Tulip Time at the Table

 

When I bought the Lazy Susan that I introduced you to last week, I honestly had no idea that I would have so much fun with it. I have yet to use it at dinner as a way to serve seasonings, condiments, or various Indian or Chinese dishes, but I have been having a delightful time decorating it.

I love to set a beautiful table, and I equally love those three tier stands, but sometimes dealing with either of those seems a bit daunting. This little gem, on the other hand, requires only a handful of items in order to look inviting.

 I don’t know about the rest of you, but sometimes I will buy one or two plates or cups because I happen to like them, but then wonder about their use. With this Lazy Susan, I can display such items, and enjoy them every day.

The day after Mother’s Day I got a heck of a deal on tulips. Aldi was selling 10 stems of tulips for $2.49. Naturally, I had to buy two. I put them into one of my favorite pitchers, and that was the start of a new arrangement on the Lazy Susan.

I complemented the color of the tulips with organic baby heirloom tomatoes from Melissa’s produce. I also decided to add faux garlic and a bunch of faux scallions to signify spring. Soon enough, I will be bringing in fresh ones of my own.

The plaid napkins are favorites of mine, as well as the little wooden scoop, part of a trio that I picked up last year at Target.

My hope is to change up the arrangement twice a month if not every week, to reflect the changing seasons, and display some of my favorite things.

 
 

Decorating for Spring!

While I am most definitely NOT a fan of summer, and I cannot emphasize this enough, I am a fan of spring. It is the season of hope — hoping that I’ll find the right fruits, vegetables, and herbs for my garden, hoping they won’t succumb to insects or disease, hoping that I’ll break even in what I harvest versus what I’ve spent trying to grow them.

I find that my table settings and decor tend to reflect my gardening interests at this time of the year. If you feel the same, then you may enjoy seeing the lazy Susan that I have on my dining table. It’s a new acquisition, thanks to Pottery Barn rewards points. This is the first time, believe it or not, that I have ever owned a Lazy Susan, and I have to say that I am really enjoying it.

It pleases me every time I look at it because it is whimsical and fun. The bespectacled bunny poking his head out of the plant pot is from local favorite home decor store, The White Hare. The “Nibble” plates are Rae Dunn (Available on Amazon, but cheaper elsewhere.), the leafy-handled ladle and upright cabbage plate are by Fitz and Floyd, and serve as the base and serving ladle for a bunny gravy boat that I inherited from my mother. Seeds, that will no doubt be viable this year despite their purchase last year, are only a portion of what I expect to plant this year and are from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

The cylinder vase holds two leaves from two different varieties of sansevieria that have finally rooted after two months in water – yay!

The green salt and pepper shakers once adorned the dinner table of my mom and dad and now adorn mine.

 How do you celebrate spring in your decor?

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A Tea Time Centerpiece

A number of you commented on my tea centerpiece when I showed you my "curious" table (that you can see here), so here's a closer look.

I have had this three-tiered stand for about 30 years. I bought it at a darling shop called Oak Tree Furniture on Historic Main Street in St. Charles. I mourned for weeks when that shop closed more than a dozen years ago. My mother and I used to visit it often, and when I spied this at the center of one of their lavishly decorated tables, I knew I had to have it. It has served me well over the years, largely holding greenery and grapes. But, lately, I've been using it as not only a centerpiece, but also a part of the meal. If you have one of those very popular galvanized metal three-tiered stands, you might consider this as well. I love it when a centerpiece does double duty.

Consider using it as an appetizer tray. You can showcase some of your favorite dishes, and fill them with fruits, nuts, cubes of cheese, small, hot baked appetizers, and use the lower level for small bottles of wine.

You can also use it as a salad tray, serving people a beautiful bed of freshly torn lettuce, and allowing them to choose their toppers from what you feature on your stand. You can use croutons, nuts, sunflower seeds, dried fruit, bacon crumbles, cubes of ham, shredded cheese, whatever you can dream up, you can put on your tray.

For holidays such as Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween, or Christmas, where sweets are always featured, use it as a sweet tray. For Valentine’s Day, you can fill bowls with flowers, conversation hearts, chocolate candies, and heart-shaped cookies. Candy is in abundance at Easter time, so imagine how cute this would look filled with pastel colored vessels overflowing with jellybeans, chocolate eggs, malted milk eggs, or your homemade options.

The tray could be filled with spooky fun for Halloween. Use colors like black, brown, orange, and amber as your vessels, and fill them with all sorts of Halloween candy. The kids and your family will go crazy. At Christmas time, picture greenery, berries, small bowls of Christmas cookies (snowball are particularly popular), holiday candy, anything colorful and delicious. Now, if you don't have a three-tiered tray, my guess is you're going to be running out to buy one. Click below if you don't have one. They are so much fun to play around with.

Mine here is tea themed. It features sugar cubes of white and Demerara sugars, teabags in a variety of flavors, some squares of Ghirardelli chocolate (that taste so good with tea), some almond cookies, bowls to hold the goodies, cups for drinking tea, and a small bottle of spiced rum to warm up the tea as well as the insides of anyone who consumes it.

I hope you enjoyed looking at my tea tray. Let me know what you do with yours if you have one, or what you plan to do with one if it's in your future.

This post is linked to:

Cooking & Crafting with J&J

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Center[piece] of Attention

I am all about the unusual centerpiece as you can tell from this post and this post. I'm also about the centerpiece that does double duty, as I'm about to show you today. If you want to make a centerpiece intriguing and the talk of your guests, make it more than a centerpiece; consider making it the attendance prize or party gift for one lucky guest.

When I was growing up my mother used to play a lot of bridge, and host a lot of bridge parties. Sometimes the winner took home only a little change in an envelope, other times the winner took home some pretty nice gifts. Whether you play bridge or canasta or bunco or, as my grandmother did way back in her day, pinochle, make your party gift the center of attention as a part of your lovely dinner table.

My centerpiece here actually has a theme, but yours doesn't necessarily have to. The theme of mine, as you can tell, is Colonial Williamsburg. I grabbed one of my favorite little baskets that I use to hold kindling by the fireplace, and put it together with a Williamsburg cookbook, a jar of soup made from a recipe in the cookbook, two more recipes printed on lovely little tea towels, as well as a favorite teapot. The teapot is extra special because it has two different sides reflecting two different people, a man and a woman. It's one of my favorite teapots in my collection, not just because it makes the perfect amount of tea for me in the afternoon, but also because it always gives me a smile whenever I use it.

I'm not saying that I am giving this particular centerpiece away, no, I can't get rid of any of these treasured things, but it does serve to give you an idea as to how to make a centerpiece for your table not just for pleasant viewing, but to use as a gift. If you want to have your guests talking about your lovely table, entice them with an exciting giveaway.

This post is linked to:

Art of Homemaking Monday
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A Bouquet of Talent

Cozy Winter Table

When the green tablecloth that I had planned to use for my second dinner table at my annual Boxing Day dinner didn't fit, I had to get creative. Rummaging through my tablecloth closet (read: the jam-packed craft closet in my office/studio that only has about three feet of space for actual hanging which is where my tablecloths are stored), I knew I was going to be in trouble. The cranberry tablecloth was way too big, the white tablecloths way too blah. I had a patterned one that worked well in the past, but had something different in mind for the centerpiece, so reached for, the first time ever at Christmas, the blue one.

It looked great in the room, blended perfectly with my new Santa pillow, and ended up being quite popular once I decided to swap out my planned evergreen plates for my Currier & Ives winter scene ones.

This is a table that, if I wanted it to, will take me all of the way through winter. There is nothing about it that screams Christmas, just winter coziness. 

As it turned out, everyone loved this table and raved about it. It was set for eight during the party, but for every day, it will just be set for four.

The centerpiece is one that is a mishmash of some of my favorite things, including wooden trees that I have used in the past here and here. Twig reindeer are also more winter than Christmas and from Pottery Barn years ago, a purchase that I have never regretted.

The “tin houses” are pure genius, fooled everyone, and were the brainchild of Debbie of the wonderful Confessions of a Plate Addict blog, whose easy instructions I followed, and am I ever thrilled that I did (read: buy houses, buy paint, spray). I do not recommend waiting until the last minute and putting on the final coat on the day of the party, but this darling trio of cardboard houses from Hobby Lobby (that stack inside each other for easy storage) will appear again and again. For only $15 for the houses and $5 for the Rustoleum Hammered Silver spray paint (that I found at Wal-Mart), I ended up with these super cute tin look houses. Even up close people were completely fooled, and can you imagine what I would have spent had these houses been actual tin? Lots!

The flickering tea lights inside are from Pier One and are battery operated. Do NOT use real candles. No.

The tabletop greenery is actually a taken apart swag that I bought days before the party at Home Depot for half off. I love using fresh greenery not only for the looks, but also for the fresh pine fragrance, and it is nothing additional to store.

 Plates - decades old
Napkins - Pier One
Flatware - Oneida
Crystal - “Marquis” by Mikasa

This post is linked to:

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Giving Thanks, a Thanksgiving Tablescape

I know that none of you probably want to see a Thanksgiving table after the fact, but you're going to anyway. Considering that I had absolutely no idea just how I was going to set it as close as the very day before, I thought it turned out beautifully.

It was largely due to our good friend and dinner-and-baseball bud, Lennie, who was not able to join us, but sent a lovely little flower arrangement instead. It was a bit small for our table, so I surrounded it with some faux pumpkins and the result was quite pleasing, I think.

Then, I thought I'd do something really different with the napkins this year, so folded them into turkeys!

While they are more pretty than practical (because each diner has to deal with not only two napkins, but a securing pin and piece of foil), everyone enjoyed them and they were amazingly easy to do.

The best way to learn is to watch this video. I find that it really helps to fold them on an ironing board, and iron between each step. Also, do starch your napkin that will be used for the feathers.

I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving. Here's what we had for dinner (and this took me THREE DAYS to prepare!) that probably tasted better than it looks.

Even two days hence, I am still recovering from it!

Now...on to Christmas!

Plates – Johnson Brothers “His Majesty”

Placemats – World Market

Tablecloth - Williams-Sonoma

Brown Napkins – World Market

Indian Corn Napkins – Made by my mother

Stemware – Gift from my dad

This post is linked to:

Celebrate It Sunday

Silver Pennies Sunday

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Brag About It

Make It Pretty Monday

Making Memories Mondays

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Inspire Me Tuesday

Wow Us Wednesday
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