An Easter Egg Tree

I'm posting one of my favorite holiday decorations that I bring out every year but you're going to laugh when I tell you how hard I made it on myself--the job ended up being much more difficult than it needed to be.

I didn't want the glaring, garish colors of the little commercial kits, I wanted muted tones on my eggs--the kind that you find in nature or something. I guess I thought they looked classy that way.

So I got out my food colors and my dyes and made this cocktail of colors, dying and dipping each blown out egg in an effort to get just that right shade of pale greenish-blue.

I must have struggled for a couple hours, entirely too long for any rational person. If my husband could have seen me he would have said I was certifiable. Sniff--but Martha would have understood me, yes she'd understand.

At any rate I finally got it just right and had my eggs nicely dyed. In fact, each was slightly different than the next which made a wonderful variety and subtle contrast. I loved it. Then I got out a toothbrush and some black paint and splattered the eggs to give them that nice speckled look. As I recall I also used some brown and a bit of silver so the speckles had a more natural look and variety.

I collected some willow branches, strung the hollowed painted eggs with ribbon and beads like you see here and hung them. It helped to anchor the branches in glass beads for stability.

Anyway, the point is that not long after that I was going through a Martha Stewart Living issue and found an article about Martha's araucana chickens--the kind that lay bluish-green eggs. D'oh! Turns out, there's even a hatchery in Wasilla that sells them. It would have been faster for me to have drove the hour up to Wasilla than to have struggled with the dye if only I'd known. Though I suppose there are people who would still think I was crazy for driving two hours round trip just for some pretty eggs.

I was up there some time later and bought a fresh dozen just to see if I could tell a difference in taste but my clunky palate couldn't discern anything out of the ordinary. Yes, I'm a heathen I'm sure.

But regardless, the effort has graced our Easter table for years now and it's just beautiful though every year I seem to break one. I guess if I ever need to make more I know where to get the blue eggs . . .

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