get a smoother texture. The speckling on these eggs is kind of beautiful though.

The kids got out the costume box to entertain themselves while we worked on our natural dyes. :)

Left Bowl: grape juice concentrate, strawberry puree, red onion skins, beets, red cabbage

Right Bowl: blueberries, yellow onion skins, turmeric, turmeric + blueberries

** Now an interesting thing happened when I put these eggs back into their cardboard container and drove the 10-minute drive back to my house. THEY CHANGED COLOR! Check it out:

Here's how the eggs looked before I left my sister-in-law's house:

beets, red onion skins, yellow onion skins

turmeric, turmeric + blueberries, blueberries

red cabbage, grape juice concentrate, strawberry puree

And here's how they looked when I got them home:

yellow onion skins, turmeric, turmeric + blueberries, blueberries

red cabbage, beets, grape juice concentrate, red onion skins

The four eggs in the back stayed mostly the same color, but the eggs in the front changed dramatically! I don't know if it was having them enclosed in the egg carton or the heat from the trunk of my car or what, but I was very surprised when I got them home and saw the different colors. 

Here's a side-by-side comparison with lines connecting the same eggs before and after their change in color:

color-changed eggs as pictured in bottom photo: 

red cabbage, beets, grape juice concentrate, red onion skins

I really don't know what made those four eggs change colors like that--maybe we needed to let them dry longer before putting them back into their cardboard carton?--but they turned out beautifully. 

clockwise from left-center: red onion skins, grape juice concentrate, yellow onion skins, blueberries, red cabbage, beets, turmeric + blueberries, and turmeric in center.

COLORS AS THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO APPEAR:
PINK: beets / strawberries?

RED: red onion skins
ORANGE: yellow onion skins
YELLOW: turmeric
GREEN: turmeric + blueberries
BLUE: red cabbage / grape juice concentrate
PURPLE: blueberries

WHAT WORKED:

• Blueberries - boiled in enough water to cover for about 20-30 minutes. Strained liquid, let egg sit in liquid for 1-2 hours. Produced a lovely marbled dark blueish color. Would have done differently: strained through cheesecloth to get smoother consistency and less marbling on egg color.

• Turmeric - boiled a few tablespoons in water until dissolved. Let egg sit in liquid for 1-2 hours. Produced a rich yellow color.

• Turmeric + blueberries - combined some blueberry liquid with some turmeric liquid. Let egg sit in liquid for 1-2 hours. Produced a nice green hue with blue marbling (see "would have done differently" under blueberries to reduce marbling).

• Yellow Onion Skins - boiled skins from about 8 onions in water for 20-30 minutes. Let egg sit in liquid for 1-2 hours. Produced a rich red-orange color.

WOULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY:

• Beets - boil beets longer and let egg sit in liquid longer. (only boiled for about 10-minutes. Egg sat in dye for less than one hour).
• Red Onion Skins - boil more skins and let egg sit in liquid longer. (only boiled skins from two onions. Egg sat in dye for less than one hour).
• Red Cabbage - chop cabbage smaller to allow for less water in boiling. Let egg sit in liquid longer. (Boiled 1/4 head of cabbage cut into large pieces for about 30 minutes. Egg sat in dye for 1-2 hours).
• Grape Juice Concentrate - maybe try 100% juice not from concentrate instead? Let egg sit in liquid longer. (Egg sat in dye for about one hour).
• Strawberries - boil to extract color, let egg sit in liquid longer. (Pureed berries instead of boiling. Did not work at all. Egg sat in puree for about one hour).

WEBSITES FOR DYE MIXTURES AND METHODS: these are the websites I found and referenced to make our natural dyes. 

• Two Men and a Little Farm - has a great list of several options for each dye color
• Comfy Tummy - their colors are so rich! I will try their method next time (boil dye material for 30 minutes, then boil egg in dye liquid (instead of hard boiling before sitting in dye).
• The Make Your Own Zone - good color saturation also.
• Katie Did - shows lots of variations in results. Her red cabbage blues turned out so pretty!

OVERALL REACTION TO NATURAL EGG DYING:  it's a lot more time consuming than using the dye packets you buy at the store, but the natural dyes produce beautiful, natural, rich colors not found in the store-bought dyes. I will definitely try it again with a few alterations. You should try it too! And if you do, let me know how it goes!

Now the only problem is, the eggs are so beautiful, I don't want to crack them open to eat them! :)

Project Mode

I stayed up way too late last night working on something that absolutely does not matter! Despite the unimportance of my task, there was no hope for me; I was in project mode, working with blinders on, unable to focus on anything but the job at hand. Nothing else mattered. I had to keep working. I had to finish!

Well, I didn't finish, but at 2:30 in the morning my brain finally decided I had reached an adequate stopping point. It's not looking good for Reasonable Anna, because this project may take quite some time, which means Irrational Project-Mode Anna will be here to stay for a while. But don't worry, Reasonable Anna kicks in when needed, like when Sara demands attention or when my stomach screams from starvation. I'll step away from the insanity for such necessities, but in the meantime, you'll find me working on my project!

The best form of flattery

I like to think that I'm creative, but mostly I'm just good at copying people who really are creative. Take this recently completed art/photo wall in Sara's bedroom for example.


First I saw this really cool alphabet name poster here, and after spending way too much time playing with their "customize your own" feature, I thought to myself, "I could make that!"

So I did.


Then I saw this awesome elephant collage here, and a similar screen print of more elephants on the same website here (and I have always loved elephants!) so I thought to myself, "I could make that!"

So I did.


They both differ slightly from their respective originals (obviously I used different paper for my elephants than Petite Collage did, and my alphabet poster is in ABC order instead of randomized), but for the most part, they are just blatant copies. It sure would be nice if I could think of creative stuff to make all on my own. But for now I'm good with just making slightly different versions of the cool things I see online.

So, the take-home message from this story is: go be creative so I can copy you!

get ready to rock

I did this. And by that I mean Rob's Mom did it and I helped. Kind of. I think I may have hindered more than I actually helped. BUT look what we did!


Sara is 10 months old and we just got a rocking chair. Why didn't we get it sooner? Who knows. But Sara likes to be held/rocked to sleep (spoiled!) and the lack of a rocking chair was getting more and more difficult. SO we finally broke down and bought one. We wanted to get something "stylish", but didn't want to spend a ton of money, so we compromised and bought a second-hand basic glider but recovered the cushions in a fun print. It looks SO much better than the original fabric. I was too excited about recovering it that I forgot to take a "before" photo before we ripped the old fabric off, but here's a shot of the fabric sans chair.

BEFORE

AFTER!

Quite the improvement, don't you think?!

Sara seems to like it.

Painting

I took a few oil painting classes while I was in college and really enjoyed them. I haven't painted since those classes, and I didn't realize how much I missed it until yesterday when I started a new painting! I have to thank my friend Audrey who asked me to do a painting for her. I've been keeping blank canvases behind my bed for way too long; it's time to get some paint on them! This painting I'm doing for my friend is very small, only 5x7 inches, but I'm hoping it will turn out okay. If it does, I'll post a photo of it when it's finished. And hopefully this will keep the painting bug going!

Cabin Fever

Rob did a church service project last week where he and several others from our Stake built cabins for a Young Women's camp in Heber, UT. The main structure of the cabin was already completed from what appeared to be a pre-fab kit complete with double-paned windows. He and two other guys from our Ward put the roof together in 6 hours or so. A full days work and two strange sunburn patterns on his arms later, here's what they had built.

Camping anyone??

Sew Fun

A few of my gal-pals and I met at IKEA yesterday for some yummy Swedish lunch and to get fabric to reupholster an old rocking chair. First of all, did anybody else know that IKEA has fabrics? I mean, not just bedding and curtains and stuff, but actual bolts of fabric that you can purchase by the yard to sew anything you can dream of? Well they do, and after looking at them to help Brittany pick one for her new chair cover, I wanted to purchase a whole bunch and redo our whole condo with new drapes, pillows, bedspread, etc. Their fabrics are so fun and colorful!

After we found the perfect fabrics (the middle one in the stack above and some lime-green accent fabric) we proceeded to recover the chair. I just realized that I don't think we took any "before" pictures, but hopefully my friend will take some "after" photos because I think it turned out pretty darn cute! But that cuteness came at a price; we all worked on it from the time we got back from IKEA (about 1:00 maybe?) until 8:00 at night! It was a crazy insane all-day project! When Brittany's husband came home from work, we were still sewing away! But he was kind enough to stop at Little Caesar’s to get us all a yummy Hot-n-Ready pizza and cheese sticks. Yum! And the kiddos were kind enough to take nice long naps for most of the time, which was very convenient.

JoAnna did most of the work on her handy-dandy sewing machine while Brittany and I did our best to add impossible to work with green fabric that kept fraying all over the place to the buttons (that we later “tufted” onto the cushions), and also hand-sewing the tops of the cushions that the sewing machine had trouble with. So, my friend Brittany now has a new (and much hipper) cover for her rocking chair. Yay for IKEA fabrics and JoAnna’s sewing abilities! It was a fun day. I’m glad I could help out and spend the day hanging with my chicas!