More Easter Decorations

I kicked my Easter decorating into high gear this weekend after someone mentioned the holiday falls early this year. I was operating under the assumption that it was in late April, like it was last year.

Oops.

Last week, I showed you some of my handmade Easter decor. And yesterday, I showed you my Pottery Barn Knockoff Mercury Glass Easter Egg Tree.

This weekend, I decorated my dining room for Easter, creating a tablescape using a mix of handmade items and things I already had on hand, most of them vintage.

I love the juxtaposition of the rustic blue Ball jars with the silver, cut crystal salt cellars and green Fenton glass hobnail vase.

The silver cup is a keepsake Jackson’s grandparents gave him when he was a baby. It matches my silver pattern, Gorham Chantilly. The tussy mussy (aka bouquet holder) is from our wedding. I bought the two stacked salt cellars at an antique store years ago, and the green hobnail vase was a gift from my mom. The eggs are a real ones that I blew out, much to the amusement of my husband and son.  (My husband may have made a lewd comment about this project.)

Did you spy the two bunny pillows in the background? They’re actually dishtowels, purchased last year at the after-Easter clearance sale at Williams-Sonoma. I draped them over two pillows I had. They look like real pillow shams in person, too. Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.

The only new items in the tablescape are the two flower-covered bunnies and carrots. I found them over the weekend at a little giftshop in Kernersville, N.C., and I couldn’t resist. I think they’re adorable.

The vintage bunny basket is another yard sale find. The big old ostrich egg came from an ostrich farmer I wrote a newspaper article about in my very first job out of college at The Lancaster News. The egg had belonged to my little brother, who is 26 now, so my mom gave it to Jackson on our last visit. He grudgingly allowed me to use his egg in my decor!

These decoupaged storybook Easter eggs may be my favorite part of the entire tablescape. My dad made this small yellow basket years ago, and I made the eggs over the weekend.

The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes is one of my favorite Easter stories from childhood, and so I used pages from the book to decorate some 34-cent papier mache eggs from Hobby Lobby. I didn’t want to destroy the book, though, so I made copies of a few pages on my printer. I tore the illustrations and text into scraps of varying sizes and used Mod Podge to apply them to the eggs. I was careful to highlight certain words — bunnies and Easter, for example — and images to create a story on each egg. When the eggs were covered and dried, I coated each with Mod Podge to seal them and give them a slight shine.

I love these eggs so much. They’re not only beautiful, but they also represent a fond memory from my childhood. I’d say these are going to become one of my keepsake Easter decorations, and I can proudly say I made them myself.

I’m not the only one who gets into decorating for the holidays at our house. While I was photographing the dining room tablescape, 5-year-old Jackson was creating a holiday vignette of his own in our breakfast room. He borrowed a stuffed bunny from my dining room scene and set her up on the kitchen table. Then, he lined up a selection of toys and dinosaurs behind the bunny. They’re waiting in line to see the Easter Bunny, he told me.

I tried to snap Jackson’s photo with his design, but he was adamant that I photograph “just the decor.” So, here’s a photo of “Dinosaurs waiting to see the Easter bunny” from an up-and-coming home stylist and designer.

Don’t you just love it?

I’m sorry to say, however, that this installation was dismantled shortly after this photo was taken, to make room for lunch and dinosaur playtime!

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