Mother's Day lunch

On Sunday I hosted 15 of the Martinez family members for Mother's Day. Although my hip joints were killing me and I didn't get as much done Saturday evening as I had hoped, I still had plenty of time to set the table and prepare my food on Sunday before they began to arrive.

Scott had gone out to the store first thing Sunday, and he brought me back a Mother's Day card and the two pretty bouquets of roses that I used for the table's centerpieces.

We brought my sewing table out of the spare room to add seating for 12 at my main dining table, and my smaller pedestal table seated the remaining three. That's the first time I used the two tables together, and it worked really well.

When we were in Iowa last time my mom gave me some cloth napkins from her collection, and I used them in conjunction with the few white ones I already had. I really need to build my napkin collection, but for Sunday I had enough, and the pale green colors worked just fine for the table scheme.

Do the yellow butter dishes look familiar? They're the ones I had just found at Salvation Army the day before, and they worked perfectly with the colors I was going for. The lace on the tables are curtains that my mom gave me some time ago, and under the lace are bedsheets to serve as the background. Who says you have to use fancy things to get a fancy look!

The green bottles on the kids' table ended up having more roses in them, as my nephew Kyle brought me a small bouquet, which was perfect.

As always happens, I was too busy with the foods' last-minute details to take pictures of the food I made, or of everybody sitting down at the table, which was filled with dishes, both hot and cold. I wanted to serve this meal family-style, as opposed to having a buffet line in the kitchen, and it worked pretty well. If I do it again I'll make sure more of the food is in smaller dishes that would be easier to pass around the table.

Our menu was steaks that Scott grilled, Rosemary Cheesy Mashed Potatoes, Southern Biscuits, grilled portobello mushrooms I'd purchased from our Wyoming mushroom producer the day before, potato salad from my mother-in-law, fresh fruit, Red Velvet Punch, Peruvian Salad that I made, and maybe a few more things that I'm now forgetting.

For dessert I made strawberry shortcake. You'll have to take my word for it that it was very pretty! And it also must have tasted good, as evidenced by the fact that this was all that was left of it when we were done. We also had chocolate cake brought by sister-in-law Stacy.

So, I wish I had taken a picture of my table full of food and family, but all I have is the 'before' photos. I will try to do better next time!

These days I've moved on to party-planning, as our Wyoming wedding reception is a mere two-and-a-half weeks away. I purchased more of the fabric flowers that I used in this post at Hobby Lobby on Monday, and yesterday I purchased the lanterns that I'm going to use as a component in my centerpieces. Today my goal will be to get to Home Depot to purchase the drop clothes that I'll use as tablecloths, then after that I'll need to go to Hancock Fabrics and choose some pretty, hopefully patterned, fabric on which to arrange the centerpieces. I also need to scan in and print the photos of Scott growing up, and find frames in which to display them.