What's For Dinner?

Speaking of eggs, hopefully you picked up a few (dozen!) extra while you were out yesterday getting what you needed for the Easter egg wreath. In a perfect scenario, you would have stopped at the refrigerated egg aisle and thought to yourself “let’s just pick up a few extra cartons of eggs…just in case.” What?! It could happen you know! But that’s okay if you didn’t because, let’s get real. Very seldom do our days function by a perfect scenario. But while I was in the egg wreath/egg crafting mood yesterday, I started doing a little more digging for some additional ideas.

And remembering how much you guys loved the Christmas garland post, I thought you might like to do an Easter egg garland post. What I love about this is A) you’ve already got your headache pain reliever from blowing out all those eggs yesterday so you should be set there, and B) you can dye or lave the eggs alone to accommodate your Easter décor (since I'm going to go out on a ledge here and assume that we don't all have those fancy chicken, geese, quail, etc.. in our backyard as Martha does). Admittedly, I am typically not that good about decorating for Easter. The reason being, that we go home to Atlanta for Easter every year. But remembering to my own childhood, my mom always had bunnies and eggs and Eastery things all over the place. So I’m making a real effort to step it up this year.

You Will Need
-Flexible tape measure
-Eggs
-Pad of paper and pencil
-Pin
-Scissors
-Waxed twine
-Embroidery needle (the length of your largest egg)
-Hot-glue gun

1. Using the tape measure, determine the garland’s desired length, allowing some slack to hang below the mantel or window frame. If you are planning to use the garland on a table, add extra length to snake around platters or centerpieces.

2. Measure one of each type egg you have chosen; add these measurements together. (Martha’s Araucana eggs are 2 inches long, and the quail eggs are about 1 1/2 inches; together, they are 3 1/2 inches.) With pad and pencil, divide the length of your garland by the combined length of the eggs to calculate how many eggs you will need.

3. Blow out the eggs: Make a pinhole in each end of a raw egg, making sure the pin breaks the yolk; gently expel the contents with an egg blower or by blowing with your mouth. Rinse well with water, and let dry. If using quail eggs, be careful not to crack them, as their shells are particularly delicate.

4. Cut the waxed twine to the desired length, adding 2 inches for the ends. Thread the embroidery needle with twine.

5. Carefully direct the needle through the holes in each end of the first egg. After pulling the twine through, remove the needle, and knot the twine. Carefully secure the knot to the end of the egg with hot glue.

6. Thread the needle with the other end of the twine, and string the rest of the eggs, making sure that all eggs face the same direction and alternating among types and sizes, if you’re using more than one type or size.

7. When finished, knot the end. Carefully hot-glue the knot to the egg.

You know the other thing that occurred to me is that you can hang this over windows, or drape your Easter table with the egg garland. How about draping a small garland over a mirror in the dining room for Easter, or using them to decorate for an Eastery baby shower? Not only are the eggs Eastery, but symbolic and très appropriate for a baby shower I think. Just something to think about. Now I know that we don’t all have quail eggs at our disposal (anyone???), so in trying to think of something else to put in between the larger eggs, I thought you could use knotted ribbon (grosgrain, gossamer, even a pretty toile) or large beads as substitutes. Does anyone else have any good ideas?

I know one thing for sure, and that’s what’s for dinner tonight. Eggs, eggs, and more eggs! ;-)