Easter Fabric Flower and Carrot Centerpiece

On Saturday, we will host our 1st ever Easter Egg Hunt for neighborhood kids and friends.  I'm very excited about it and have been busily filling eggs, assembling supplies, and making some decorations to add to the fun.  Today I'm sharing a play on a flower arrangement that I made using some basement finds.

The vase was from a flower arrangement that my husband sent me a few months ago.  The flowers were amazing, the sentiment was touching, and the vase was WOW.  I just loved the color, the shape, everything.  What's nice about it beyond all that is that it's SUBSTANTIAL, but the opening is narrow, so you don't need a ton to fill it up and have it look full and stay upright.

I tossed in a few chunks of Styrofoam to serve as a base.  I then turned my attention to the fillers.  While unpacking my Easter decorations, I found a little baggie filled with fabric carrots and flowers that my mom had made.  She was making one of those cloth baby books where you have numbers to match, buttons to do, zippers to zip, etc.  She didn't like the way her carrots had turned out, so she started over and gave me the rejects.  I had planned to make a garland, but hadn't gotten around to it.  Anyway, with a little hot glue and some bamboo skewers...

... I ended up with this.

I really like how it's a fun play on a floral centerpiece.  I also like how it was free.  I like that part a lot.

It will look great (I hope hope hope) on my treats table.  Lots of height and visual interest.  And did I mention that it was free?

DIY Clearance Aisle / Donation Salvage Chalkboard

So I found this picture at Marshall's on Clearance a few years ago for $2.00.  It depicted 3 French-looking chefs holding a variety of foods and the image was mounted on a black and white checkerboard background.  It was an odd little picture, but it actually worked really well in our old black and white kitchen.  When we moved into our new house, we now had a grapevine kitchen and the picture no longer fit, so I tossed it in the To-Be-Donated box and forgot about it.  Fast-forward to a few months later, when I realized that I really, really wanted a chalkboard in the kitchen to list daily reminders for the kids.  I decided to make my own and packed up the car to drop some stuff at the Goodwill before shopping there for a suitable frame that I could repurpose into said chalkboard.  And there it was in my box - the weird French chefs.  SCORE!  It was just the right size and shape to become a chalkboard.
I painted over the chefs with gray Martha Stewart chalkboard paint from Michael's (coupon!).  Once that was done (3 coats), I painted the background with a little of our leftover green living room paint and then glossed it up with some antique bronze glaze.  Not bad for free!

My lesson from this - shop in your house first.  You might have the perfect thing languishing in your basement or garage, waiting to be transformed into something fresh and new!