Easter Dinner

Since K and I couldn't be with family for the Easter holiday, we decided to host friends for an Easter Potluck. The idea was to provide a place for other SA "transplants" to gather and celebrate Easter. It was so much fun! Good company, yummy food and a great reason to celebrate.

First things first, the food was delicious. It was such a treat to share a meal that everyone contributed to. We set up the dinner buffet on our dining room table and a separate dessert buffet in our kitchen. Here's a peak at our menu:

I bought a Honey Baked Ham, made these cheddar biscuits, and Kathryn's famous yeast rolls. To recognize the contributions made by each of our guests, I printed up labels for the buffet items.

Here are a couple of the labels spread out before our guests and the food arrived.

p.s. This is a terrible picture, but it's the only one I took!

I wish I had remembered to take a picture of the buffet table when all the food was ready to be served! I like the touch of pink and green the labels added to the buffet table!

For dinner, we set up tables in our backyard for dinner al fresco. The decision to put everyone outside was one of necessity - 20 people just don't fit in our little dining room. But, to be honest, I have been looking forward to having a dinner party under the maple tree that shades our yard since we moved in. It's one of my favorite places in our yard and turned out to be the perfect setting for our Easter dinner.

We were so fortunate to have a beautiful and relatively cool day in SA.

Do we own the tables and all those chairs? I wish! Because we had all of the linens, china, crystal and silverware, we only really needed the tables and chairs and decided to rent for the day from Aztec Party Rentals. To keep the feel casual, I set the table with simple white linens and a burlap runner. For the flowers, I tried to keep things simple and fresh - using a soft pink/white palette and lots of fun spring blooms.

We have a great flower shop in San Antonio - San Antonio Flower Co. - where I have started buying all my flowers. It's basically a wholesale florist where you can find anything and everything you need for arranging flowers. Word to the wise - flowers go fast on holiday weekends. I arrived around 5:00 on Saturday and quickly learned that the pickings were slim. Thankfully, there were still plenty of hydrangeas and I was able to find garden roses and what I think were the last dozen tulips in SA at a nearby HEB. I'm pretty pleased with the way the combination of pink and white blooms came together. The best part is we have so many lovely flowers around the house this week!

There is so much hope in the Easter holiday and I had so much fun planning this gathering to celebrate Christ's resurrection. I hope you had a wonderful Easter with your families, friends or a combination of both!