Easter - (the natural way) - is the new awesome

Every once in awhile, we need to remind you that we live in San Francisco by doing something just a little bit hippie. This weekend our friend Emily invited us all over to particpate in her family tradition of dyeing eggs the "natural" way - with flowers and leaves and berries - just the way that the Easter Bunny intended.

Of course, doing things the "natural" or "environmental" way also sometimes equates to doing things the gross way. Like using cloth diapers or feeding your garbage to worms that live in a manure/compost bin in the backyard.

It turns out that dyeing your Easter Eggs the natural way isn't all that gross - in fact, it is even more fun than just buying some crappy kit from the store, because this way you get to go steal flowers from your neighbor's yard or Golden Gate Park to plaster all over your eggs!

Well. There were some spiders living in these stolen flowers. I guess that is kind of gross.

Okay - so how do you dye an egg naturally? First you cover your raw egg in all sorts of neat colored plants.

Uh, Shawn? I think your flower might be a little bit big for your egg. Maybe you can put it behind your ear and wear it there all night instead?

Closer, Steve. But it still kind of looks a little like you are wrapping your egg in your dinner salad.

Leave it to Emily to show us how it is done - wrapped in just enough petals to leave a little impression.

Then you stick your covered egg into a little bag fashioned from an old nylon and tie off the ends.

I know, I know. Wrapping your egg in used nylons might be considered a little gross.
But Robyn was just amazed at the new function she found for all of her used hosiery. Looks like you guys might be eating a lot of hardboiled eggs in the near future, Shawn.

Then you boil the wrapped eggs in some water that is full of onion skins that have been soaking, which will give everything a nice redish brown color, or will react with the flowers on the egg. Emily warned us that the colors weren't going to be as bright as we were used to, and that we shouldn't get too caught up in controlling what our eggs came out looking like. For true artists like Betsy, you know that this was a little tough, but it was fun to see the flower shapes appear on the eggs.

Eventually we kind of figured out which leaves left some color and which blocked out the color, so we could take neat leaf shapes ...
... and watch them magically appear dyed on our eggs! Leremy invented this egg that can also be used on valentines day.
Exactly how I felt about it, Betsy.

So although we had no traditional rainbow eggs, these natural ones turned out pretty great.

Mother Nature AND the Easter Bunny would be so proud.