Pink Deviled Easter Eggs

Happy Easter, friends!

Today I am sharing a bit from our Easter menu. I realize it’s too late for you to serve these pink deviled eggs on your Easter table this year, since today is actually Easter. But I’m posting in case it is something you’d want to try in the future. In addition to these eggs, today we had homemade chicken salad on brioche buns (recipe here), roasted asparagus (recipe here), and ambrosia fruit salad (recipe here).

For these eggs you are going to prepare your deviled eggs using whatever your normal deviled egg recipe is. I’m just showing you a tip for a little twist. For our deviled egg filling I use Miracle Whip salad dressing, ground mustard, salt, and Everything But The Bagel seasoning. The measurements depend on your taste and how many eggs you’re using.

I’ve found that my eggs peel easier if I keep them at a full boil for 10 minutes, followed by a bath in ice water. I leave them in the water until the ice is nearly all melted. It doesn’t matter for this recipe how you prepare your eggs – steamed, instant pot, or traditional boil. Anything works.

After your eggs are cooked and cooled, you will need to peel them, rinse them, and add them to a ziplock freezer bag.

Drain the liquid from a jar beets into the ziplock bag filled with your peeled eggs. You can save the beets for another meal or add them on top of a fresh green salad.

The eggs are immediately dyed. You should leave them in for at least an hour. I left mine in the beet juice overnight because I didn’t have time to finish preparing them until the next day.

The eggs will look like this once they’ve been dyed by the beet juice. After mine were dyed, I continued to prepare them like I would normal deviled eggs.

I made some regular, white deviled eggs as well. I have some very picky eaters at my house, and they all say that the beet-dyed eggs taste the same as the white ones.

This is a fun way to make deviled eggs look festive for Easter. Have you had them this way before? Let me know what you think!

From our family to yours, Happy Easter!

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Decoupage Easter Eggs

We’re just a few days away from Easter, but there is still time to squeeze in an easy Easter craft! A few days ago I made these decoupage Easter eggs, which I plan to reuse in my Easter décor for years to come.

To get started you will need:

  • either plain papier mache or wooden eggs from the craft store.
  • a decorative napkin with a spring-like design
  • Mod Podge
  • white paint
  • foam brushes
  • paper plates
  • wax paper

First you will want to cover your work surface with wax paper. This will protect your surface from being damaged from glue and paint, but it will also give you a place to rest your eggs or brushes if you need – they won’t stick to the wax paper if they dry there.

Next, you will want to give all of your brown papier mache (or wooden) eggs a base coat of white paint. Be sure to let them dry completely before moving on. While your eggs are drying, separate your napkins. Mine were three layers, but I only need to use the top layer with the graphics on it. After you have separated your napkins, cut or tear them into smaller pieces. Don’t worry about what the edges look like. Once your eggs are completely finished you will not see the edges.

After your painted eggs have completely dried, begin applying Mod Podge to the egg. Place pieces of napkin on top of the Mod Podge, smoothing them down and pressing the wrinkles out as you go. Once your eggs are completely covered in pieces of napkin, apply a top coat layer of Mod Podge to seal everything in place. Once they are dried, you have Easter décor to enjoy for years to come!

Here’s a one minute video to show you how to create your decoupage Easter eggs!

I’d love to see your decoupage eggs! Be sure to tag me on Instagram @ BelleAntiquarian!

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Easter entry table decor

Spring and Easter Decor

Good Friday is one week from today, so I thought I would share a few ways that I’ve added some little touches of Spring and Easter around our home.

If you follow me on Instagram, you may recognize this oversized glass lantern from one of my Thrifty Thursday trips. It was $6, and I knew that it would be a perfect vase for oversized flowers like these Larkspur and Aster, as well as some Gladiolus later in the season.

I’m really trying to be intentional about not having bins and bins of seasonal decor. (I only have one bin for Easter!) Flowers can make your home feel special for Easter without adding a lot of clutter. This is true for any holiday, as long as you use flowers that are in season.

And, of course, my trusty sidekicks are never too far away when I am arranging flowers. 🙂

A few little touches on our mantel…

On our entry table I used some of my jadeite and white milk glass pieces. Using them together with the dried grass and eggs makes them feel very spring-like. Everything in the photo above has been linked on my LiketoKnow.it commissionable links. You can click HERE or click on the photo above to access the links.

Another view of my jadeite and milk glass Fire King pieces. Have you decorated your home for Easter?

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Easter Basket Gift ideas for Teens

Teen Easter Basket Gift Guides

I’ve put together two teen Easter basket gift guides for you. Our 16 and 19 year olds gave me some great recommendations to share. Shopping for teens can be tricky, so we’ve taken all of the guess work out. You can find each of these gift guides over on my LiketoKnow.it page with commissionable links to everything you need for your favorite teen’s Easter basket.

Click HERE (or click on the picture below) to access our Teen Boy Easter Basket Gift Guide

Click HERE (or click on the picture below) to access our Teen Girl Easter Basket Gift Guide. Our daughter recommends the small kitchen appliance that you see. She thinks other teen girls would also enjoy using it!

I’d love to hear if you have any other teen Easter recommendations. Let me know in the comments below!

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Blue and White Easter Decor

Blue and white remains a timeless color scheme for traditional interior design and decor. With today’s rising popularity of Chinoiserie Chic and Grandmillenial design styles, blue and white endures with younger and older generations alike.

Today I have rounded up some beautiful blue and white inspired items available for spaces at Easter, some even year-round. Each of these is available through my curated commissionable links on LiketoKnow.it. Please follow me there for more decor inspiration and ideas. You can find each of these curated items HERE.

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Spring Easter Decor

While most of the country is sheltering in place during the Covid-19 Pandemic, how are you keeping busy? I am a homebody by nature, but I admit…I’m getting bored and itching for a project. My kids realized yesterday how bored I was when I took all of the art off of the walls and started rearranging it. Something quirky that my “interior design” mind does after sitting in a room for a while, is that I start mentally rearranging the furniture. Full disclosure, if I’ve sat in your house for any amount of time, I’ve probably mentally rearranged your furniture, too. It’s like doing a puzzle in my head. (Teacher friends, I’ve rearranged your classrooms in my head. LOL) After sitting in our family room/breakfast room/kitchen for weeks on end now, I’ve decided I’m going to rearrange and paint. But I’m going to wait for projects until after the pandemic to buy supplies because it’s our civic duty to shelter in place. ❤

So this year my birthday falls on Easter. And Easter falls within the shelter in place order that my county is under. I’m not sad about being home for my birthday. I’m not a birthday person. I don’t care about presents at all. But I am a little bummed about Easter. No surprise if you’ve been reading my posts for a while, but I am HUGE on traditions. To me, traditions are like glue for a family. So I’m going to miss taking flowers to church and adding them to the cross, getting new church clothes, etc. If you want to know more about what our family does and eats for Easter, check out these posts here and here. (Sidenote: I think it is okay to feel bummed or even depressed about missing out on things during the pandemic. Won’t it make it all the more sweeter when life returns to normal?)

With all this time on my hands, and no where to go, I am using what we already have around the house to decorate for spring and Easter. I pulled out my Blue Willow egg cups (made by Allerton’s) and a blue and white platter (Yuan by Wood and Sons) to put on our mantel.

I had these tiny glass jars left over from some cold-pressed juice drinks. Glass recycling is not available in our area (which seems crazy to me in a major metropolitan area), so I try to reuse glass when I can. They were the perfect size to add a little ribbon and some Carolina Jessamine cuttings from our yard.

It turns out that Carolina Jessamine doesn’t do well as a cut flower and drops the flowers after a few hours, so I’ll be switching these flowers out for something else from the yard soon. One last picture for you – our Easter tablescape. These are all items we already had in our home. I bought these plates several years ago from Williams Sonoma, and I still love them!

How are you doing during this crazy time in our world? If you are sheltering in place, thank you. Thank you for putting the needs of others before yourself. If you are sheltering in place in a dangerous or abusive situation, I’m praying for you.

As I wrote on my Instagram page recently: This Easter there won’t be egg hunts, flowers on the cross, or sunrise church services. There won’t be ham and potato salad with extended family. Maybe this year Easter will just be about an empty tomb.

If I can pray for you, feel free to send me a DM on Instagram or email. You could even drop it in the comments below. Happy Easter, friends!

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Easter Egg Salad

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What do you do with all of the dyed eggs when Easter is over? We love deviled eggs, but don’t forget about yummy egg salad! Here’s my personal recipe below. Try using different kinds of bread, too. You can get variations of flavor with rye, white, or croissants. I personally love egg salad on rye bread.

Ingredients

  • 10 hard boiled eggs
  • 1/2 cup of Kraft Miracle Whip (Mayo is BIG in the South, and if you want to use mayo, you can. But the Miracle Whip adds a pleasant tang, so I use it in my egg salad.)
  • 3/4 tbsp. of dry mustard
  • 1/4 cup sweet pickle relish
  • Salt & Pepper to taste
Get Cooking!
  • To cook the eggs place them in a cold, large saucepan. Cover with one inch (or a finger tip) of cold water. Once the water starts to boil, reduce to a simmer for 10 minutes. Remove and place in an ice bath until completely cooled. 
  • Peel cooked eggs and rinse with water to remove all bits of shell. “Surprise” shell is very unpleasant!
  • Cut eggs in half; Separate the yolks from the whites.
  • Chop the whites; Smash the yolks with a fork; Combine in a large bowl.
  • Add the remaining ingredients and mix well. If you prefer more Miracle Whip, salt, or pepper–add to taste. 
  • Chill before serving.
Use this method to boil all of your eggs to avoid those weird green yolks. Eggs are one of those starchy foods, like pasta, that continue to cook even after you turn off the heat. The ice bath stops the cooking. No rubber eggs, please!
Enjoy!

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Easy and Elegant Easter Place Settings

Let’s get real for a minute here: You’re probably not hosting Easter brunch for a magazine shoot. Your place settings don’t have to look like the Easter Bunny couldn’t decide what to buy, so he bought one five of everything. There are several reasons why I like to feature simple, but elegant place settings.

First, hosting friends and family for a meal doesn’t need to be unnecessarily complicated. Your guests aren’t expecting a “show.” What they really want is conversation, fellowship, contact. It’s possible to make them feel special when they sit down to eat without killing yourself to make it look that way.

Next, making a place setting look special doesn’t need to cost a fortune. As I talked about in this post HERE, I like to find basic dishes that can be used for all sorts of occasions. White works…go with it. If you buy different dishes to use for different holidays and events, the cost of hosting will take some joy out of doing it. Not to mention, you will need to find storage for all the various things. We are blessed to have an abundance of storage space; but honestly, there’s never enough space to store all of the things you have. Bottom line, invest in some nice, quality basic pieces that you can use time and time again.

Finally, sometimes less is more. I firmly believe in keeping things simple and classic. I don’t want to sit down to a meal and feel like I’m surrounded by cluttered decorations. Can we say, “Claustrophobic”? That’s not how you want your guests to feel. Hosting is all about making your guests feel comfortable and welcome. Focus on that!

With all of that said, here are some examples of simple and elegant Easter place settings.

This is in our dining room:

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To see any photo larger, just click on it!

The tablecloth, place mats, and napkins are all from HomeGoods. The plates are antique German china, but I’d also be completely comfortable using my favorite white plates from World Market. The mini tulips are from Publix; we used them all throughout our Spring decor this year and you can see more of that HERE and HERE.

Here are some examples of other people’s place settings that I found on Pinterest. If you’d like to follow me on Pinterest, use the button on the top, right corner of the page.
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I found this on Or So She Says…. She has a great how-to. I’m not great with acrylic paint, so I’d opt for a gold or silver Sharpie marker. Look for the little nests in the floral department of Michael’s or Hobby Lobby. 
Cookie cutter bunny
This one seems so simple and FUN! I found it on All You.com. You can find M & M’s of all one color at Party City, Michael’s, or Hobby Lobby. 
Super affordable and your guests can take this one home! I found it on With a Grateful Prayer and a Thankful Heart. Use simple twine, string, or even embroidery floss to bind the sticks together. If you want to skip on the tags, you could type of the verse on some paper or card stock and cut it into strips. You could lay it with the strip or even glue the strip. Since it’s sticks, simply use Elmer’s glue. 
This one is a little different, but I love it: 

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I found this on Apartment Therapy. If your local store has carrots with the green tops attached, you could totally use those, too. It reminds me of the poem by Else Holmelund Minarik:
Little seeds we sow in spring
growing while the robins sing,
give us carrots, peas and beans,
tomatoes, pumpkins, squash and greens.

And we pick them,
one and all,
through the summer, 
through the fall.

Winter comes, then spring, and then
little seeds we sow again.
Enjoy! Remember, relax and don’t make hosting a chore.
Want to see more posts about simple place settings? Go HERE. 

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Spring Entryway Decorations

The sunshine and warmer temps have definitely been inspiring. Our bright and happy Easter and Spring decorations have carried throughout the house. Here are a few pictures of the entryway.

Click any photo if you want to see it bigger!

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I don’t think I’ve shared a photo of this table yet. It was originally a dark cherry finish. The bottom has a glaze over powder blue and the top has been “crackled.” 

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This little lamb is so sweet, don’t you think? Plus, tulips in antique Ball jars is a no brainer. The chalkboard was picked up at Hobby Lobby and I used our barnwood vinegar stain from THIS POST to age the frame. Before, it was new and unstained. 

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This typewriter is a fave. I picked it up one year while on an adventure with my sister, Tara, at the Crabapple Antique Festival in Milton, Georgia. If you’re interested in finding other antique festivals in Georgia go HERE and HERE. (It’s an older post so the dates won’t be accurate, but you can put it in the Google-machine.) 

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Our Easter Mantel


//assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.jsI thought I’d share a few photos of our Easter mantel this year. If you’ve read my past posts then you know that I like to decorate by “shopping” my house for items I can use. I always gravitate towards shopping for items of specific color. This time I was on the hunt for blue.

To see the photo larger, just click on it!

I can’t for the life of me remember where I bought the banner, but I am certain that it was one year after Easter and on discount. Then it sat in a Rubbermaid bin for a couple of years before Samantha and I put it together last year. We stamped “Hoppy Easter” on it.

The blue books on the mantel were easy to collect throughout the house. And well, Ball mason jars are pretty common around here. Let’s just say that I’ve hoarded passionately collected them. I regret every one of them that I’ve sold!

You might recognize the little bunnies from this post HERE. They’re from World Market.

I keep meaning to spray paint that candle holder. Warmer temps are here, so now may be the time!

I am pretty sure the bunnies (one piece) came from Hobby Lobby. The wall color is Danville Tan by Benjamin Moore. It’s been our wall color since we moved in ten years ago, and I still love it as much as I did the first day. It looks different at night than in the day. It’s very calming in person. (P.S. This color looks great in person. It looks totally wonky on my cellphone screen, so keep an open mind!)

Do you remember the barn wood that Ken and I got off of a an old barn/army building HERE? And also used to make THIS?

We used some our favorite pieces to make some free wall art for our mantel. The color is all natural and original. All we did was cut it and attach it together.

The “S” is for our last name. 😉 The window was picked up on one of our Craig’s List adventures.

I had fun pulling everything together. Everything other than the fresh tulips and the tiny bunnies on top of the books are things we already had. My favorite kind of decorating…FREE!

If you want to save any of these pictures, just click on the Pin It button and you can save it to Pinterest.

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