Happy Easter

Hope everyone had an awesome holiday. I enjoyed every minute of it especially the crafting. The goal was to create a sweet spring table setting without breaking the pocketbook and yes we have accomplished the impossible again.

Two weeks ago I saw a picture in a magazine that displayed paper flowers in a vase and they were beautiful, so like any American girl worth her salt i hit the Internet. Now I don't know if you are aware, but when you type in "paper flowers" into the search bar, you may be exposed to several thing that really have nothing to do with "paper" or "flowers", but I persevered and found some lovely instructions to make the sweetest little flowers you ever saw.

The idea was to make a delicate centerpiece with smaller corresponding pieces for the corners and the dessert and wine table (side note: when i say dessert and wine table, i mean to say the table that held the Hershey kisses, pound cake, apple pie, and 4 bottles of Riesling and by no means are we anywhere near the scale of Martha or Ina). With a little imagination a lot of browsing i came up with this,

We used long fold away tables and decided that the expense of buying tablecloths large enough to fit would be outside our agreed budget for the holiday dinner, however making the tablecloths would be completely do-able. We used white premium muslin with quilting cotton in coordinating lime green patterns as the runner and napkins. All of the cloth cost a total of $42 (that is of course with the use of those wonderful JoAnn coupons) which is a steal considering i priced one tablecloth at reputable wholesale store @ $35.00 for one table. The green flower pot was a plain terracotta pot, terracotta paint (even cheaper) a paint brush and patience and boom custom made to match the runner terracotta pot (cheap) and a bottle of . A little floral foam and some of that dry grassy stuff to put on top and awesome thing can happen to you too.

Now the flowers, if you follow the link further up, you will see that the flowers themselves are pretty easy. Now what you don't see it how to make them stay for more than 3 minutes and how they survive several teenage girls and 4 men with total disregard for the blood sweat and tears of crafting, or maybe just paper cuts, numb butt, and nail biting of crafting. Any way the magic happens with CRAFT GLUE! Now of course as with everything it has to dry clear and be used in small amounts. A little glue on the end of the floral wire will secure the flower and the bead to the tip of the wireAnd finally along with the large centerpiece I wanted smaller ones so we used the Magic Water Pearl to fill the green jars along with some green crystals for a little sparkle. Now people tend to pick the pearls up, squeeze them, split them, let them pop out of their hands and skit across the dinner table and look at it with child like amazement, which is precisely why I used them. They're fun and slippery and an all around good time. AND the best part is that the ones that survive will dehydrate back into tiny little beads to be used again another day (recycle score!). Easter Crafts ..............Good Times.