Blasphemy - I hate coloring Easter eggs!

I have never really understood the whole concept of coloring Easter eggs. First of all, you have to hard boil enough eggs for each person participating to make it "fun" and "worthwhile". So, that means at least six eggs per person, and hopefully more, because kids have the attention span of........well, they have no attention span, and therefore, coloring six eggs will last about fifteen minutes to your hour of prep. You must purchase and prepare whatever dye process you're using. It used to be so simple. Drop a colored Paas tablet into a cup of water and vinegar and await brightly (actually they were more pastel-y) colored eggs! But now, commercially available, are tie-dye egg dyeing packets, sparkles, stickers, marbled (do not get this one! It's sticky!), and any imaginable combination of cartoon characters. Most of these dye kits come with similar dye tablets, various accessories and some completely inadequate wire "lifters" used to remove the eggs from the dye (these have the consistency of a rubber band, normally, so don't even bother using them unless you enjoy watching wobbly eggs spill over their edges and roll awkwardly across your counter tops leaving a trail of splattered egg dye in their wake). So, you boil up a hundred or so eggs, drape the kids in "paint shirts" to protect their clothing, and get down to the business of dyeing eggs. But the thing is, it's super boring. I mean, you just drop an egg into the dye and......wait. And when it comes out you wait for it to dry. And then maybe you slap a few stickers on it. Or perhaps you get really fancy and draw on the un-dyed egg with white crayon so ghostly scribbles will appear on the egg when you lift it from the dye. Oohhhh. Then, as appealing as a bowl full of oblong pastel-y eggs is, you really can't do much with it except refrigerate it. So, then you have a very pretty bowl full of eggs in your fridge for days. And after a few days you'll say something like "wow, I better make some egg salad" so you'll set to work peeling all those eggs and you'll end up with a few eggshells under your nail beds and a bowl full of peeled, splotchy-colored eggs which you'll mix into a delightful egg salad and that's when your kids will say they don't like egg salad (and your whole house will smell like a fart. Bonus!).

Some people even get really fancy and BLOW OUT their eggs. This involves making a tiny pinhole in one end of a raw egg. You then blow the gelatinous insides of the egg out this tiny hole into a bowl and rinse the very fragile empty eggshell out. After it's dry you can decorate the egg in any sort of fancy ways and you can KEEP IT FOREVER! Until it breaks. Oh, and you get a bunch of raw eggs in a bowl that you then have to cook up into something delicious like a 30 egg omelet or something. Have I mentioned I'm not a huge fan of eggs? Unless they are mixed with a box of cake mix. Then, they're devine! I say make a whole bunch of cakes with those eggs and do us all a favor. Some people spend HOURS decorating these blown-out eggshells. Like with jewels and gilt paint and the like. And to that I have to say this: what the hell? Just the thought of this tedious decorating process makes me need a Valium. Have I mentioned I don't have a lot of patience for tedious craft projects?

But like any good (guilty) mother, I have, year after year, boiled up several dozen eggs so my kids can dye them. And I've oohed and aahed over how pretty they are, and then I've had to force-feed my children hard-boiled eggs for the next week. I just don't get the point. Let's make these things pretty and look at them for a day or two. Then, let's crumble off their skins and eat them.

I've always wanted an "alternative" egg. You know, something made of plastic or wood that's cheap and could be dyed, washed off, and re-dyed year after year. Just skip the whole egg EATING part. So, then I found these: http://www.orientaltrading.com/ui/browse/processRequest.do?demandPrefix=12&sku=57/9313&mode=Searching&erec=4&D=eggs&Ntx=mode%2bmatchallpartial&Ntk=all&requestURI=processProductsCatalog&Ne=90000&N=388760&y=0&Dx=mode%2bmatchallpartial&Ntt=eggs&x=0&sd=Design+Your+Own+Easter+Eggs#RL4  Sorry for the long URL, but these are from Oriental Trading and they are plastic, white, Easter eggs that you can decorate with markers and use year after year! YAY! No more egg salad! And they are cheap enough that if you don't really like them year after year, you can just buy more. And they're fillable! Because who wants a yolk and a white in their egg? I want chocolate! I do believe this is the solution to my Easter egg decorating woes. No dangerous boiling water, messy dyes, silly wire things, cheap stickers, or weeks of egg salad. Just cheap, commercial plastic eggs that are white - a promising canvas ready to be transformed! What do you think?