Well guys, St. Patrick’s Day is over. And I have to say that Hubs and I didn’t do anything especially festive to celebrate yesterday, which is okay, because we still had a good day.

And now that the green-filled holiday is over, I’m moving on to the next stage of the year’s mantle decorations: Easter Eggs.

(Even though I’m a bit sad to take down the fun St. Patrick’s stuff.

Now, I don’t remember decorating at all for Easter last year. At least not with eggs, which means I didn’t have already made or ready to use for this year. So a couple of weeks ago, when Wyatt was gone to California on an adventure business trip, I took a day off and visited my good friend, Elizabeth for some Easter egg adventures of our own.

We had lunch at a local Greek place (hummus and pita bread…mmm…)

…and spent the afternoon at her house making four, yes four, different kinds of Easter Eggs.

We started with removing the insides from several eggs so we could dye the outsides but keep them for more than just a few weeks.

I’d never really dyed eggs before (I know!), so she had to walk me through the entire process.

We started by drilling a small hole in each end of an egg with a sharp metal tool.

Then, we chipped out the edges around it to make each hold big enough to work with. It’s probably possible to do this by only making tiny holes in each end of the egg, but please don’t give yourself and aneurysm or break a blood vessel in your eye by blowing into the too-small hole too hard. Plus, it takes a REALLY long time to do it that way, so I’d recommend enlarging the holes, at least a little bit.

This will work fine for me anyway, since I want to string these on a garland. But I’m sure you could find lots of creative ways to color these holes…ribbon, paper mache, stickers, etc.

Then, by blowing in one end of the egg, the yolk and egg whites get pushed out the other side.

We saved them in a bowl and she used some to make a few treats, then put the rest of the fridge for some scrambled eggs another day.

Don’t forget to wash the shells out at this point or they will get pretty gross after awhile.

After that, it was time to dip them in the dyes, which we just prepared according to the package instructions. We were wanting pretty pastel eggs, so don’t hold them in too long if that’s what you’re going for. Also, remember you can mix and match to make colors not included in the kit (i.e. teal) by dipping for a few seconds in one color, drying slightly, then redipping in color number two.

Make sure if you do this to drain the dye out of the insides of the eggs or they’ll leak dye out all over as they dry, making a puddle of blue or pink or whatever color on your counter top. Not so good. We used several layers of cardboard to help avoid this.

Pretty soon, I had a dozen eggs that looked like this:

I can’t wait to turn these into something awesome! Stay tuned for more egg ideas! We still have 3 more to go!

How did you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, if at all? Are you now all ready for Easter?