hoppy easter and a tip

 I was kind of a lazy Easter bunny this year, and had no firm plans of what we would do to celebrate until 6:00 this morning. (The Easter bunny had delivered a book to each boy overnight, but that was it.) I (thankfully) read The Artful Parent's post about colouring hot, boiled eggs with crayons soon after I got up with T. The heat from the egg melts the wax as you colour, resulting in beautiful, easy, not-nearly-as-messy-as-dye-which-I-am-slightly-afraid-of, lovely eggs. She then dips them in dye, and with gorgeous results, but we skipped that step.

 Then the eggs can be easily peeled and eaten. I picked up those sweet little nest bowls a few years ago on clearance at the Superstore. I have three, and love, love, love them.

Things I love about this project:
1) no waste - we ate some of the eggs for breakfast and the others are in the fridge
2) no messy dye - today was one of those days that P and dye would have equaled a disaster
3) no supplies required that we didn't already have
4) beautiful, vibrant results

One tricky thing was that when the eggs were hot enough for the crayons to melt really well, they were really too hot to hold. (Did you see my lovely ceramic egg holder? It's for when I have my hens and a perpetual supply of eggs.) When they cooled a bit, the wax didn't go on quite as smoothly. Other tips: regular Crayola crayons (we had some fresh new ones with sharp tips) worked the best; the thick Crayola ones for little hands didn't seem to melt as well.

One last tip for all of you who love glass jars, as I (ahem, yes, I have a problem) do.  I have seen these plastic lids on several blogs (Food In Jars is AMAZING!) lately used on standard and wide-mouth canning jars. Not used for the canning process, of course, but for freezer jams, and storage of pantry items. I asked one blogger about them, and she said that they're made by Ball in the US. Anyway, after a bit of digging, I found out that Bernardin (the Canadian equivalent of Ball) makes them as well. I hadn't seen them in person, but decided to look when I was at Canadian Tire a few weeks ago (so much more than tires, for you non-Canuks!) and they had them! I bought almost all of the ones they had left, since almost all of my pantry staples are stored in them, and they're much nicer as lids for lotions, honey, and the like, when your hands might be goopy, or they're in the shower. LOVE.

I have some cookbook reading to do! Kitchen Express is amazing and written exactly as I would write a cookbook, and I want to spend some time cuddled up with it. The Family Dinner was a birthday gift, and I borrowed Feeding the Whole Family, both from Ingrid. The cover illustration is by Nikki McClure!

Hope you had a lovely weekend!