Last year I dyed my easter eggs with all natural ingredients. I didn’t know how things would turn out, but I kept imagining bright, traditional Easter egg colors.
When I pulled the eggs from their solutions of boiled spinach, red wine, carrots and turmeric I was immediately disappointed. They weren’t bright and Eastery. They didn’t meet my expectations.
Expectations remove the joy and curiosity from creative projects, relationships and new ideas.
Once the eggs dried, I noticed the unique, earthy, natural colors. They were beautiful, soft, hopeful and oh so very Eastery.
Don’t dismiss something because it doesn’t turn out the way you thought it would. Instead, plan to be surprised and find the beauty in not just the results, but in the way everything came together exactly as it should. Trust that things will be ok and usually even better.
Happy Easter friends.
they are BEAUTIFUL not beautiful. peace. billy
Thank you Courtney and to you as well! BTW Those eggs are lovely!
Bless you for posting this.
Our family just had a disappointment that is hitting some of us harder than others and your post was a great reminder of the power of mystery and things that, just are what they are. How we can mourn and wish things were different, but no matter how much we do so, they’re not! Acceptance is the key to moving on from these times; after a bit of mourning time of course.
This probably doesn’t apply to Easter eggs coming out a different color, but when I have hard disappointments in my life, I try to see them not as wrong, mistaken or missed opportunities, but new ones that God gives us to be thankful for and maybe see as a better outcome or way for us.
To all your readers and mine, have a Blessed, Happy and Holy Easter Season!
Before I read your post, I thought they were beautiful. Now, even more so!
Happy Easter, Courtney. Thank you for spreading hope and happy!
When my sister and I were children our Grandmother taught us about coloring eggs with natural things. When we wanted shiny ones she just took a bit of Crisco and rubbed on the eggs making them shiny.
The eggs are very pretty whether shiny or natural. Very nice work.
Reminds me of the Japanese value of wabi sabi–beauty in the rustic, aged and imperfect. That was what first came to mind when I saw the picture. We are so bound by our expectations. Whole cultures value the imperfect, the well-worn and rustic. We so easily forget or never have the chance to see this alternative perspective in our bright, shiny, new, youth-oriented culture.
We grow wise, dignified and beautiful with age. The more we love our simple, natural, imperfect selves the lovelier the world will be.
I agree with Tammy. I actually read this post because I thought the eggs looked really cool. This post actually makes them even more beautiful. This post is really relevant to me also. I feel like I am getting some divine affirmations lately. This post had given me a perspective on something that has been on my mind all day today that I would not have thought of without reading this. Thank you for this post!
I think expectations are very closely linked to control – for me at least. I want to be able to control the outcome of… well, of most things actually. But the truth is, there is very little in this life that we do have control over, and that really is a good thing.
When I get myself all tied up in a control knot, I try to imagine what the world really would look like if I had control over everything. And if I honestly imagine it, it would be a horror-scape that no human being would want to experience.
I mean, think about it – if you had complete control over everything, and everything always turned out the way you wanted it to, could you ever trust that anything was real? How could you know someone really loved you if you had complete control over everything they did? And don’t even get me started on the larger life and death questions. How horrible would it be to have to decide who got to live and who died?
Most things in life are out of our hands, and I, for one, am very, very grateful.
I like the eggs you made a lot more than the artificial, flashy ones you can get at the supermarket. Who says that eggs have to be bright to be beautiful? My mother makes eggs like these every year and even as a child I preferred those over the ones at the supermarket.
Unfortunately I don’t have time to celebrate easter this year, but by looking at these eggs I get into a kind of festive mood 🙂 Thank you!
I know what you mean, Courtney. I rarely shop for clothes — only when I need a specific item to replace another specific item (i.e. white blouse) — but I find myself already having a mental picture of exactly what I want. Of course, I have no fashion sense, so what I imagine is not in style and can’t be found. lol Seriously, though, as a result, I end up frustrated and my hate for shopping grows a bit more. I’ve seen this happen with others in terms of vacation — they had the image of what they wanted and, of course, family members didn’t act according to script, etc. Other than shopping :), I stopped doing that about 3 years ago. Instead of expectations, I have hope and am just pretty darned happy with almost anything that happens.
By the way, I love the egg colors — soft, mellow, comforting. Much nicer than the jarring almost-neon colors typically seen. But were they harder to find? lol
Those are, perhaps, the most artistic and rustic looking eggs ever! Great analogy. Happy Easter!
These are beautifully ‘wabi-sabi’ … and a lovely reminder of the value and joy in subtlety. We used to gather spiny gorse from the hillsides to dye our eggs a soft lemony yellow.
Am reading your lovely insightful piece as I sit with our son who is in the ICU, and your words are so spot on. Natures bounty provides all we need for authentic rather than man made beauty. Love love love your eggs.
Your Eastertime/Passovertime observation & graphic image is the rainbow and eternal. It is a gift and bright light.
i love your eggs. i also did a natural die this year and mine were pretty drab, but still beautiful. i love what nature has to offer even though i thought they might turn out robin’s egg blue or beet. ha ha!
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Expectation truly is the root of all heartache. And how happy a person can become if we train ourselves to expect nothing, or only very little…
As for the eggs (which I think look beautiful), in my country there is a tradition of boiling brown or red onion skins in water for an hour or two, then let the water cool until it is at cca. body temperature; place different shapes of grass or leaves (clovers, for example) on the eggs (the eggs should be as white as possible) and secure them with old nylon stockings which are then tied into knots so the leaf does not move. These wrapped eggs are placed into the warm water and left there for an hour or two; then we bring the water slowly to the boil again and simmer for 15 minutes; the eggs are then left in the onion water until they cool down considerably (and you can reach with your hand into the water without getting burned); the nylons are removed, as are the leaves and grass and the eggs are patted dry gently; in the end, we put some olive oil onto the palms of our hands, rub it in, and then spread it over the eggs so they get a nice sheen. The colour is nice and bright red and the shapes of the leaves are clearly visible. We seldom use artificial colours, although they are widely available. Try it next year!
This sounds really cool. Do you pre-cook the white eggs, or do they just cook during this process of setting the dye on them?
No, no pre-cooking. They cook for 15 minutes while they are also getting dyed so that’s that! I hope you like the results, but yours are just lovely as they are!
Well, although many have told they are beautiful, YES, they are. I love this post. Sometimes it’s not only what we expect, but what we have told to expect. This is a lovely example of things turning out great but different of what we expect. When we discover that, we can like not only the final stage, but all the process. Gracias.
We went the traditional route this year! And, I was sure to tell my daughter ahead of time that the results were unpredictable but would definitely not be like what we got with the chemical tabs. We went into the experiment with curious minds and loved the pastel results.
Simple, short, beautifully written piece.
I particularly love the advice: “plan to be surprised”
The eggs are a perfect hue of nature! It is the fast consumer culture too often that dictates our expectations, and the closer one gets to nature one finds anything but bright colors. Look at the natural landscape, it is mostly muted tones of greens, browns, rusts with specks of cardinals and bluejays. There is beauty in patience, we must all be patient to find it.
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