Coloring Easter Eggs {with PAAS & Heinz Vinegar}

When it comes to coloring Easter eggs, I am the first to admit that I drop the ball.

Big time.

I start with good intentions, and then get swept up in the avalanche from Madeline’s birthday, Lent, St. Patrick’s Day, Spring Break, and … well … before you know it, I’ve missed another year. It’s happened often enough that “color Easter eggs” has actually appeared on our Spring Bucket Lists at least twice now, no matter that the holiday had already passed by then.

But this year! This year we colored Easter eggs. Before the actual holiday!

I know! Cue the angels singing. Take a moment.

And I really have to give thanks to the folks at PAAS and Heinz. Because if it wasn’t for their goodie-filled Easter basket arriving on our doorstep a few weeks ago, it likely wasn’t going to happen.

After a long day of school, work, and Girl Scout Daisy meetings today (how is she old enough already?!), I set the kids up with all the supplies, gave them a few simple instructions, and let them do their thing while I made dinner.

Now, a few fun things I learned to help you out with your own Easter coloring eggstravaganza:

• If you use vinegar when you’re coloring your eggs, you’ll get a more vibrant color. And if you know our family, you know that vibrant color is always a good thing. I filled the coloring cups halfway with vinegar.
• Also, if you add vinegar to your pot of water when you’re boiling the eggs, that will keep them from cracking and also help the eggshells peel off easier when you’re done. A tip I will totally be using from now and forever since we hard-boil a lot of eggs around here.
• The folks at PAAS have seven new decorating kits available now, including one that comes with flocking powder to make velvety shapes on your eggs, and Volcano Eggsplosion, which uses melted crayon shavings to decorate the eggs (and this might be a new favorite).

We did a small batch of eggs this time because we’re not going to be here for Easter, so I wanted to make sure we could eat through what we had decorated. (And if you get tired of eating hard-boiled eggs, this egg salad with capers is a delicious way to use them up!)

One last thing… Heinz Vinegar and PAAS Easter Egg Dyeing Kits have joined forces to create a fun free Easter Egg Decorator App. From now through March 31st, when you decorate and share a virtual Easter egg, Heinz and PAAS will donate $1, up to $25,000, to Make-A-Wish. I can’t think of a better reason to decorate an Easter egg. Just search PAAS/Heinz in the iTunes App Store to download the app or you can do it online here as well (and e-mail it when done).

*This is NOT a sponsored post, but Heinz and PAAS kindly provided us with the materials to get our Easter egg decorating done, and we love them for that!