Our Easter Table and a Wild-Goose Chase

How was your weekend? We had our family Easter dinner and had a great time! Holiday family dinners are always fun, and I have just as much fun preparing for them. This one was no different, especially since I was able to enlist some help from my mom on a few projects (and an epic wild-goose chase)!

My mom picked out the yarn colors for the flower motifs (which I showed you blocking here). I had a lot of fun creating the patterns. I made two of each eight designs I came up with. (I'm toying with the idea of sharing the patterns with you guys if you want to try to make them!?) In my head the tables were a little wider, so I envisioned the motifs spread about in a more random organic pattern, but putting them in a straight line down the center worked too. You just have to work with what you've got!

Picking up on the colors from the motifs, I dyed plastic eggs (which I got from walmart), blue, yellow and green, and then gold leafed them in a random pattern. My mom helped me with the gold leafing, and let me tell you, it's a pretty messy business! We had gold leaf everywhere! To hold the eggs, I made origami egg cups after seeing THIS post on How About Orange. I used computer paper, and I think if the eggs had been real, they would have sat in the egg cups a little better. (When my sister and I were setting the table, one of the eggs shot up out of its cup, out of no where. No joke.)

We also gold leafed some terra-cotta pots after spray painting them white. Figuring that flowers might be a little much with the crocheted flower motifs,  I went with some green succulents. I thought they were a nice complement with a little needed height.

I was pretty happy with how all the colors looked together!

For these table projects there's usually one ridiculous thing that turns into a massive quest to find. When we were talking about gold leafing the eggs, we joked that we should have a goose (you know, the goose that laid the golden eggs?), which then turned into, "we obviously NEED a goose," turning my mom and I into extremely determined obsessive hunters... We looked in every store we went into, and scoured Amazon (only to be emotionally distraught over a dead goose lawn decoy they had [I won't even link to it, as it will make you sad])... One of my friends did give me a good lead on a goose at Pottery Barn, but we didn't think we'd be able to make it to the more out-of-the-way store with the added gamble of the store having in stock what was found online.

So Friday, my mom and I were doing some last minute shopping to get ready for our dinner. We had given up all hope on ever finding our goose. We were in TJ Maxx when my mom said "it's too bad we didn't find a goose..." My reply, while pointing in complete disbelief was "oh, like that one?" My friends, it was a magical moment. I swear that there was heavenly music playing while we slowly approached the goose, as if it were going to disappear in a puff of smoke if we acknowledged its existence. We kept laughing about our incredible find the rest of the day like delusional treasure hunters. It was pretty unreal and hilarious. It was probably also one of those you-had-to-be-there moments, as I'm beginning to realize while typing this, that this story probably won't seem even half as amusing to anyone else. (Although, I'm pretty sure that our reaction to this little unassuming piece of home decor in the store must have been amusing, if not confusing, to fellow shoppers.)

Anyways, $7.99 and a white spray paint job later, he perfectly adorned our dessert table with a touch of whimsy and the reminder that sometimes to get what you want, you have to stop trying so hard to find it.