Take the easy route with egg dye kits, or the natural way with what's in your kitchen.

Decorating eggs can be lots of fun. Invite friends over for an artful adventure. Take the easy route with egg dye kits or the natural way with what's in your kitchen. Kids will not only have fun, they'll learn lots with these great Easter egg coloring ideas.

Dye Eggs With What's in Your Kitchen: Food Coloring

For beautiful, natural, homemade colors you can dye eggs with food coloring, add foods you may already have to the cold water before cooking eggs. Experiment with onion skins, cut-up beets, spinach, tomato paste, coffee, tea, spices like turmeric or sugar-free gelatin. Wrap string around eggs to create fun patterns. To keep mess to a minimum, spread a plastic tablecloth and let the creativity begin.

Egg Storage

• Store hard-cooked eggs in egg cartons in the refrigerator if you don’t color them immediately.
• Hard-cooked eggs in the shell will keep safely up to 1 week.

Important Safety Tips

• Eggs should not be left out of the refrigerator for more than two hours without risking food poisoning. If you plan to display decorated eggs longer than two hours outside the refrigerator, do not eat them. Cook and refrigerate extra eggs for eating, and throw out hard-cooked eggs used for decoration. Store hard-cooked eggs in egg cartons in the refrigerator if you don’t color them immediately.
• Cracked eggs should be thrown away.
• Use only food coloring or food-grade dyes made especially for egg dyeing, not craft dyes and paints.
• For more information on handling eggs safely, check out the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service's Web site at www.fsis.usda.gov.