G’day all!  I’m so excited about the Tablescape Link Party I announced yesterday, so I couldn’t wait to share some inspiring ideas with you!  Setting a table is so much fun, because the table is that place where people gather to do two of the very best things in life: eat and talk.  Eating and talking, talking and eating, really does it get much better than that?   I don’t think so.

I rounded up a bunch of inspiration for you and some tips for setting a stylish table with ideas for all of the upcoming holidays, so here we go!

Choose the Classics.  You can’t go wrong when you opt for the traditional palettes we associate with each holiday, whether it’s the warm amber hues of Thanksgiving, the blues and whites of Hanukkah, or the classic red and white of Christmas.

Williams Sonoma

Martha Stewart

House to Home

Pinterest

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Oh we love our tablescapes during the holidays don’t we?  I know I do.  Most of the year, you’ll find a simple bowl of fruit and some fresh flowers on our dining room table but during the holidays, like many of you, I set it with a pretty centerpiece.  Friends appreciate it, and an attractive centerpiece on a dining room table is a great way to creatively get into the spirit of the season. 

Better Homes & Gardens

Beckie from Washington sent me this email with a great question about what to do with decorative centerpieces when you’re serving guests a meal:

“Hey Kate. This is one of those questions that I think a lot of people (ok me) have always wondered how to do gracefully but seem too afraid to ask. Real life just doesn’t work the way you see it in a magazine, so here goes.

You go to all the trouble and creativity to set a beautiful table for a special occasion, you set up a nice well thought out centerpiece and you bring out your best dishes and set up the place settings and your nice stemware and everything looks perfect . . . You’ve cooked your meal and now everyone is sitting at the table ready and waiting with baited breath, but wait… there is nowhere to put the food as you have filled your table with beautiful things. How do you deal with that?

Do you set up a buffet?  Remove the centerpiece? Fill each plate and serve each person like a waiter? Am I the only one who doesn’t know how to do this right? Awaiting you answer for the holiday season.  ~ Beckie”

Hey Beckie, great question! I don’t believe there is any one way to “do it right”. There are several ways to work around your table decorations during a meal, it just depends on your preferred method of serving guests.

When it comes to how to serve your meal and where to put the food, you have a few options. You can clear your centerpiece and make room for the food on the table, family style. You can set up a location for the food elsewhere such as a sideboard, and serve buffet style. Or you can choose the formality of serving your guests on a plate one by one. 

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Well, it is finally done. Nothing like a series of link parties to kick my booty in gear for the autumn season. Sarah is hosting the final get together, so I added some autumn touches to the front porch.  Now it’s time to sit back, relax, and enjoy this season!

I’m completely embracing all of the fall hues this year with no regard for one color and no playing favorites. Bring on the all the harvest colors I say ~ burgundy, yellow, orange, green, and aubergine.  No muted or monotone color palette this year, I felt like throwing all of them together. Hey, if the rug can do it, shucks, so can I.

I swapped out the white iron benches that have sat on the porch for years for my wine barrel side tables. I’m in a ‘use what you’ve got’ kind of mood and these came from the outdoor cabana which we retired due to the oncoming rains. The cabana will return next year, so I made use of the half barrels on the porch instead ~ how very harvesty of me.

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Yes, it’s true, I’m a crafty gal around the holidays and now that October is here, it gets me excited and feeling all warm inside. But that could just be my glue gun permanently affixed to my hip which I might as well just leave plugged in until December 26th. 

I’m happy as can be to be hosting a Fall Crafts Link Party today as part of the ongoing series with my blog pals Sarah, Layla, and Rhoda. So glad you’re here, have an hors d’oeuvre! Or better yet, enjoy the virtual eye candy in the form of all the crafty goodness you’ll see linked below. 

Sometimes I think we’ve all gone and done everything we possibly could to a pumpkin, I’m wondering what will be next. As much as I like them in their natural state, I’m always a fan of a little embellishment – I love ‘em gilded and painted too. My first craft you got a glimpse of yesterday and I really bent over backwards man. They are what I call Distressed Pumpkins and they are so easy, there’s no real ‘how to’ necessary.

I’ve never tried this with latex paint, but Chalk Paint is famous for its easy distressing qualities, so I used the ‘Old White’ and it worked really well. Simply paint with one coat then sand with a fine sanding wedge to reveal the skin underneath. 

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Hey y’all!  I’m very excited to be hosting the Fall Craft Link Par-tay tomorrow!  Over the weekend I added a few fun seasonal touches to the dining room.  And I made soup.  Because we all know soup and fall go hand in hand.

Last week, I brought home a bunch of gourds and pumpkins and scattered them across the table, then hung a few festive corn husk pom poms because don’t we all need more pom poms in our life?  Yes, thank you, we do.

I played around with a few vignettes on the table watching the 49ers win (yes!).  This one includes vibrant viburnum leaves from my yard in a vase full of white cannelloni beans (the stems are placed in water in a more narrow glass inside…) which also made me crave soup.

There is no such thing as too many white pumpkins in my book, this beauty is garnished with a few faux berries.

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