Easter Eggs Take 3

Third times the charm...

Before actual Easter we died eggs the "natural way" following all the tips online for people not wanting to use commercially available egg kits. I think those people are personally not looking at the globalization of holidays. Egg kits create jobs in China! They aren't sold in China, but I'm sure that somebody is feeding their family cause they make or package egg dyeing kits. Anyway, those haters of the commercial product say that you can color eggs with grape juice or tea or some other ways. Well, those folks didn't use brown eggs I guess. Why would you use white eggs if you were against commercial stuff, again I don't see their logic. We tried their tips and failed horribly. So we thought what stains clothes that we have on hand in China. Hmmm, jello. Some people had left China for life back in the states and had given us a 2 year supply of cherry jello. They tastes like cough syrup so I think previous repatriates had passed them when they left and that no doubt we will be doing the same. So we tried dying the eggs in cherry jello... well it did create a slightly pink egg.
The day after Easter, my brother's Easter package arrived containing the real kit! Redo, success, happiness!

So many colors

Take 2

My brother was so kind and generous that he sent a couple of kits that we saved one. We were thinking about when we adopted Little Guy that we'd take the kit and dye eggs and take them to the orphanage. Our experience in Shenyang SWI volunteering was that the kids got 1 hard boiled egg a day and that egg was like gold to them. We thought how wonderful it would be to show up with a whole bunch of colored eggs for the kids instead of candy. Well, we ended up in a hotel room in Hefei and were shocked when we found out we were going to be allowed in the SWI much less trying to figure out how to boil eggs, dye them and then transport them. In retrospect it could have been done- all the room come with the electric teapot so you could boil eggs in that, then dye them in the water cups, but anyway, we didn't do that.
Little Guy is the pickiest eater in the world. The foster mom said she kept him alive by force feeding him a hard boiled egg everyday for breakfast. Personally, I think maybe it would have been nice if she would have worked on getting some solid food in him. But the egg was what she could do and she did have 6 other hungry kids to feed so no doubt Mr. Picky Eater was lucky that she cared enough to force that down his throat. Our situation is that we want him to like food so we thought maybe dyeing eggs would make him like eggs.
Take 3... he was not at all sure about turning his egg blue! He may not like eggs but he was in the orphanage long enough to value that you do not play with that egg. Princess was a pro by this time and was having a blast playing with her eggs. Little Guy finally decided that it was cool. If fact he even got his hands dirty! Progress.

Getting his hands dirty

Take 3

Both were equally happy to peel and eat the eggs. We are not sure who ate their eggs because under one of the chairs was a big blob of spit out egg. Oh well...

On a separate front all our light colored clothes have been died yellow. We bought Little Guy a yellow shirt and threw it in the machine with the lights. We don't have a drier. So now our apartment has these clothes hanging to dry everywhere and it looks like a dog came in here and peed all over everything. Lovely...my favorite is the now yellow "I heart China" Sometimes that's how I feel about this place. Before we came and lived here we had all these dreams and ideas and now I sort of feel that they have been trampled on, spit on, and then had some chihuahua pee all over them.

Easter Eggs Take 3

Harbin, China