I love cooking and entertaining at the holidays. I especially love setting a beautiful table. I think that setting the mood for a holiday meal is half of what makes the meal special. But, one thing I don’t like is accumulating a lot of holiday-specific pieces. It gets expensive to purchase tabletop decor for every holiday and feels a bit wasteful. In addition, it requires a lot of storage space. My solution is to try to reuse basic pieces that I already have in order to keep the purchasing to a minimum.
This year, I decide to challenge myself to create a table for Thanksgiving and Christmas using three common elements: my everyday vases, a basic linen table runner, and basic linen napkins. I also decided to do as much as possible with pieces that I already own.
In our house, Thanksgiving is a pretty relaxed day. It is all about the food (and football). So, it makes sense for us to keep our Thanksgiving table simple. I decided to keep thinks natural and easy. Orange berry branches, fall leaves, and miniature pumpkins (left over from Halloween) give the table a pop of seasonal color against a neutral background.
Even though I was keeping things simple, I couldn’t resist adding a few vintage candlesticks to increase the shine-factor a bit.
Stemless glasses and rattan placemats continue the low-key feel of the table. And, thankfully, the fall leaves were free for the taking right outside our front door this year.
By switching out a few accessories I was able to transform my natural Thanksgiving table into a sparkly white winter table for Christmas (and maybe New Years Eve).
I simply exchanged my pumpkins for some sparkly candles and took things up a notch with crystal stemware. It is a bit difficult to see in the photos but the mercury glass candleholders reflect the warm candlelight beautifully.
Because the purpose of the table is to serve a meal I think it is critical that the setting be functional as well as beautiful. As you can see from the photo above, there is plenty of open space on the table. On for both holidays, I would remove the large vases after serving the salad course and intersperse the serving dishes among the candles/pumpkins.
If you like these looks, here are some similar choices that won’t break the bank. Happy holidays!
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