Christmas Tablescape

Christmas prep is really not complete for me until I've come up with a plan for our dining room tablescape.  

This year I once again drew from items we have on hand.  

The base placemat is square, woven and gold.  They're no longer available, but a similar style can be found at Distinctive-Decor. 

Resting on the square gold placemat is my favorite charger ever ... they're round rattan with scalloped edges and I found them a few years ago at Pier One.  They appear to also be discontinued, but Pier One carries a really lovely round charger without scalloped edging HERE.

 (Note:  I was not compensated in any way for this post - 

the opinions expressed are my own and reflect personal experience.)

The rattan charger is topped with a red plastic charger to complete a trio of placemats/chargers that provides nice texture.

A creamy white porcelain dinner plate contrasts the red charger.  This dinnerware set has been the perfect foundation for holidays and special occasions.  With basic white, you can add any color combination/design of complimentary salad plates and bowls.  I'm so glad I bought 12 place settings several years ago.  

This set is Red Vanilla Classic from Overstock and you can find it HERE. 

Now for the cutest little holiday plates!  Have you seen the adorable holiday dinnerware collection at Walmart?  I wouldn't have believed it, either!  But, they have an entire set of several different winterscape designs - I chose Santa with his reindeer pulling his sleigh.  Other designs include a Christmas tree, a little deer, the popular red car/truck with Christmas tree, winter landscape and several other designs.  

Each year we enjoy crackers (or do you call them poppers?).  This year's are red with a gold glitter scroll design.

Napkins are red cloth and napkin rings were a last minute project.

The cardboard "rings" are twine ball centers that I saved and they're really sturdy and thick cardboard.  One quick coat of my "go to" metallic gold paint was all it took to give them a little gilding.

The paint is from Target and it's Valspar's Devine Color in Karat.  It comes out beautifully when I've used it on plastic, metal, wood and now, cardboard! 

An added touch of glitz with decorative ribbon and the napkin rings were all set to go.

Our Christmas Day meal will be buffet style and silverware will be in the caddy nearby.  Final touch to the tablescape was water goblets and I called it done.

The centerpiece is a large, clear glass cloche filled with red and gold ornaments, placed on a tray encircled with red and gold strands of garland.

The tray is one of a set of two from Decor Steals.  They're farmhouse style wood trays with metal handles.

Now that the table is all set, I guess I'd better firm up the menu!  

Are you all set for a holiday meal?  We start out buffet style (using the wonderful Crock-Pot Hook Up connectable entertaining unit), and then favorite dishes seem to find their way to the dining table.

Do you serve buffet style, or family style with serving dishes on the table?  Or, like us ... a mix of both?

 

Your comments are greatly appreciated and I look forward to your thoughts and ideas!  I try to respond to comments via email as soon as I can. If your email address isn't available, I will comment here. Thanks so much for visiting!

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2016 Christmas Decor

It's starting to look and feel a lot like Christmas ... the presents are wrapped, the mantel is aglow, and our home is an explosion of glittery gold, bold red and deep green.

This year's mantel is decked out in three layers of garlands ... a base of vertically strung pinecones, and a lighted spruce garland, topped off with a gilded cascading garland.  Instructions for the DIY pinecone garland are HERE.

Above the mantel, a traditional spruce wreath with gold and red ball ornaments is surrounded by a gold open picture frame and a symmetrical arrangement of glittery cutout gold stars and red trees, red felt cone trees, and copper lanterns filled with gold wrapped candles.

A splash of red also warms the hearth area - this darling wood step stool painted with shiny red enamel was built by hubby's grandfather many years ago and is the perfect perch for the vintage red truck and tree.  Surprisingly, our gold painted Thanksgiving pumpkin appears to be alive and well to shine on through Christmas.

On our coffee table, a large clear glass cloche filled with red glass ball ornaments is resting on a gold framed mirror tray.  In reality, it's not a tray at all - it's a wall mirror found at Target.  Nice when items can do double duty.  

Accompanying the cloche is a little red lighted vehicle with Christmas tree.  It was originally green and received a festive makeover with red paint.  Read more about that HERE.

The two slipper chairs in the living room are adorned with red rosette pillows, and my thrifty find of the season ... a dark grey plush throw with super large fluffy pom poms.  I was thrilled to find it at Tuesday Morning for only $14.99!!!  If you're searching for these, they also had them in ivory and a light tan.

In a break from tradition, this year's large living room tree is decorated all in gold, with burlap garland and gold raffia.  It rests in a burlap filled galvanized container.  To see how we set up the tree container, click HERE.

The topper is a gold star with white lights, and glittery gold cascading sprays.  The sprays were found at Lowe's and the star topper at Target.  Tree ornaments were all items we had on hand.

Instructions for making the burlap and book page stocking ornaments can be found HERE.

The foyer decor (adjacent to the large tree) is simple and consists of a lighted tabletop urn centerpiece on the foyer table, and a simple  door wreath.

Our gift wrapping color theme this year is a combination of metallic gold, white and black.  I created and cut the gift tags from black card stock using my Silhouette Cameo, and shiny gold paper fills cutout tree openings in the tags. 

Names were written on the tags with a metallic gold Sharpie (from Lowe's).

In the dining room, a new addition this season is the hot beverage bar on the small antique chest.  The chest is just the right size for all the goodies needed to enjoy a hot cup of coffee, tea, spiced cider or cocoa.  In addition to the Keurig and K-cups, add-ins are ready to go - chocolate chips, marshmallows, flavored coffee creamer, sprinkles, candy cane stirrers and cinnamon.

The dining room table centerpiece is another large glass cloche, filled with red and gold glass ornaments and surrounded by gold and red beaded garland.  This cloche is displayed on a farmhouse style carved round wood tray with metal handles.  The tray was from Decor Steals and came in a set of two.    

A counter height bar separates our kitchen from our dining room and it's a great place for two lighted 4' counter trees in urns.  They're decorated with the handmade cinnamon ornaments from last year (instructions found HERE and HERE). 

Next to each lighted counter tree are small gold metal ornament stands loaded with red and gold ornaments and "skirted" with red berry candle rings.  The gold metal stands were Goodwill finds this summer.

If you're still with me, have you noticed that pillows move around a lot in our home?  :)

In the kitchen, we continue the explosion of festive red.  Our kitchen is typically very neutral and at Christmas the red really makes it come alive.  

The light fixture above the island is dressed up a bit with green garland and red and gold tinsel wreaths.  A similar wreath is also centered on the garland at the kitchen sink window.  

Our framed Christmas countdown is in full swing on the kitchen counter, along with a mug of hot cinnamon flavored candy canes in a holiday mug perched on a white and gold dotted cupcake pedestal.  A trio of glittery gold cone trees add a little sparkle to the top of the fridge.

The trio of cracked glass lighted orbs on the counter remain year-round because we enjoy them so much.

A white ceramic soup tureen is great for displaying Christmas crackers/poppers (which do you call them?) until Christmas day and a chubby little Santa is keeping them company.

Wrapping up this holiday tour, our master bedroom has a touch of glitz in the form of tinsel trees and matching gold wreath.

How is your holiday decor coming along?  Are you just beginning to decorate, shop for gifts and plan your menu?  Or, have you finished and are now breathing a sigh of relief?

Your comments are greatly appreciated and I look forward to your thoughts and ideas!  I try to respond to comments via email as soon as I can. If your email address isn't available, I will comment here. Thanks so much for visiting!

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Tucking Away the Holidays

It was inevitable ... all visual reminders of Christmas and the holidays are now tucked away.  We enjoyed our decorations a bit longer than we have in years past and earlier this week we put away our large living room tree.  Today I bagged and tagged the smaller trees, garland and exterior wreaths for storage.

While our home does seem so bare and we really miss the glow of little lights each evening, it's nice to have a brand new year ahead of us!

To help accomplish the task of storing away the holidays, we're fond of the red canvas storage bags with zippers and handles.  

Very easy to carry and store.  Most have sewn in label holders that are awesome for quick identification of the contents.  They come in various sizes and shapes and you can usually find them after the holidays on clearance.  All of our trees, wreaths and garland are stored in this type of container in our attic.  We like that they're versatile and can be stored upright (great for trees in urns) or horizontally.

The round ones are perfect for wreaths and garland and I've found we can get multiple wreaths in each bag - up to 4 exterior window wreaths fit nicely in each one.  

For storing and organizing tree ornaments, stacking drawer units are my choice.   The ones I'm using are 3-drawer units and ornaments for each tree fit safely in separate drawers which I've labeled with my handy dandy label maker.  Ornaments for our larger living room tree are in multiple drawers.  The advantage to using these is that there's no fear of ornament breakage from lid collapse. 

And, for those miscellaneous decorations that do not have to be climate controlled (summers and attics get really hot here), we use heavy duty lidded storage containers (black with yellow lids).  

With our hot temps, the clear containers with thin white lids don't hold up well to hot attics, causing the lids to collapse if the bins are stacked.  We've discovered that the clear containers have also become brittle and cracked over time. 

These heavy duty ones have held up super well so far after a few years' use  - they stack well and no collapsing lids.   They're a little more costly than the typical ones, but well worth the investment (in our opinion).  

I number them as C1, C2, etc. (C = Christmas).  Pretty ingenious, right?   Then, create an index of contents for each box and tuck them away in the attic.  

 
Do you make New Year's resolutions?  I don't, but do have a long list of projects to tackle this year ... some involving holiday decor ... after all, Christmas is only 352 days away!!!
 

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New Year's DIY Clock Face Plates

Do you serve a traditional New Year's dish to bring prosperity and good luck?  Here in the South, one traditional dish is black eyed peas. To make them a little more fun and appealing, I made glitzy New Year's clock face plates on which to serve them.

Supplies used:

Clear glass plates
Clock face graphic
Mod Podge or white glue

Before we get started, I must give credit for the amazing clock face graphic to The Graphics Fairy.  Karen has a seemingly endless variety of graphics available free for your personal use and the one I used, along with two additional options, are found HERE.  You'll also find many shared project ideas for the free graphics she graciously provides.  Please check out her site - you will be impressed!


To create the clock face plate, I measured the diameter of the inside center of the clear plate.  These are salad plates, but dinner plates can easily be used by printing a larger clock face to fit the center area.  

This is the graphic I selected:

The Graphics Fairy

After printing the clock face on my color printer, I cut it out and applied Mod Podge to the front (clock face side) of the image.  Then, carefully placed it on the back side of the clear plate and used an old gift card to smooth out any air bubbles.  Let dry.  

The glue dries clear and only the gorgeous clock face image will be seen from the front side of the plate.  I'm loving the combination of black, cream and metallic gold tones.

Paired with gold chargers, the clock face really "pops" against the gold.  For texture ... a table centerpiece comprised of everything gold (repurposed from Christmas).  Will later add napkins, silverware and glasses to complete the tablescape.

This is a very quick project and adds a nice touch of glitz to New Year's.  The clock face images are certainly not permanent and can be removed quite easily by soaking in warm soapy water. 

For those with limited storage space, this can be a great alternative to buying occasion-specific dinnerware  - just use the same set of clear plates and change out the design with each holiday or occasion.  It really takes little time at all!

Wishing you a fun-filled and Happy New Year!!!

Many thanks to Karen at The Graphics Fairy and

Christine at Must Love Home for featuring this project!!!

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