Easter Dinner

My husband and I choose to host Easter at our house every year. This is year number 3 for us, we skipped out last year as Easter was about 6 days before our wedding and I was not about to cook for 30 people 6 days before our wedding.
I will do these in separate posts so I can tag the recipes & items. Like usual, I didnt take pictures of everything because people think I am absolutely nutso for taking pictures of food. I had to sneak in my pictures before anyone got there.
We love hosting a holiday. I love it because I can cook and entertain. Hubs loves it because we have everyone come to our house as opposed to us traveling to everyone else's. Each year we have an Easter Egg Hunt in our yard. But because we live in a new neighborhood, there is minimal landscaping & trees to hide the eggs. We get creative and use the cars in the driveway. One year we put the candy in the plastic eggs. Easter was later that year, in the middle of April, and of course this Midwest weather, it could be snowing in the morning and 80 degrees in the afternoon. Of course, that year it was 80 and the chocolate melted in the eggs. We had about 6 kids running around with chocolate fingers.

We dye eggs outside, we do the whole nine yards. This year we had about 20 guests which seemed just right. One year we had 40 and it was a little difficult, not unbearable but difficult. It was nice this year to be able to relax and of course watch basketball.

So onto the food/menu, we like to have a theme for our dinner. One year it was all Italian food, one year it was more of the traditional Easter dinner (ham & prime rib) This year, we wanted it to feel like Spring so we went with a BBQ themed menu. I think the Hubs really just wanted to use his smoker.

Appetizers
hot cross buns
veggie tray
deviled eggs
cheese balls
fruit tart
Side Dishes
green bean casserole
corn casserole
scalloped potatoes
baked beans
Main Course
smoked brisket
honeybaked ham
smoked turkey
Desserts
carrot cake
bunny cake
angel food cake w/berries
fudgey oatmeal bars
Drinks
Peach bellini
beer
iced tea
lemonade
coffee & hot tea
sodas

The hubs ended up throwing some pork ribs on the smoker too. My mom brought some shrimp cocktail. We just had tons of food (not surprising) Everything was delicious. I tried a crockpot recipe for the potatoes and it was B-A-D. I'll just stick with my normal oven for this kind of stuff.