Sunday, March 30, 2014

Hippity-Hoppity! You know what's coming! Photos by Photography by Melisa

Tulips and daffodils and hyacinth mean sneezing at our house, but they also mean Easter is coming up!  Mom and I are busily preparing for a home-freshening for one of her long-time and most loved clients, but in all the chaos, I didn't want to forget to share our Easter brunch and tabletop ideas. 

Easter is the second favorite holiday at the Malcolm house--we usually celebrate with a "young, fat hen" and dressing, asparagus, deviled eggs, Sister Schubert rolls and mashed potatoes.  I think we celebrate it with a lot of gusto because it represents not only the rising of our Savior, but also it signals a season change, a renewal, and a return to life outside our windows.  This year, the 5 of us, Mark & I and the girls, will celebrate with an easy mid-morning brunch, leaving all afternoon for egg hunting and the traditional wiffle ball game in which we use Easter eggs, not wiffle balls, thereby totally trashing the entire street with boiled eggs and shells.  Those things explode like grenades when you hit them with a wiffle ball bat!






I think I have mentioned before a book that I love, The Collected Tabletop by Kathryn Greeley.  She subscribes to the same belief that I do, that any space is better, including your tabletop, when it has history.  I rarely create any room, home, or tablescape for myself or my clients that is strictly "new".  It is special when it reflects the individual or family it serves and including items with historical and sentimental significance is the best way to add that special touch!


For this brunch, I used my Mom's original sterling flatware that she chose when she and Daddy first got married.  I think it is beautiful, it is simple and elegant.  My precious LouLou's vintage china cups and saucers are springy and lovely and my Mema's milk glass goblets--you can just see the stem up there, top left--are all tabletop elements that are very  meaningful to me and my family.


I am a huge believer in a high/low mix unless the occasion is super formal.  While we occasionally host or attend super formal events, I would have to say that it is more fun to have a little more leeway in your table design.  The beautiful banded china dinner plate was a gift from my Aunt Dot who taught me how to throw a party  She was a consummate hostess who is probably responsible for my entertaining genes.  The dinner and salad/dessert plates are fine china but I think they mix well with the sweet Caskata bunny plates (relatively inexpensive) and the flea market egg cups (very very inexpensive:, like 6 for a dollar inexpensive) 

 

The inexpensive ceramic bunnies look perfectly at home with the Baccarat and Waterford eggs--the mix is what makes it work, in your home, in your closet, on your table!


Lovely!


 And hey!  I made those napkins last year!  They are simply flour sack tea towels with transfers, Tres French and Tres EZ!  Trust me, I'm not crafty, if I can do that, anyone can do that!


We will serve from the bar a super easy make-ahead breakfast casserole, I will try to remember to post the recipe in the next few days.  The buffet will have bisquettes (that's canned biscuits, cut in quarters and brushed with egg whites, baked till golden, they are beautiful and just the right size for little ones), real butter (it would be nice if you could find some real homemade butter.  My BFF Sandy Massey's grandmother Lola made real butter when I was little and we called it oleo), fresh apple butter and blackberry preserves, iced shortbread and fresh strawberries and blueberries


I'd like to take credit for this beauty, but any fresh fruit in my Mema's milk glass compote is going to be stunning.  Please note the beautiful iced shortbread by my friend Sarah DeClerk who is truly an artist.  If you haven't called her already, get in touch with her soon at Ann Potter Baking!


Look at these things, everything she does is like a work of art!



Can you see the little lamb butter dish?  It is so cute and Easter-ish, and of course, I do have an affinity for any little lambs:)



A little better pic of the lamb butter dish

 


There's another, this one is from Peter's Pottery.  Peter apparently split from the McCarty's.  I still much prefer the McCarty's dinnerware, but Peter's lambs are awesome! 





Fresh forsythia in the crazy lady's head, so pretty--also had I straightened the bottom panel, this would have been an excellent shot of the gorgeous tablecloth made by Linda McNeil of Batesville, one of two amazing seamstresses I use almost exclusively, the other being Linda Taylor of Oxford.  The Linda's of North Arkansas are so talented and create from fabric what I see in my head!

 

One more shot of those beautiful strawberries in the milk glass and Sarah DeClerk's iced shortbread.  It's almost too pretty to eat.  But I will.


Happy Easter and Happy Spring from all of us!