It's Easter and I have returned to guest bloggerdom! (I kinda think there's a Jesus-based joke to made in there, but I'm not Sarah Silverman, so I'll refrain.)

Over the past year, since we discovered my daughter is allergic to red food dye, every holiday that's come along has been a new challenge. Christmas meant finding dye-free candy canes. Making her birthday cake this past January meant a foray into making pink frosting. And Valentine's Day... well, we just kinda skipped Valentine's Day this year.

This Easter has been another new frontier with its own set of challenges. By now, I'm pretty good at finding dye-free candy (or candy substitutes) but egg dyeing was something else entirely.

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When I was a kid, we used to dye our eggs with food coloring, and although I do have all natural liquid food dyes, at $19 a box, you'll forgive if I'm a little miserly with it. So, wanting to take a cheaper route, I found an article on, of all places, the Celestial Seasonings site with a list of alternative egg coloring. Following their directions (more or less), I made the following colors from the listed ingredients:

• Red (beets)
• Orange (paprika)
• Purple (Cherry Berry Zinger, as the store was out of Red Zinger)
• Blue (purple grape juice)

Each dye was assembled, then simmered for 15-30 minutes, and left to cool until still warm, but no longer hot.

We decorated them first, with crayons and bits of tape, then slipped them into the dyes and waited.

And waited.

And... waited.

Do you know how long "at least 15 minutes" of waiting is to a four year old? It's like a stoner watching Titanic for the first time. "Is it done yet? How about now? Is it done? This is taking so long!"

We didn't quite make it as far as 15 minutes before we checked the colors.

The blue was more like, well, grape.

The red was only faintly pink.

The orange was a light, drab yellow.

And the purple? Mossy gray-green.

See for yourself:

I'm not totally disappointed with the results — the eggs do have a Martha Stewartish look-at-what-my-Araucana-hens-just-laid look to them, which is not without its appeal. They definitely are not the lurid, cheery eggs you'd get from, say, a Paas kit, though, and seeing as I stood around cooking these damn dyes for almost an hour, I was hoping for colors with a little more pop.

And now, the Easter Bunny will take these organic, free-range eggs colored with all-natural dyes... and lovingly place them in a plastic basket lined with fake grass. Ah, Easter.

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