My friend Kelly saw that I needed an idea for Jude and Paige’s Adventures in Stock project, so she called me up with her vision: bathtub, full of eggs, with her, cowboy boots and a bird’s nest in her hair. I said, “Perfect! I’ll get the tub and eggs.”

I have been wanting a tub in a field shot for a long time….but the eggs part was all Kelly. So I spent the day running around, gathering and hard boiling. I quickly realized that the 3 cartons of 5 dozen eggs (180 eggs), although it sounds like a lot, is not much when you want to fill a bathtub. So I put in the call for Kelly to buy more eggs.

So she bought 3 more cartons of 5 dozen eggs, which we didn’t have time to hard boil, but even filling the tub with blankets and covers, 360 eggs were still not enough.

Another problem was that we had two very different and competing visions… one wanted wild and mysteriously arty, and the other wanted tame stock…. so 360 eggs later, I am disappointed to say that I don’t think either of the visions felt very satisfied with the results.

But as always, we learned lots of lessons: more eggs, one vision, less cooks and try and mark the hard boiled ones because trying to find out which ones are raw, by spinning and shaking, is very time consuming…. and can lead to broken eggs in your ear if you shake too hard.