Decorated Easter Eggs using Natural Dyes & Leaves

How to make simple decorated eggs for Easter

You will need:

• some ordinary fresh eggs, preferably white, though I expect you'll just get deeper colours using brown eggs
• a selection of leaves from the garden or kitchen. I used Coriander, Lemon Balm and Ivy. Just use good shapes of a suitable size
• an old pair of tights
• some elastic/rubber bands
• a bag of onions or two. I used red onions and white onions
• a little olive oil (any edible oil will do)

Rub off or peel the skins off a bag of onions and place in a pan of water. I kept the red onion & white onion skins separate in two pans as they gave different tones. In the photograph the paler brown is from white eggs boiled in the red onion skins and the redder brown is from white eggs boiled in the white onion skins. The more skins the stronger the colour.

Bring the pans of water to the boil.

Meanwhile lay a leaf or two against an egg and use a 3 inch section cut from a pair of tights to hold it in place. Use a rubber/elastic band at the back of the egg (opposite from the leaf) to hold the tights & leaves in place.

Place the eggs in the pans with the onion skins and boil for 12 minutes.

Run the eggs under a cold tap and then remove the tights and the leaves to reveal your decorated egg.

If you want them to be shiny then paint some oil on with a brush.

Then arrange them nicely in a basket.

Later you can use the boiled eggs in a salad as usual!

Green River Canoes: Take the kids canoeing

Connect your children to nature



In my other guise as a guide for Green River Canoes. We have some excellent short canoeing trips in the school holidays for 2014. We canoe on rivers in the Belgium Ardennes, just a short hop across the channel and also in the Lot region of France.

Plenty of things for the kids to do apart from splashing about in the river of course. Lots of butterflies and dragonflies to observe and plenty of history with castles and caves to get involved in.

We take the stress and strain out of organising the trip and everyone has a great time.

The rivers are easy to paddle and eminently suitable for children over the age of 7. Being able to swim 25m is a must. We paddle tandem open canoes with an adult and child in each canoe. Once we assessed the abilities then kids can paddle together under supervision. We all where life-jackets when on the river.

We provide instructions on paddling for those that have never tried it and generally mess about on the river whilst we learn. Of course we also make sure everyone is aware of the dangers and run through the safety regularly.

All the different trips are on the web, with summaries, day-to-day schedules and notes on the places we stay. You can also read our brochures and download them too.

Our scheduled trips are limited to 7 people, plus our two guides. We can arrange for larger groups if required. If you are 4 or more then we can arrange a private group and schedule for you. Talk to us if you want to tweak the dates, include or exclude certain things, change the rendezvous place etc and so forth.

We really love canoeing and we would love to take you.