Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter filled with lots of family and love! We did get together as a family and, as promised, here are the photos from our Brunch!

I'm going to start out with the pieces and then show you our entire table at the end. The "centerpiece" was a working centerpiece. The little gardener's bag held the flatware as well as the napkins and colored hard boiled eggs. In our house, there is always Easter Candy out for the "kids" so these little mini cups were perfect for the buffet table. We filled them with Cadbury Chocolate Eggs this year but Jelly Beans would be just as cute. It makes for an easy portable treat to put on the plate and carry away. 

The Star of our centerpiece were the kool-aid dyed hard boiled eggs. To get them to sit up on the top of the bag we used paper under the Easter grass and braced the bag with a folded colored paper plate.

As always, PEEPS made it to the table as well. These are just such a part of our day and as our grandsons first real Easter (he was only a few days old last year) he got to munch on these and loved them. Notice that we carried on the "Gardening" theme with the planter dishes. We bought these new and lined them with paper plates for service. They will now actually do their intended job and sit under my pots on my patio! Finding duel purposes for party goods is a great way to reuse the items instead of tossing them away after the event.

 Most of us love Deviled Eggs and Tory tried out a new recipe that does not have mayonaisse in it. She is not a fan of it and the rest of us appreciate the decrease in calories for this treat. They were SO good, I could have eaten the whole plate myself but I was good and shared with everyone else. 

And then I was "bad". Our Brunch Drinks were Vodka, OJ and Rainbow Sherbet and were SO good. Dangerously good. But we held it to just one each.  What is great is that not only did they match our color palette but you don't need to start out with cold liquid...the ice cream chills it up really quickly!

 Here is how we presented the Kool-aid dyed eggs after Brunch. This was the first time we had tried this method of dyeing and we found it on, of course, Pinterest. I have to say we were pretty doubtful that it would work as vibrantly as the photos on Pinterest would lead you to believe so we only bought 3 colors of Kool-aid for this project. We shouldn't have doubted. The Cherry, Pineapple and Orange Kool-aid worked very very well. I did add just a bit of the orange into the Pineapple to make the yellow a bit more vibrant. But these colors work really fast and are, indeed, as vibrant as promised. Each dip takes only about 20 seconds to get this deep color! Amazing! Oh, and there's no vinegar smell since you don't use any. 

That's right. No vinegar. Just a cup of hot water, to dissolve the packet of Kool-aid, and once it's dissolved you just let it cool a bit and go for it. Your kitchen will smell like Kool-aid but not vinegar. Now the "User Warnings" for this method. The positive aspect of how fast it dyes is also a negative aspect. It means it will dye your fingers upon contact as well! So either wear gloves or, like I did, use a spoon and then pat them off with paper towels so your hands don't actually touch the eggs. I think the "whisk" idea would work here as well. That is where you put the hard boiled egg into the inside of the whisk and dip it into the dye. But, if you have more than one person, you would need a lot more whisks! The other issue wasn't an issue with me. You can see on the red egg in front there is "pitting". So you may not get solid coverage with every egg. The striped egg on top took the colors more evenly where a few of the others ended up sort of spreckled. I absolutely loved it so it wasn't a negative for me.

Our complete table. We added Pancakes, Bacon and Bunny Butt Bread to our treats and Deviled Eggs. Bunny Butt bread is just a round of dough with a small "tail" added on the back and then baked. Yummy Brunch!

At the end of the day this was all that was left..a few PEEPS and a couple of eggs. I'm sure they are completely gone by this morning! LOL! 


We hid and hunted eggs, teaching our Grandson how to pick up and put the eggs into his basket. He picked up on it quickly and soon was putting them into the basket and out of the basket and then in, and then out...LOL. Yes, he loved playing with his Easter Eggs. Our son, who is almost 11, got to hunt his eggs too. The difference is that the almost one year old got baby snacks in his eggs and the almost 11 year old got candy and change. Oh, and we hid the eggs for the old kid in a lot harder to find places and the baby's eggs were just on the grass! LOL! 


So, yes, we had a wonderful Easter. We hope we gave you some ideas of what to do with your Easter next year too. Of course, this summer you could break out the plastic tablecloth and make dying eggs with Kool-aid an Art Project and then make egg salad out of them in the end thus making it a Cooking Lesson too!


See you next week where we share Baby's 1st Birthday!

Cat