easter

This was our first Easter as a married couple. And boy did we do it properly! My in laws and sister-in-law stayed over, we went to the most amazing church service and the weather was spectacular.


Mel (my sister-in-law) made us a red velvet Easter cake, with the sweetest bunny on top:

When I told my mom my ambitious plans for Sunday lunch, she nearly fell over. While my friend Tam, and others, were busy making macarons and generally being Domestic Goddesses In Training, I was balancing cash flow statements and fighting with CEO's and being miserable. So I am not known for my cooking.


But look what I made (with the help of wonderful hubby of course):

Butternut soup with fresh chives

Jamie Oliver's Irish champ mash with leeks and  spring onions

Lamb shanks with sticky Guiness gravy (in my gorgeous Le Creuset pot from the amazing Dawsons)

Panna cotta made with real vanilla pods and cherry compote

And just to make the whole housewife experience complete, my two adorable puppy children, Howie and Chloe:

succulents

I am a huge HUGE fan. Succulents stole the show at our wedding. And we could re-pot them afterwards!


They are so easy to grow, and grow little shoots off the leaves that fall off the main plant. So you can have lots of new individual plants in a few weeks, if you just leave the old leaves on the soil.

Here are a few pretty succulents that inspired my wedding, as table decor and on a cake and in a bouquet...

From the wedding bee

From the beauty bridal

From Green Wedding Shoes

Here is a grey-green one I now keep in the bathroom, due to the destructive powers of puppy.

Her Puppiness

Chloe:

A girlfriend for his puppiness. She is very pretty, and a little dumb. A total Daddy's girl, and sweetness itself.

And has been known to make a brandy drinking 120kg Afrikaans oke oooohhh and ahhhh at how cute she is. We went to a braai recently where she spent the night squeaking at the nearest available human feet and then being cuddled by however said feet were attached to.

She is also incredibly naughty.

our wedding: decor

The flowers made our wedding décor. And that I can only attribute that to Kim, my unofficial official wedding co-ordinator, and Wimpie, my flower artist. I had ideas for colours (green, pink, purple, grey, white) and Mom planted succulents galore, but Kim and Wimpie did the rest. They pinched some lavender from Kim’s garden and some other cool greeny grey leaves from one of her neighbours. So we just had to buy the roses, lillies and gerberas.

We used these recycled glass bottles instead of vases, an idea that really appealed to me. It amazed me how gorgeous any ordinary bottle can be just by removing the sticky label. Try it!

Wimpie also had the idea to wire my Granny’s brooch (my something blue) into my bouquet. It looked wonderful, and really made the brooch stand out.

We are huge fans of Frankie’s Soda since first trying it at Piggly Wiggly in the Natal Midlands a few years ago (aside: they do the yummiest breakfasts, if you are ever in the area). So we decided to order a few cases straight off their website and served them with cute grey stripey straws (which you can find at In Good Company). A bit of lace and voila we had our pre-drinks!

The seating plan was handmade with love by The Hubby by doing various clever woodworky things with white paint. And then we ordered business cards with each guests name printed, Mom hand wrote all the table numbers (like a superstar!) and I found some tiny tiny pegs at Flowerspot. Oh and the buttons were fun, we just chose a whole lot in a range of colours and glued them on!

For more on our wedding, check out our ceremony and our post on bloved.

All beautiful images by Estefania Romero :)