Easter eggs and Rube Goldberg machines

I spent Easter weekend with my friend Lisa at her annual Easter egg dying brunch. It's always a ton of fun, and she always has lots of homemade goodies. She's an awesome cook, and I love to eat!

Lisa had cups of store bought dyes and a couple homemade dyes she made from beets and purple cabbage.

There were a lot of decorating supplies like stickers, temporary tattoos, and sponges. I went with rubber bands. Wider ones work great for dying Easter eggs. For a perfect stripe use a rubber band that's just a little smaller than the egg's circumference.

To get a bright blue I rubbed undiluted dye right onto the egg. I used a small dry sponge to speckled the egg with the same blue dye. Speckle one side, and wait for it to dry before turning it to speckle the other side.

While we waited for our eggs to dye and dry, Lisa showed me a Rube Goldberg machine she constructed on her desk. She made it to celebrate the release of her book "Double Dog Dare".

"Double Dog Dare" comes out just a few days after Easter. I have all her books. I can't wait to get this one too!

When I finally took the eggs out of the cups, the store bought colors were super bright. The natural dyes took a while longer to take, but they came out in nice pastels. I made more elaborate eggs in one of Lisa's previous egg dying parties, but this year I kept the Easter eggs simple with stripes and speckles.

Tags: Easter eggs