I Love Blue Lipped Egg Blowers

The Rucker family typically puts up the Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving, but Jack Dear was away at Alva.  He came home Monday, and last night, we put up the tree.  Jack is always in charge of tree set up leaving us girls to do the decorating.  It is such a pleasure to put the world people up, followed by all the ornaments we have collected the past twelve years, some starting to lose their shine or with paint scratched, but all with a story.  My favorites are from the early trees, like the horde of gingerbread men we we made our first Christmas as the Rucker family.

Other than the world people that came from grandmother's tree, thevery oldest ornaments are from my first year as a teacher.  Jack who then lived a few blocks away kindly brought me a tree scrounged from his mother's pasture.  It was a cedar tree, not a lovely spruce or pine, but it was free.  It was one of those years when I had money for presents or decor but not both.  I opted for presents.  How could I not?  So I bought a few strings of lights and one box of ornaments.  I strung pop corn and made some other crafty ornaments, but the Christmas eggs are what I best remember.  I am not sure whose idea it was to blow and decorate eggs, but when we started, I pictured something delicately ornate, Faberge like.

Eggs are thankfully pretty cheap, and I also had a bunch of colors of Rit fabric dye.  We debated whether we should dye first or blow first.  For some insane reason, we decided to dye eggs first so that the hollow eggs wouldn't get full of dye.  It seems we thought it would be ages before all the dye dripped back out or dried. And so, we mixed up red, yellow, blue, and green dye and most carefully dipped the raw eggs.  After they dried forever, Jack showed me how to heat a needle and delicately make a hole in each end of the egg.  A bit of whites will leak out of a pierced egg, but to truly clean out the eggs, one must blow them out, so we we put the eggs to our lips and blew and blew and blew.  I am not sure at what point we looked up and noticed each other's new lips, but we looked like we had been kissing rainbow lollipops.  It turns out that it was impossible to blow out eggs without getting some moisture from our lips onto the eggs.  Once the eggs were damp, the color rubbed right off and behold!  We were dyed as much as the eggs. Not just our lips, but an inch all the way around our mouths were blue and green and red and this gross black where the colors ran together.  For those of you who have played in dye, you know it lasts a few days.  Once we realized the damage, it was too late and we were half done, so we just finished the job. 

  Lungpower is a must and before long,  we were ridiculously dizzy, but we also had a bowl of yolks and whites for cooking, and soon, a bowlful of eggs to decorate, some with glitter, some with intricate designs in craft paintt, all with hot glued ribbon loops for hangers.  They were a far cry from Faberge, but several were indeed pretty.  Once the paints and glitters dried, we  shellacked them, hoping to make them a little stronger.  

That would have been 16 years ago.  The eggs have had a hard life.  Cats who climb Chirstmas trees and bat ornaments don't help.  Trees on wood floors and clumsy decorators don't help either, but many years and five moves later, a few have survived.  Bella felt left out that she didn't share this story, so a few winters ago, we made a new dozen with her - I am older and wiser now and know to blow first and dye second.  Her eggs are sweet, but I  love those eggs from that first tree, when Jack and I still danced around and between  the ideas of love and friendship and relationships, marriage a taboo topic, but when he already cared enough about me to go around with rainbow lips just so I could have ornaments to decorate a tree.