Easter tablescaping with Lucinda Chambers | How I Host... | Homes & Gardens

I'm Lucinda Chambers and this is how I host. Come on in. This is our dining room. I think when you're starting a house or you want to refresh a house, you have to think about what you're doing in that room. So I love this colour because yellow to me signifies energy and excitable conversations and people laughing and talking. The tablecloth is for me a starting point because sometimes it's red and pink and then sometimes it's electric yellow, sometimes it's plain. So that's really like my base camp. Everything starts with a tablecloth and then I kind of work around it. So this is particularly an energetic one which is perfect for Easter. So I've got my wonderful tablecloth down, I've got the placemats down which are a new addition, I love them, and now it's bring on the plates and start laying. I love the mismatch of plates and some are old favourites and some are vintage and some are new and I never care whether it all looks the same. Actually I really love the differences. I'm not a huge tablescape planner but when I start with a tablecloth things kind of come together and then I grab a plate off the wall and there's often a colour thread that runs through it but I'm not really conscious of it and it's only when it's sort of finished I think oh yeah I was really thinking of green and yellow and luckily because my house is so full there are lots of things to sort of grab. This plate spells summer to me so this is going to go definitely spring into summer and I often use tea towels as napkins just as a cheat. As a mother of three boys things got broken I'm not materialistically attached to everything. I love changing things up but I also don't buy huge sets of things that's not really my way so I'll often buy two plates at a time or a couple of napkins or one napkin holder so it's more kind of like a adding on bit by bit rather than going out and buying the whole lot. I really enjoy mixing up the glasses so these are such a high low mix, low high, hand painted, so beautiful, really precious and I love this little olive guy, martinis I think. Everything really has to be like a feast for the eyes so I literally grab anything from the garden and just pop it on. The joy of it is adding on a few new favourite bits and pieces each year and that makes it I think really special. I always keep the treasures in boxes every year and children are much more sentimental than you think because when you take out all the things that they've made over the years they absolutely love seeing them. Then they also act as place names so I pop them in the glasses around the table and then everybody knows where they're sitting and then all the lovely vintage eggs that I've collected over the years. These ones are lovely and hand painted and then what I like to do is like scatter different things and I think these colours are just so spring-like and optimistic so I just pop anything that has Easter, egg, spring and they just can light up the table. So we're almost there with the table, it looks really energetic and lively and ready for the final touch. This is probably my most favourite part of the day which is arranging flowers. Don't be afraid of buying faux flowers because when all these beauties have died down you're left with my favourite ones which are mimosa and I've chosen everything green and white to go with the table and I think it just signifies the coming of spring which we're all excited about. And then each Easter I bring out some of my old little favourite guys which are these articulated rabbits and then I buy a couple of new ones, these wonderful ones that are hand painted and you just pop them on the dry twigs and they can go right in and then they can also just pop on the outside. So this is the final flourish and I call it my Easter tree because I use really tall twigs so that it makes it come alive and then I pop all the flowers in around the bottom so it gives height and depth and I just love it, it's like the singing ringing tree. I really like doing menu cards because then everybody kind of has the anticipation and then the realisation but also I think it's nice for people to keep and then what I tend to do even though these are lovely new ones and I particularly love these as the mimosa carries all the way through the table which is great, a happy accident but use old cards and keep any cards just cut the message, keep the message but then use the back of them to write the menu. My favourite thing about having people over is the conversations that you have, the joy of being the provider of the feast. What I hope guests take away is that they've had really lively and interesting conversations with people that they've never met before and would never imagine meeting and then I think also that they felt incredibly comfortable, warm, well-fed and thoroughly uplifted. My friends are all kind of quite varied and from all different stages of my life but I love the mix and I think that's when it becomes really interesting. Thank you so much for joining me. That's the doorbell, I've got to go and answer it.