After several hours of trial and error at a friend’s house, I was pretty proud of these, the product of sparkly Mod Podge and several colored paper napkins.

Turns out, Ray does not have a proper appreciation for decoupage. He recoiled.

“Why are they so ugly?” he asked.

I stared at him, then at the eggs. Then back at him.

“Oh,” he said, getting it. “Um, maybe they’ll look better when they dry.”

“They are dry!” I said, rolling them over in my hand. I thought about getting mad, but I had to laugh instead as I headed for my laptop.

“At least I”ll have something to blog about.”

I’m not sure the photo does their ugliness justice. (They were photographed on the stove, next to the kitchen utensils, since there’s not currently a spot on the dining room table — more on that in a moment.) It’s true that the eggs are lumpy and bumpy and mottled. I still think they look kind of cool. Maybe if I showed Ray the rejects for comparison purposes, he’d agree.

The truth is that I suck at decorating eggs. I spend weeks staring at magazines and searching online, then devote one night a year to reminding myself how hopeless it all is. I mean, really, how do they make those eggs in Martha Stewart Living look like that?!

It reminds me I need to do something with martharexia.com, the URL I bought a while back.

The good news is that our kids had a blast making their eggs. Sophie wasn’t so into it, but she did behave, except for one brief episode in which she emerged from the bathroom in just a tee shirt. Luckily my friend has a three year old who sometimes does the same. (She claimed so, at least.) Annabelle made a few nice colored/Crayoned ones, including one for Sophie and one for me.

After last year’s experience trying to wrap lace around eggs then dye them to look just like Martha’s, my friend and I were skeptical. She stared hard at the photos in this spring’s MSL and decided they’re airbrushed. (I felt the same way when I looked at the pictures of Valerie Bertinelli in People magazine a couple weeks ago.)

Maybe we’re just bitter. Speaking of bitter, I’ve got to swap the Easter bonnet for the apron and get to work on the bitter herbs (Manischevitz now makes horseradish with wasabi! Cool!), matzoh bark and everything in between for tomorrow night’s seder. Before that, I”ve got to unearth my dining room table. It’s after 11 pm and I have to work tomorrow. The race is on.

Maybe I’ll try decoupaging a few more eggs first.