All Natural Easter Egg Dyes

I don't have any pictures to post, but I wanted to share what we will be doing later to color eggs. Yesterday I was walking around in my favorite store, (Whole Foods) and they had a cute Easter table with printed sheets of paper with information on how to dye your easter eggs with all natural food dyes. I knew that there were certain ways, but didn't know all of these.

First, there are two dipping methods. Hot or Cold.

For the "Cold Dipping" method:
1. Boil the eggs and coloring ingredients in two different pots.
2. Let the dye pot cool and then strain it. Dip the eggs in the dye for 10-15 minutes.
3. Dry eggs in carton or on paper towels.

For the "Hot Dipping" method:
1. Add both eggs and natural dye ingredients to a pot and cover with water.
2. Add 2 Tablespoons of white vinegar.
4. Bring to a rolling boil, and reduce to simmer for 20 to 30 minutes.
5. Run eggs under cool water.

Now, the fun part. I understand that this isn't as cut and dry as opening a package of those candy-looking mystery pills, but if you're wanted to do something different, this is an option. We are doing a little variation of the "Cold Dipping" option above.

Colors:
Yellow/gold - turmeric
Light pink or dark pink - beets or cranberries
Baby blue or royal blue - coarsely chopped red cabbage (they have a note saying the cabbage dye won't work until it cools.)
Chartreuse green - dye yellow, then dye blue
Dark lavender - blueberries

To have deeper colors, we plan to boil the eggs first, then the kids can draw cute pictures on them with white crayon, and then we will let them soak in the dye overnight.

*One thing that is noted is that since these are food dyes, they may affect the flavor of the eggs, so we plan to just use blueberries and beets to make pink and purple eggs that won't be ruined by those two flavors.

We'll post pictures tomorrow!

HAPPY EASTER!