I never could understand why people would pay so much
money for those expensive egg decorating kits when most
people have all the tools they need lying around the
house! And, oh, the fun that can be created when you allow
your kids to use their imaginations!
When my kids were small there were so many things that I
enjoyed doing with them! One of those was dressing them up
and going trick-or-treating, and another of my favorites
was decorating Easter Eggs.
Frugal to the core, I scoured my cabinets, pulling out the
food coloring, vinegar, and enough small bowls, cups and
containers to hold all the various colors that I knew my
little ones would want to experiment with!
Then I would gather up all the broken crayons, various
brands of markers, and all the hundreds of stickers that
had been given to them throughout the year. One year we
even incorporated some Glitter Glue, that was left over
from some school project that we just HAD to have them
for!
After we gathered everything up and deposited it all on
the kitchen table, hot water, a little vinegar and several
different colors were added to all of those mismatched
bowls and containers.
Then the fun would begin.
My daughters would do their best to see who could come up
with the prettiest or most unusual colors, or to see who
could layer the most colors on top of each other to get
the strangest looking hues! Writing little messages on
them and THEN dipping in the colors was always so much
fun, because wherever the crayon wax was, the color
wouldn't stick leaving a white border around every word or
little drawing.
Some of them ended up with crayon scribbles, left undipped,
some were decorated with stickers only, but each and
everyone of them were unique, a work of art that any egg
decorating 3-year-old would be proud of.
When all of the eggs had been crayoned, markered,
stickered and dipped, they were placed back into the
carton to await the hiding and hunting.
I guess you could say that none of our eggs would ever be
worthy of a pictorial spread in "Martha Stewart Living",
but we loved them and were very proud of each and every
one. The girls never could wait to show them off!
When I sit and think about all the things that I'll miss
as my kids get older, egg coloring is at the top of the
list. Watching as my children created their works of art,
and getting a little insight into what they were thinking,
is a treasure that you can't hide in a clump of grass, put
in a basket, or discard when the day is over. It is one of
those rare ones that you get to keep forever.
Kandi Traxel is the owner of Country Moms Online Family of
Websites
http://www.countrymoms.com
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the Family Content Archives at: http://www.Family-Content.com
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