Christmas Dinner Table

This was our first year to host Christmas dinner at our house.  We had both of our families over for a total of 11 people.  I wanted to make the table festive and elegant with a lot of natural elements.  Here's what I came up with:

I knew I wanted greenery on the table, but I wasn't sure exactly how I was going to do it until I went browsing at the craft store.  I found nice quality artificial garland 70% off the weekend before Christmas.  I cut it into pieces, averaging about 12 inches long each, so that I could place the greenery more precisely how I wanted.

To add elegance and a nice ambiance, I used a variety of candles.  In the center, I floated three red candles in a bowl with fresh cranberries (bringing in the natural elements).

On either side of the bowl, I had a pedestal candle holder with a red pillar candle.

Then on each end, I used a bowl half filled with Epsom salt (to mimic a snowy look) and topped with fresh cranberries.  I used a small pedestal candle holder in each bowl with a white votive candle.

When entertaining for big groups, I'm usually big on easy cleanup, but because I wanted this to be a really elegant table, I decided to use my wedding china.  It meant more dishes to hand wash, but it looked beautiful!  (And how often do I get to use my china anyway?  It's worth the extra cleanup once in a while).

I wanted natural elements at each place setting, so I tied the napkins with natural jute twine and tucked a cinnamon stick and a sprig of fresh rosemary in each one.  I also used real wood "stump" place card holders.

Finally, to tie in the cinnamon sticks to the centerpiece, I filled four small votive candle holders with Epsom salt and cinnamon sticks and placed them alongside the greenery.

I love how it all turned out.  Merry Christmas!

My Memory Tree

Whenever I'm browsing Pinterest or looking through a home decor magazine before Christmas, I admire all of the pretty Christmas trees, perfectly decorated with just the right balance of colors and shapes.  As nice as those trees look in a magazine, though, it just wouldn't be Christmas to me if I decorated my tree that way.  My Christmas tree (and all the trees I had while growing up) is a memory tree.  I've been collecting Christmas ornaments since I was a child.  I've actually had to cut back on my collecting in recent years because I've run out of room on the tree.  I now limit myself to one Hallmark ornament per year (and an occasional other "special" souvenir type of ornament).  Continuing a tradition my parents have had since they were engaged in 1976, my husband and I choose one Hallmark ornament each year to represent something from that year.  So when I decorate my Christmas tree each November, I'm not just thrilled by the way it makes our family room look pretty and festive.  It's also a heart-warming experience as almost every ornament brings back some special memory.  Here are just a handful of examples of the memories on my tree.

A pair of mittens that I got from AWANA (a kids' church program) in 5th or 6th grade.  I cashed in the reward bucks I had earned and picked out this pair of mittens that still hangs on my tree.

A bell from the tables at our wedding reception:

Every year, my mom gives me the Mother-Daughter and the Daughter Hallmark ornaments.  Here is one of them.

In 2010, I went ice skating for the first (and only) time in my life.  I was TERRIBLE!!  I held onto my friend Emily the whole time and couldn't move at all if I let go.  Emily later gave me this ice skate ornament.  It always makes me chuckle (and appreciate my sweet friend who kept me from falling.)

This "Joy" mug is such a tiny, little, nothin'-fancy ornament, but my grandparents gave it to me the last Christmas before my grandpa passed away.  So even though it's a tiny, generic type of ornament, it means something to me.

The year we got married:

The year we found a toad in the crock of the sump pump:

An ornament that my grandma (who passed away in 1994) gave me as a child.  I had a matching painting on my bedroom wall.

An ornament I got the last time I went to a Christmas tree farm with my parents:

The ornament that probably gives me the biggest chuckle every year is my black Christmas tree.  A little girl that I babysat (she's now in high school) colored this ornament for me when she was just a little squirt.

Even though I don't follow the Pinterest or HGTV instructions for how to decorate a Christmas tree, I, for one, think that our memory tree is beautiful!  Merry Christmas, Everyone!

A Happy Thanksgiving

We are loving our new family room!  (Yes, I know I haven't posted pictures of it yet.  We're still working on some details.  As I write this post, my husband is putting together a cabinet that will go in the room.  Things are coming along, but it's not quite "done" yet.)

One of our primary reasons for adding onto our family room was that we love to have people over.  We really wanted a bigger, more comfortable space for friends and family to gather.  The way our house was originally designed, there was a small family room on one end of the house and a small living room on the other end.  Neither space was large enough to host a big group of people all at once.  Our previous family room was 20.5 ft. x 12 ft.  After the addition, we've slightly more than doubled the space at 20.5 ft. x 26 ft.  Already, we can't believe it wasn't always this big.  How did we live in such a small room before?

Since we love to host and since we now have a nice big room, we invited both of our families over for Thanksgiving dinner.  We are blessed to live near both families.  Not everyone was able to make it, but we enjoyed the holiday at our house with both sets of parents, my aunt, and my husband's sister.

Due to the family room project, our dining room is kind of a storage area right now.  So we decided to serve dinner in the family room.  We recently bought a 5-ft. round folding table, which comfortably fits the eight people we had over.  Some of my pictures of the table turned out disappointingly poor (That will teach me to load them on my computer and not just rely on how they look in the camera viewing screen), so they don't quite capture how pretty everything looked.  But at least you'll get the idea.

I found the burlap-looking tablecloth on clearance, and I have already used it several times.

I love decorating with natural elements and textures (hence, the burlap).  I bought the acorn and berry napkin rings on clearance quite a while ago.  Since they were in the clearance bins, I couldn't find a whole set of either type, but I love how it looked to alternate them.

I've had the tealight candle centerpiece for a long time, but I hadn't taken it out of the box until now.  It worked really well on the round table, and the glass candleholders are amber tinted, which coordinated well with the burlap tablecloth.  To make the centerpiece more Thanksgiving/fall-ish, I put mini pumpkin candles around the centerpiece.

Sticking with natural elements, I used place card holders that are made from real wood and look like little tree stumps.  I used cards that said "I am thankful for" and then added each person's name.

I really loved the table, but of course, what good is a beautiful table without a great meal?  I am all about keeping things simple when it comes to entertaining, so everyone contributed dishes to this year's Thanksgiving feast.  My mom and dad brought the turkey and stuffing.  I made rolls, pumpkin muffins, "Pink Jello," applesauce, crustless pumpkin pie, and baked sweet potatoes--most of which could be made in advance.  And my in-laws and aunt contributed to the sides and desserts, as well.  We ended up with a bountiful, delicious feast!

I'm especially proud of my pumpkin-shaped Butter Rich Rolls:

I got the idea online (http://www.thistlewoodfarms.com/simple-pumpkin-rolls).  I used my own roll recipe with dough made in my bread machine.  Instead of pecans, I used fat pretzels that I cut to the right length.  They turned out so cute!

In addition to having a great meal, I really wanted to do something special to focus on the reason for Thanksgiving Day and to establish our own new tradition for Thanksgiving at our house.  I got the idea from Pinterest to have everyone write what they are thankful for in a book and then add a group photo of all the guests who joined us.  I found this really cute book online, and I'm excited to make this our family tradition for many years to come.  It will be fun 20 or 30 years from now to see what we were thankful for in 2013.

We had such a great Thanksgiving!  I hope that you and your family had a wonderful celebration, too!

"Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever." - Psalm 107:1

Easter Table

This was our first married Easter.  (We are coming up on one year of marriage in just a few weeks.)  We are on an alternating schedule for holidays with our families, and this year, Easter was with my family--eight people total.  We decided to host dinner at our house, and I had so much fun planning everything!  I especially enjoyed decorating the table.  I love how a specially decorated table can set the mood for a meal--whether formal or romantic or fun and whimsical.  I love using table decor to enhance a gathering.  For Easter, I wanted to create a very spring-like feel.  I'm not a huge fan of traditional Easter pastel, so I wanted to use vibrant colors.  I also didn't want it to be too girly for the men of the family, and I wanted it to feel elegant while also being very fun and cheery.  Finally, I wanted it to have some unique personalization, and I wanted it to be easy enough to clean up (especially since a toddler would be involved) so as not to take away too much family-time after the meal.  I love how it all turned out!!

For the centerpiece, I used my Anchor Hocking cake plate, which is designed so that it can be turned upside down into a pedestal bowl.  I dyed 63 Easter eggs to fill the bowl, leaving the eggs in the dye for about 5 minutes each in order to get the most vibrant colors I could.  I used my wedding bouquet (silk daffodils--yellow daffodils are my favorite flower) in the middle, and I covered the base with silk yellow rose petals that were used on the tables at our wedding reception.

For each place setting, I used a round purple placemat, ivory plate, and purple napkin.  I love how the turqouise and purple go together.  I also found these adorable dragonfly napkin rings to put in the center of each plate.

I thought about using my wedding china plates, but for the sake of easy clean-up, I opted to use the everyday plates that can be thrown in the dishwasher.  One thing I've learned about hosting parties is that it's better to keep things a little simpler than to spend all your time in the kitchen, missing out on the gathering.

I also personalized each place with the guests' names.  I found some really cute potted silk flowers in bright spring colors for half off at a craft store.  I wrote each name on a foam Easter egg sticker.  I attached the sticker to a mini clothespin, which I clipped to the top edge of the pot.  They looked so cute!  And I can easily unclip the names and re-use the flowers for other events.

I absolutely love how everything turned out, and my family was very pleased.  Happy Easter, everyone!

"I don't want to go home!!!!"

We don't have kids, but we do have an almost 3-year-old niece that I absolutely adore!!  We love to have our family over for get-togethers, and I want our niece to enjoy these times, too, as well as any other young children who may come over.  So I keep a small basket of toys, books, and crayons in the family room.

 



 

Our niece goes right for the basket when she comes over, and we play hard the whole time she is here.  I'm usually exhausted by the end of the evening, but these are some of my favorite times.

My family came over recently to celebrate a birthday, and my niece, as usual, had a great time.  We ran around the house with a birthday balloon, played with the squeaky toy eggs, drew pictures on the Magnadoodle, and read a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse book.  When it was time to leave, my niece complained emphatically, "I don't want to go home!!!!!"  Isn't that the perfect response from a guest?  I hope all of our company enjoys being here so much that they are sorry to see the get-together end.