With the price index for eggs up nearly 60% over last year, if you’re thinking you may not be willing—or even able—to shell out the cash for a basket of eggs to dye this year, you’re likely not alone. Here in Alaska, an 18-pack of eggs is a staggering $12.99 at the time of this writing. With four kids, that would be an expensive tray of deviled eggs post-dying, especially because we usually hide plastic eggs anyway to avoid any unfound rotters in the yard.
Thankfully, that doesn’t mean the kids have to miss out on the egg-dying experience. There are actually alternative options to dying eggs for Easter. Here are five things you can “dye” besides eggs. I use the term dye loosely, as some of these involve paint. 
Marshmallows
Vaguely egg-shaped, white, and they don’t need to be boiled… What better egg replacement could there be? Just set up some bowls of dye, stick some toothpicks in some marshmallows, and let the kids go to town. The only catch with dying marshmallows is unlike a traditional Easter egg, the dyed portion of a marshmallow is eaten. If your kids eat a few too many, they may end up with colorful poops. You might consider some natural dyes or melting chocolate, which brings me to my next idea.
Truffles or Rice Crispy Balls
Keeping with the food options, while you can’t really dye truffles or rice crispy treats—at least not by dipping them in food dye like an egg—you can dip them in colored chocolate. Both are surprisingly easy to make as are bowls of melted chocolate. Just mix up a batch of truffle or rice crispy treats in any flavor you’d like, roll it into egg-shaped balls if necessary, and you have a perfect egg replacement. If you have one of those nifty machines, cake pops could work well too.
Air-dry clay
If you’ve never heard of air-dry clay, it’s just like regular clay, but as the name implies, air dries. You don’t have to bake it. It’s also relatively inexpensive and can be found in nearly any craft aisle in any department store. All the above make it a great option as an alternative to dying Easter eggs. You can dip your foam eggs in paint, do paint pours, or even let the kids just paint them by hand. You can also buy wooden eggs for this purpose, but it may not be cheaper than real eggs.
Rocks
If air-dry clay still seems too expensive, there are always rocks. As a bonus, you get the fun of finding egg-shaped rocks. It could even be an alternative to the Easter egg hunt itself I suppose. The Easter rock hunt. Rock painting has become so popular in recent years, that there’s a variety of products for this purpose too, from paint pens to full kits.
Paper Mache
Finally, while this one wouldn’t be my pick as paper mache is a mess, and it would be time-consuming to make a ton of little paper mache eggs, paper mache can be dyed or painted. You wouldn’t want to fully dip a paper egg, but you could dip strips in dye to apply to the eggs or just paint them like a rock or clay. You can buy paper mache eggs as well, but again, that mat not be cheaper than eggs, which is the goal here.
Those are the ideas I had as far as what to dye instead of eggs this Easter, but I’m definitely all ears for more options. What are you dying this year?