Last Minute Tablescape

It’s the holidays and I love entertaining. Like, I LOVE ENTERTAINING. If I could afford to throw parties all the time I would in a second. I must get that from my Grandma Mullis. The only problem besides the cost incurred with parties is time. Where, oh where does a Mom of two find time to prepare for a dinner party? Answer: she doesn’t.

Last week my Dad was in town but wouldn’t be able to stay through Thanksgiving, so we had a family dinner on Wednesday night. My brother came over and it was a nice little get together. I looked forward to the opportunity to make a nice meal we could all enjoy together. I also looked forward to making the table pretty. With limited resources and even more limited time- I wasn’t sure it was going to come together. But, it did! It isn’t the fanciest thing, but I think it looks like I spent more time on it than I actually did.

My first word of advice is to always have white table linens handy. You can coordinate all decor around white, no matter the holiday or occasion. Also, it just looks clean and sophisticated. I grabbed one of my “fall” table runners and put it on the table cloth. I went all the way to my living room to get a glass vase I have that holds a votive candle, and a couple of other matching miniature hurricane lamps to go on either side. When I was at Target earlier that day, I grabbed a little set of place cards and some metallic patterned paper straws for fun. (My six year old is a little obsessed with straws.) Lastly, I collected pine cones in the yard I used some pine cones I purchased at Target (I realize I live in Georgia, but I didn’t have time to hunt them. Leave me alone.) as place card holders and to display around the table. I folded the napkins thanks to a youtube tutorial and tied twine around them.

It isn’t formal by any stretch of the imagination, but it was easy, fast and gave us exactly the elegant vibe I wanted.