Easter Brunching

Happy day after Easter, everyone! I hope you had a wonderful, worshipful, day of resting and enjoying family and friends yesterday...and the most important part about Easter, remembering that Jesus rose from the grave TO SAVE US!

We hosted my parents, my grandma's, and aunt at our house yesterday and it was lovely. Small, relaxing, zero-stress and lovely. There is something great about big, hullaballoo, crazy gatherings...but don't count out the value that can be found in the small, intimate, simple get together. When you factor in different family dynamics, one G'ma coming from a nursing home in a wheelchair, and dealing with a 1.5 year-old on a BIG day...sometimes it's best to just keep things as small and simple as possible. We rarely host Josh's family AND mine at once because there is just too much crazy from all sides. It gets huge, not to mention expensive, so we've stuck to rotating all holiday's and jumping in to host whenever we can.

This Easter was our turn to host my family, and with Mav being the only kiddo around, I decided to go a little overboard with the pretty table. The G'mas loved the pretty dishes, and I always like to make sure and point out to my G'ma Phyllis that I'm using her special silverware (it's actually what we use everyday!). We did a brunch-theme for food, even though we ate at noon and it was so EASY! I think I want to do brunch EVERY TIME we host something!

Menu:
Quiche
Breakfast Potatoes
Sausage
Blueberries
Powdered Donuts (only because they're Josh's fave)
Muffins
Kringla
Yogurt Bar
Orange Juice
Coffee + Cupcakes for afternoon dessert

We were heavy on the pastries, but people volunteered to bring stuff at the last minute and I welcomed that. It made the spread a little "fuller," but didn't take any extra work on my part.

We did 9:00 church, egg hunt at 11, brunch at noon, nap at 1, coffee and chatting until he woke up around 3, everyone left, and we hit the park. The day's events just could not have been more perfect. I'll reiterate...doing everything I can to keep Mav's schedule generally the same (even on big, fun day's like this when a 3-hour nap isn't the 'most convenient') is the BEST thing I can do for our family. Keeping that part of our life smooth and stress-free is super important when everything else is so crazy.

Here are some pictures from our day with some explanation about where I found certain things or why I like setting a table this way...

This sweet little Easter banner came from Target last year and I love it so much. Aside from two One Spot bunnies I added to the collection this year, it's the only 'Easter Decorating' I do.

An extravagant centerpiece for something like this is a big NO for me. The trough of tulips was easily moved to the buffet for the day. I like whatever I use to be really low and long or really tall and skinny. As you can see, I went with tall and skinny, and stuck Maverick on one side so the view didn't really matter.

I prefer a table 'runner' most of the time to a table cloth...I feel like it still lends some color and texture, without being so overwhelming as a giant table cloth...like this colorful pattern would have been TOO MUCH. It's also easier for kiddos and G'mas to deal with...no one gets tangled up while they're trying to get up and down and eat. I made this one from leftover fabric I had after making my pillow cases.

This little collection of dishes I have going is great for so many reasons, but here are my top two:
1. Something gets broken? Oh well, it's not from anyone/where special and at the MOST cost me $3 (the bigger platters and bowls are usually between $4 and $6 for a really pretty one...otherwise it's 50-cent plates!). So it's beautiful and breakable, but at the same time, really low-maintenance.
2. Nothing has to match! The more mismatched, the better! Makes adding to the collection easy, and when stuff gets broken it doesn't throw the whole set off (funny...none of these pieces have gotten broken yet, but our wedding glasses sure didn't survive long).

The previous caption about all of our wedding glasses all breaking...is the reason we now just buy another flat of mason jars when the cupboards start getting bare. Plus they look kind of perfect on a vintage farm table like this. The bunny place card holders came from the One Spot (2 for $3) and because we generally like to host Easter as much as we can for both sides of the family, I thought they would get a lot of good use (as long as I can keep them from breaking).

I don't decorate with very much color throughout our house, so this table was super fun for me to play with. And then it was fun to wash, put away, and get back everything back to normal today. ;)

I didn't plan on holding this banner every year, but since we started it last year, we might as well. ;) 

Initial thoughts on this picture: Never underestimate the power of a good spray tan and makeup leftover from a wedding the day/night before. #praisehands

MmB