Easter Eggs

Part of our Easter tradition has been to make a Easter Egg Tree. My sister and I would go in the backyard and pick a huge branch with lots of twigs, then we would plant it in potting soil in a Easter Planter. Once the branch was sturdy we would hang our decorated eggs that we had just colored and eggs that we had decorated over the years! Each year my mom would give us each about 4-6 eggs to color. To make the eggs my mom would use vinegar, food color and crayons - this was before the Paas Easter decorating kits. We would draw on the eggs with our crayons then dip them into our favorite colors. My mom still has these eggs (except the broken ones) plus all the ones from my other siblings...we are talking about 35 years of decorated eggs between all of us! The big part of this tradition is not only the hunt for the best branch but blowing the yolk/egg out of the egg. This is the first year it TOTALLY grossed me out. First, I couldn't get a hole in each end of the egg without cracking the egg and I couldn't stop thinking about SALMENOLLA. I literally washed each egg, then before I blew the yoke out, I would give the egg a bath in Purell. After I blew it out, I would again give the egg a bath in Purell. Neurotic..yes of course! I wonder if my mom felt that way? I used an old Paas egg decorating kit from 2005 that I had in my Easter Box, some of the tablets crumbled before opening but most worked fine. The boys ended up with dark colors because they wanted to dip them in every color. You can also see we only have 4 eggs because I cracked so many and the holes on some of them are huge...not sure how to hang yet.

Starting out..

Ironically, Nicolas is wearing Santa PJ's while doing the Easter Eggs! Nicolas explaining to Ken exactly how he will proceed with his egg. Christian creating his masterpiece.

Nicolas making a face at how Christian's egg came out thinking it looks "whacky".

Christian hard at work.

Nicolas - Raccoon Egg, Christian - Bunny Egg

The giant hole I cracked to blow out the egg, haven't figured out how to hang yet. This was their very first eggs, I feel kind of bad that I made a deformed egg.

We opted out of finding a branch here in Florida (since you never know what could be on the trees down here in the South....neurotic...of course)! So we are using our nice, clean fake tree in the kitchen as our Easter Egg Tree! The new tradition.