{Getting Ready For Easter} Easter Dinner Decor Ideas

{living}

Since I already shared pictures from last year's Easter dinner yesterday, I thought I'd share some pictures from other years today. After all I can't share pictures from this year until Easter is already past.  Of course, me being me, I can't do the same thing 2 years in a row so each year has to have a different theme (although I have to say I'm not sure I always go quite as "all in" with theme for Easter Dinner as I do for Pre-Thanksgiving Dinner, but even if it's not quite as obvious with the Easter tablescapes and decor it's still in the back of my head as I choose decorations.

{unfortunately I can't find my pictures from Easter 2011.... If I remember correctly that year had some stuff I really liked, but I don't know where the pictures are currently stored, so if I can find them I will add them here, but for the meantime we'll have to make do with 2012 and 2013}

2012

The theme for 2012 was "an Easter picnic"

These first few pictures were taken early Easter morning as we were getting ready for church {I always try to set the table for a formal meal the night before}, I loved the way the early light coming in through the windows hit the centerpiece. It looked like an early morning Easter meadow

The centerpiece was several patches of plastic grass lined up together  and scattered with oversized Easter eggs, tissue paper flowers, and little bud vases with a fresh flower in each....

... and little bunny figurines {which were originally bunny shaped sidewalk chalk, that I covered with several layers of sealant/varnish to turn them into figurines}

the whole tablescape

and in case you were dying to see it from the other end of the table lol

The buffet table.  The table cloth for this was a collection of smaller "picnic blankets" {aka pieces of spring colored gingham fabrics} and decorated with more oversized Easter eggs, normal size Easter eggs and flowers arranged in jars and bottles.  the meal was Rack of Lamb; Ham; Rosemary Green Beans and Carrots; Deviled Eggs; Biscuits; and some sort of potatoes - I don't remember how they were fixed and I can't tell from the picture lol.

We also had a cantaloupe soup instead of sliced cantaloupe

My butterfly dessert plates

and Carrot Cake Cheesecake {a Martha Stewart recipe that is so good and I make almost every year} for dessert

 

2013

For some reason I really didn't get many pictures of the table and such in 2013, but I do have a couple, the theme was "glittery and elegant" or "Easter at Versailles", and I definitely didn't really go as all out with it as I would have liked to (in fact it's a theme I'll probably do again to be able to do a little more with) I don't remember what the deal was this year, I think it was a year where Easter was early and just snuck up on me (kinda like this year) and I just didn't have much time to do as much as I would have normally.

Elegantly dressed chicks and eggs on feather nests down the center of the table.  This the first year I had this china, which my Aunt gave me.  The goblets were also a gift from a lady that I am close to at work.

and of course the silver is my mix and match vintage silverware

I always have small Easter baskets for each person at their place they serve both as gifts/favors and as placecards

This is the one for my husband that year..... notice the "man" {AKA duct tape covered} eggs? lol

The buffet table... I believe the menu that year was rack of Lamb, Ham, Popovers, Scalloped Potatoes, Deviled Eggs, Sauteed Green Beans, Sauteed Asparagus, and honestly I'm not really sure what's in the soup tureen... pasta salad maybe? and for dessert Carrot Cake Cheesecake {a Martha Stewart recipe that I make almost every year... it is soooooo good} and "magic cake" - a recipe I found on pinterest, it was pretty yummy, and I'm sure you can find the recipe if you search for "magic cake"

over-head view of the food lol

beaded eggs, a tall glass candlestick and a sparkly bunny to decorate the buffet table

{Getting Ready for Easter} Easter Dinner DIYs

{living}&{making}

Getting Ready For Easter:

Preparations for Easter are definitely in full swing here at our house.  Actually, I'd say it's more like a mad rush to try and get everything I want to do done and ready.  Somehow the month of March flew by and I didn't realize Easter was going to be as early as it is until, oh..... probably last week to be honest.  I have most of the decorating done, and I'll be posting a decorations "tour" sometime this coming week, but I have a couple more things I'd like to get made before I do that.  In the meantime, though, I do have a couple of DIYs I made for last year's Easter dinner to share today:

Bunny Ear Napkin Rings and Mason Jar Footed Glasses

{Bunny Ear Napkin Rings}

I saw my inspiration for these last year at Hobby Lobby and this year I've been seeing them everywhere! I had actually meant to post this DIY last year when I made them, but perhaps since they really seem to be a big thing this year it's best that I didn't get it posted after all. ;) haha.  I think they are just so cute, in fact I'm thinking I might use them again this year (if I don't find a new napkin fold I'm dying to do) and they came together pretty quickly and easily.

{What you'll need}:
Burlap - I'm not sure how much yardage you need, I had gotten several yards to use last year since the theme was "Burlap and Lace", I also used it to make the placemats in the picture,but it doesn't take much.  I've seen some done in colored burlap too and they are super cute
Cardstock - depending on how many napkin rings you are making 1 or 2 sheets should be enough.  I used a tan color so that it wouldn't be obvious through the open weave of the burlap, if you're using a colored burlap use a similar colored cardstock
Thread and needle or sewing machine - matching or contrasting color to your burlap
Hot glue gun and glue

{How-to}:
1 First cut a strip of cardstock to the size you want the band of your napkin ring to be. {Mine were about 1.25" wide and about 8" long}. Cut a strip of burlap a little more than twice as long and about the same length.  Glue the burlap around the cardstock so that the seem is in the middle of the strip. Overlap the ends about an inch (more or less depending on how tight you want the napkin rings to be) to make a ring and glue together.

2  Next draw an ear shape (like in the picture below) onto cardstock and cut it out. Use the cardstock piece as a template to cut the ears out of burlap.  You will need 4 ear pieces for each napkin ring you are making. (2 per ear)

3 Sew the ear pieces together in pairs a little bit in from the edge, then fold the 2 bottom corners in to the middle as in the picture below and sew a straight line across to hold in place.

4 Cut the bottom of the ears off just below the stitch line to make a flat bottom

5 Use hot glue to attach the ears to the rings and you are done.

{Mason Jar Footed Glasses}

This one is so simple it doesn't really need much in the way of instructions.

{What you'll need}:
 Mason jar of your choice (I used these tall, narrow, quilted ones to make iced tea/water glasses)  glass candlesticks (I used short ones to compliment the tall jars)
Glue/adhesive - make sure you use one designed for this type of application, the one I used when I originally made these I've used on other stuff and worked great but some of these didn't survive the dishwasher (Which was fine I put them in there as a test.) It has survived hand washing on other stuff I have used it on though, but I recently found glue at Walmart, in the craft aisle that says it is for glass (among other things) and is supposedly dishwasher safe - I haven't tried it yet so I can't say whether it really is or not - I also currently can't find where I put it (my craft room is a mess right now) so I can't tell you the name of it, but basically just read the label to determine what glue will work for you

{How-to}
This how to literally only has one step - glue the candlestick to the bottom of the mason jar and let cure as directed on the glue's packaging. It's usually at least 24 hours, but definitely follow all package directions. Easy peasy.

Now since you've seen the DIYs here's a few pictures of the tablescape and other decorations from Easter Dinner last year:

As I said earlier the theme was "burlap and lace"

the table was decorated pretty simply with burlap ribbons, eggs in a wire basket, a couple bunnies figurines from my collection and baby's breath in Mason jars

this is one of my favorite bunnies since it looks like he is praying, too sweet

the place setting: burlap placemat, charger with a lacy edge, and of course the napkin rings and glasses

The buffet table (please ignore the mess that is the craft room in the background.... it's more often a mess than neat it seems lol.... The garland was also a DIY: store bought doilies cut in half and sewn into double fold bias tape.  The table runner was a wide burlap ribbon/runner that I gathered down the middle and then laid a lace edged ribbon over it

the meal was much more simple than I normally do since it was just us and my parent's last year and I had hosted a baby shower the day before.  The "vase" that the flowers in that back are in was made the same way as the glasses, just using a bigger jar and taller candlestick.

Catching Up {&} Theme Food Week February: I {heart} Theme Food Week

{living}&{cooking}

Well, well, well..... here I am again having to play catch up after being MIA for over a month..... I really can't believe its been so long, February and March have really flown by! I apparently didn't even get Theme Food Week for February posted (we'll get to that in a minute).  I know why I didn't get anything posted in February - we were without internet for several weeks again at the beginning of the month (of course that turned out to be our fault, we didn't realize the power had gone out to the outlet that the modem was plugged into and it needed to be unplugged and plugged back in ..... which lets face it should have been one of the first things we tried, but it wasn't... haha) and then we were in California for my sister-in-law's wedding at the end of the month.  March.... IDK what happened there, it just flew flew by.

So let me go ahead and do my recap for February's theme food week and then I'll get you all caught up with everything else that's been going on and what's coming up. (especially with Easter sneaking up so quickly on us here!

Theme Food Week February: I <3 Theme Food Week

In honor of Valentine's Day February's Theme Food Week was all about heart shaped food.  There were a couple new recipes I tried for Theme Food Week, but also several of the days were just normal stuff made heart shaped or with heart shaped ingredients. So here's the menu:

Monday: Stuffed Flank Steak (hearts) with Heart Shaped Roasted Potatoes and Brussels Sprouts

This was one of those that wasn't a new recipe, just a little extra effort put into the prep.  For the stuffed flank steak I pounded out the flank steak to get it to a good thickness and size then coated one side of it with a mix of crumbled goat cheese, pesto, and roasted red peppers.  Instead of just rolling it like you normally would I rolled each side into the middle and tied it off with kitchen twine to make it heart shaped (or at least as heart shaped as possible lol). Honestly now that it's been over a month I don't remember what temp and length of time I cooked it for, but I looked up a couple stuffed/rolled flank steak recipes to kind of see what the average was and went with that, so my advice would be to do the same, for that matter you can follow the whole recipe for any stuffed flank steak and just roll it this way....  The potatoes and brussels sprouts were roasted together coated with olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, etc. same as always.  The potatoes I cut out of slices of potato with a heart shaped cookie cutter.

Tuesday: Heart Shaped Mini Pizzas and Chicken Wings

This night was super easy and again, not a new recipe or anything, in fact mini pizzas is a dinner I make a lot, for Theme Food Week I took them up a notch with a couple more heart shaped cookie cutters.  The crust is Pillsbury Artisan whole grain pizza crust.  It's a really good pizza crust actually, of course making your own would be better I'm sure, but........ lol ;).  As well as cutting the crust out with a heart shaped cookie cutter I used a tiny one to cut hearts out of pepperoni.  I also (sort of) managed to make little hearts out of mini red bell peppers, and I attempted to cut grape tomatoes into heart shapes, but that only really worked on a couple of them, haha.  The wings were simply coated with barbeque sauce and then baked (you can toss them again with more sauce when they're done if you want since the sauce you baked on them thins out a lot in cooking, but it's a matter of preference.  Just make sure if you do it's not the same sauce that came in contact with the raw chicken!)

Thursday: Chicken Lazone (with heart shaped chicken breasts) with whole grain angel hair and sautéed green beans

This is the recipe for the Chicken Lazone that I used.  It was the first time trying it for us.  My mom thought it was fine but my husband and I both thought the sauce was a little to cream tasting and needed more flavor.  I do think this might have had something to do with the way I ended up making these though.  The recipe calls for chicken strips and then when you make the sauce you just make it in with the cooked chicken all in the same pan.  Because I partially butterflied the chicken breasts to make them heart shaped (to do this simply slice at an angle through the middle of a chicken breast, leaving the pointed end uncut so that it becomes a heart when you open it flat), I had to cook them one at a time because that's all that would fit in my pan and the butter in the pan got a little burnt from cooking so long so I had to clean out the pan and start over and while I did add a fair amount of the seasoning mix back in I think it just wasn't the same as it was supposed to be.  So while it was still good I do want to try it again sometime the way the recipe says to make it.  When I was plating my pasta it just happened to fall onto the plate in a heart shape too, which I thought was a cool coincidence.  The green beans were sauteed in butter and olive oil and of course salt, pepper, and garlic on them.

Friday: Italian Orzo Soup (with heart shaped veggies) and Heart Shaped Garlic Toast/Croutons

This is the recipe for this soup.  It was so good and I think for a change I actually followed the recipe as it was written, hahaha.  I cut the carrots for it into heart shapes (I saw it on Pinterest, basically you just shape it with the vegetable peeler and then slice it) and I actually found a heart shaped piece of tomato from the canned tomatoes that were used.  The bread was cut out with a heart shaped cookie cutter and toasted under the broiler (or you could use a toaster oven) with butter and garlic powder and a little salt on it - normally I would also put Parmesan cheese on them but I was out.....



Now you may be asking yourself, "But what about March's Theme Food Week?" We actually ended up not doing Theme Food Week this month, it just didn't really work out, but I am SUPER excited about Theme Food Week for April... the theme is April Fools.... definitely going to have some fun with this one!

    So now to catch up on other things..... As I mentioned we took a trip to California at the end of February for one of my Husband's sister's wedding.  It was a great trip and we got to see lots of family.  Also the weather was FABULOUS! it was around 60-70some degrees the whole time we were there, while back home here in VA we were having record cold temps.  We got some snow before we left and a decent snow after we got back but it was a really nice break to have that spring like weather in the middle (and miss the really cold weather at home).  Then it was March, then before I knew it mid March and then before I knew it here we are almost April and almost Easter.  Easter really snuck up on me this year too, I didn't realize it was going to be so early.  I still have a lot to do to get ready for it, but I have gotten most of my decorating done, as well as another house project I've been wanting to do for a little while now.  Over the next few days I plan on posting a decorations tour, as well as a few craft projects to help you get ready for Easter and some photos of my Easter dinner tablescapes/decor from the past couple years (since I wouldn't be able to show you this year's until after Easter).  And of course I'll have to show off my light fixture makeover too.  

    I'm also gearing up for my 30th birthday at the end of April, and we'll be celebrating our 5th anniversary in the middle of the month.  So all in all it should be a pretty busy month. A month to look forward to though!

I hope that you also have a month to look forward to on the horizon for April and beyond, and look forward to sharing mine with you!