Easter Altar Flowers

A few years ago I started buying fresh flowers for our church for Easter. I love fresh flowers, but this is the only time I buy them. Easter is the most important holiday in the Catholic church, and I feel like the altar decorations should reflect that.

Arranging flowers is one of my few hobbies. This is convenient, because buying all the arrangements I make at a florist would be several hundred dollars. Buying random assorted bouquets at Walmart and arranging them myself is much cheaper. Also, then I can make them exactly the way I want them.

Gathering the materials.

I bought all of these on Thursday and transported them home in buckets of water I brought with me. These stayed in A.'s relatively cool office until I was ready to put the arrangements together on Saturday.

I started by taking all the bouquets apart and putting like colors together.

Poppy helped me with this.

Staged.

I use the same box every year for the main altar arrangement. Last year, the plastic liner in it was leaking. I discovered to my great satisfaction, however, that the big plastic container of salad greens I bought awhile ago is big enough to function as a liner in this box, so I didn't have to buy a new one.

I don't have any of that foam florist's stuff to stick the stems into. I hate that stuff, anyway. It always falls apart. This year I tried using some of the sheep's wool we had from shearing, but when I got that wet, it compacted too much.

Last year I used criss-crossed branches inside the box to support everything, but that didn't work this year. I think because last year I was using a lot more lilac branches, which are stiffer than flower stems. I ended up finding a piece of chicken wire in the pasture and using that inside the box for structure.

I had several fits and starts with these flowers. They were fighting me. It took me awhile to figure out how to put them together in the way I wanted, with the right shape, height, and color mixing. I spent a little more than two hours on four different arrangements.

The central altar:

The lectern:

The saints' pedastals on either side of the tabernacle:

And then the potted flowers:

I'm not a huge fan of Easter lilies, so I only get a few.

And the bigger picture:

The view from our pew.

This is so much work, but it is also so worth it to me. It's an act of service that has the selfish result of making me very happy when I turn on the lights on Easter Sunday and see all those flowers.

Snapshots: Easter Prep

Happy Easter! We spent much of yesterday preparing for today, including . . .

Dyeing eggs.

This year I just used the light green eggs that were in the ones I get from my friend, rather than buying white eggs at the store. Because I use natural dyes--beet juice, curry powder, and paprika powder--they don't get as dark as if we were using one of those kits. That plus the green eggs made for some pretty subtle colors, but that's okay. They're still good for the egg hunt.

Poppy volunteered to iron the linen napkins for me.

She prefers to do this on the floor.

I had my nimble-fingered children help me skin a lot of chickpeas in preparation for making the hummus that will be a part of our Middle Eastern Easter dinner.

Middle-Easter dinner? No? Okay.

I made a pie. 

Strawberry-rhubarb. The rhubarb is up in the garden but not big enough to cut yet. I used the last bag in the freezer from last year's rhubarb for this pie.

And of course, I arranged the Easter flowers for church. That took a long time, as always. I'm going to do a whole post about that on Tuesday, but for now, here's the mess I made on my floor while I was doing it.

I just let the leaves fall where they may while I was in the middle of it and cleaned up later.

Because I just buy pre-packaged bouquets of flowers at Walmart and then take them apart to arrange them, I always end up with some that just don't fit with the arrangements I'm making. I had quite a few that I separated into different vases at home.

The tiny jar was for Poppy's dresser.

Well, I guess I can show you some of the church flowers, since I didn't really arrange these ones much. This year I bought some potted flowers and set them up in front of the Holy Family.

We can plant the hyacinth and tulip bulbs in our garden after I take them out of the church. 

There you have it! My Easter preparations, snapshotted.