I had so much fun decorating the table for Easter that I had to share with you. I hate to admit this, but one of the reasons I am sharing with you is that no one is coming to my house for Easter lunch or dinner. We are going to be with friends and family this year for lunch but because I love this holiday almost as much as Christmas, I wanted to have some fun with this decor.

I decided to get creative this year, but I never like to go too crazy. Although no one is going to be actually sitting at the table, I always try to be mindful of my centerpiece. I love the purpose of a table, to sit and eat and fellowship with one another. It is really hard to talk to the people in front of you if you have to dodge a massive flower arrangement or object in the center of a table. Another thing I like to think about is a color scheme. My kitchen is pretty neutral. I love blues, whites, and greens together, especially this time of year, so I decided to stick with those subtle pops of color.

For the centerpiece or vignette, I took my cotton wreath down from my tobacco basket and put it around a glass cake stand. I added a glass of hydrangeas, a moss bunny, and a cream and blue cross I received as a gift a few years back. I used my everyday dishes and added a blue fiestaware bowl in the center with my paper napkins folded into sweet little bunnies. (these were so fun to make!) If you missed my Instagram post yesterday, click –> for Bunny Napkin Tutorial

The only thing I bought for this table was a table runner from Marshall’s that can be used year round and the moss bunny which will be moved back up to my guest room bedside table after Easter is over. Something I like to think about when I purchase something for the home is one, does this bring me joy and two, can I use this year round. Ask yourself if this going up in 2 weeks after Easter, or can I leave it out all spring and summer? Sure, little accessories like bunnies etc may be put away until next year, but can place mats, table runners, chargers, etc be used for other events and not strictly one holiday? If you can say yes to both of those things in the store, I say hands down buy it girlfriend!

My biggest piece of advice is have fun with decorating your table. Stick to what you are comfortable with and think about the people that will be sitting around the table….or like me, i’ll just be admiring what I think is pretty all week. We all have different styles, but if you stay true to what you like and what you think will be comfortable for your guests, it will look amazing!

Happy Easter, Friends!

 

Tablerunner-Marshall’s

Moss Bunny-Tjmaxx

Cotton Wreath-The Faded Farmhouse

Everyday Dishes (Southern Living)-Dillard’s

Blue Bowls-(Fiestaware)-Dillard’s

 

 

Chocolate chip cookies are hands down my favorite cookies. I love that you can add ingredients  or keep it simple, and the cookie still tastes great. I have absolutely not reinvented the wheel here. The only thing that make these cookies so great is that I made a mistake while making them. This isn’t some secret family recipe, and I guarantee you have at least 5 of these ingredients in your pantry. Soo the confession is the recipe came off the back of the chocolate chip bag. Toll-house or Kroger brand etc chocolate chips usually have the same recipe.

 

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 2 Cups of Chocolate Chips

bake at 375 for 9-11 min

The usual order of direction is mix together all wet ingredients like the butter, eggs, vanilla, and both sugars separately from the dry (flour, baking soda, salt) and then combine everything at the end. However, when I made these cookies for Thanksgiving this year, I accidentally mixed the brown sugar with the dry ingredients. I realized what I did about mid way through giving the dry ingredients a light stir and I thought, we’ll just see how these turn out because I didn’t want to waste all that flour! This was very risky considering the cookies were going to the in-laws for Thanksgiving, and my mother in law is a wonderful baker.

I love a soft, slightly cakey cookie. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll eat almost anything if it involved chocolate, but I have eaten enough chocolate chip cookies to give this some thought. To my surprise, I pulled these out of the oven and they were so pretty and they tasted amazing. The only thing I can think that made these cookies so fluffy was maybe a chemical reaction when the brown sugar was mixed with the dry ingredients. My mother in law was a fan, (thank you Lord) 🙂 we had to hide them from my husband’s diabetic granddad, and every time I take them to my Monday night small group, they are gone before we leave.

Next time you bake your favorite cookies, give this little “oops” a try.

What I thought was a recipe blunder turned out to be a really great thing. Isn’t that so much of life? We get worried about nothing and it turns out to be an amazing experience? Or something gets thrown in our path that was unexpected. It went “out of the order than we originally planned” (if you really knew me, you’d know this throws me into a full fledged panic)  I could have very easily thrown out those dry ingredients and started over to make a brand new cookie. The chances of me mixing the brown sugar with the dry ingredients again would have been very rare. When we think about our obstacles and our fears it’s like God says, I’m not throwing out that flower. My child sees panic, I see good. I am going to use this experience to show you something that has the potential to be really great. The key is faith. I trusted these cookies couldn’t be too bad regardless of the order I put the ingredients in. So today, trust that The Lord is going to do something with that messy flower, the flower that may have an ingredient out of place. He is the ultimate baker and he knows his cookies are going to turn out amazing.