When I was a kid, my Grammy Yocom always had my cousins and I over to dye Easter eggs. I loved it! My favorite part was measuring out the vinegar and hot water into her assorted tea cups and dropping in the little colored tablet. I would sit there completely engrossed as the aspirin-sized tablet dissolved, releasing swirls of magnificent color like smoke rising from a fire. The smell was a heady mixture of cooked eggs (there was always at least one that broke in the boiling water, forming a sort of Quasimodo mutant egg), vinegar, dye, and steam. I remember carefully popping out the little cardboard disks on the back of the box so that we’d have the perfect drying rack, and then pushing a toothpick through the pre-punched hole in the center of the disc to make a top. The people at Paas (the company that makes the dye packs) were brilliant, using every little bit of packaging to create the overall egg dyeing experience. I can still remember the little copper wire egg retriever (you had to bend it just right so you could scoop the eggs out of the cups), the wax crayon so that you could write a secret message on your egg, and the lick and stick stickers (that usually peeled off)!

Nowadays the kits have gone high-tech and you can get everything from glitter to marbled egg kits -- there’s a veritable “egg”-splosion of kits out there on the market!

As an alternative to the traditional method of dying eggs, I thought I’d offer up some alternatives to egg decorating. Remember, you always want to use a hardboiled or blown-out eggs. Never decorate raw eggs, as they could break during the decorating process and cause quite a mess!

Read more...

My sister is a crafting genius, and her latest creation only goes to further prove that point! The other day, Simone mentioned that the Washington Post was holding a Peep diorama contest, in which folks were encouraged to create miniature worlds inhabited only by Peeps and Peep byproducts (like the Peep bunnies and other sundry marshmallow friends). The light that lit my sister’s Freda’s eyes upon hearing these words could have powered New York City during a blackout! She was on fire! The contest was ending on that upcoming Monday, and so, with a work-free weekend ahead of her, she embraced her inner Peep to create the most amazing “Peep show” ever!

I will let her explain her inspiration and process, because I wouldn’t even know where to begin! Just know that I think it’s spectacular, and I count myself one of the luckiest people alive to view these Peeps live and in peepson... er, person. The only thing that makes me sad is that it’s very difficult to capture in photos the absolute magnificence of this diorama. It is, without a doubt, “the greatest show on earth.”

Read more...