Today's posting is all about Easter Eggs. This weekend my sister and I decorated eggs with two very young cousins. Let's see if you can tell from the following picture which eggs were decorated and/or cracked by our cousins and which were decorated by us.
My aunt came up with this very effective trick for adding designs: dye + glue gun + more dye. Nice.
Not into food art? Well, there is another other kind of easter egg -- hidden stuff in computer programs! Unfortunately, it seems this is a dying (no, not dyeing) art--too many companies fear risks added by undocumented code. But back when I taught MS Office classes to pay my way through college, I found that the easter egg discussions (for instance, I pointed out an old version of Excel's Spy Hunter and the MS Access Magic 8 Ball, among others) were the only times when students paid attention.
Ah, the days when you could ctrl-shift-f into Netscape's fishcam... or go to about:mozilla in Firefox for a funny message. Oh, wait, I think those still work (assuming you're using the right browsers).
Looking for others? The eeggs.com archive might be worth a visit.
UPDATE: For some bizarre reason, this has turned out to be my most popular blog entry of all time. Not this quality posting or this controversial topic, but this teensy little entry on Easter Eggs. Huh. You just can't predict these sorts of things.
Anyway, I thought I'd reward the adoring public by giving even MORE information on the creative egg decorating technique displayed in the not so hot picture that probably brought you to this page. I don't know if my aunt made this up, or if she got the idea from an egg decorating book/magazine article/voices in her head... whatever the source, this is a fun and easy technique. (caution--this involves the use of a glue gun, which may not be safe or appropriate for young kids). Steps:
- Take a hard boiled egg, then dye it the color of of your choice. Or skip the pre-dye phase and move directly to the next step...
- Using a glue gun, decorate the egg. If you use one of those mini glue guns you can get a fairly high degree of detail in your design. Wavy lines, squiggly lines, little teensy circles... so many options! But be careful not to burn yourself!
- After the glue dries (which shouldn't take long), put the egg into a second color of dye for a few minutes.
- When you're satisfied with the updated color of the egg, remove it from the dye. Dry it off, then peel off the dried glue. Voila! A beautiful and unique egg design!
Enjoy! :)
Radiohead in Tampa, FL. Uh-MAY-zing! I think we stayed at the same hotel as the band, too. And I'm not to be blamed for Emily's newfound gambling addiction.
