Inside my Heart: Wild Egg dying!

OK so I know there are SO many blogs about dying eggs naturally. But as I mentioned in an Earlier Blog I had made some violet jelly for the first time and when I saw how vibrant that violet water was, egg dying was the first thing that came to my mind!

After seeing this I decided to take natural egg dying a step further then most....

I thought how fantastic would it be to dye our eggs all and only from things we picked from our yard?! Can't get any more natural then that! And is even more of a money saver to boot. But... I still wanted to make sure that whatever we used was edible and so we could still make our eggs and eat them. That doubled this new challenge. Because if we weren't going to eat them I could have plucked, cut, dug up anything to try! If you have happened upon an old blog of mine I absolutely love learning about wild edibles! After moving here I found out our overgrown yard was full of them!

I have been a busy mama and I wish I had spent more time actually looking into this (maybe next year!) but this is what we did!

Above you see, violets, a mix of clover and grass (it was supposed to be only clover but I was tired and just grabbed chunks from the yard), LOTS of dandelion (I needed the heads, leaves AND roots!) and of course the eggs! We had to buy some white eggs from the store because the normal local farm eggs we get are brown and I figured they would show color better.

Here we have everything boiling! I decided to try boiling the uncooked eggs with the "greenery".

For the blue here are the violets. Of which I did not get as many as I hoped (probably would have gotten better color then!) And for the yellow the dandelion heads.

For the hopeful color green, here is the clover and dandelion greens in one pot. And I must say don't EVER boil this if you can't open your windows! UGH! I was actually counting the minutes for it to be done because the stink was awful! Boiled yard anyone?!

Here we have the dandelion root. I READ that it would create a pinkish color. But either everyone else has a different kind of dandelion or I have no clue because it came out light brown... If anyone has tips on this I would love to hear! I love how this pot kind of looks like a nest though. :) Oh and digging these roots out of our hard clay soil was not a day at the park I tell you!

The finished water colors! I will admit I was hoping for a more colorful outcome... Maybe next time?! In order from left to right: Violet, dandelion heads, clover/leaf mix, dandelion root. Now it was time to let them sit in the fridge for 24 hours.

But first! Since I had some beets I decided to cut the tops off and boil them up to make another color. I did want this to be pure wild pickings but I figured my children might just like to see a little more color.

Here are the very finished colors. With the addition of beet on the left and a half of teaspoon of spirulina added to the green in a last min attempt to add a splash of color. I also Added in a few brown eggs. One to the violet because one of the violet eggs cracked during cooking and 2 into the beet color.

MANY hours later..

Voila! Now since I added to this it wasn't pure yard colors but the end result is pretty! I also learned something new today! Apparently brown eggs after boiling in vinegar can have the brown color rubbed off! For a minute I almost had a little freak out thinking someone was dying our eggs to make them brown! But I looked it up on the "good old trusty Internet" and found out otherwise. xD