Giving Thanks With Style
By Christa TerryThanksgiving, at least in the States, is less than two weeks away, and for the second year in a row The Beard and I will be serving up dinner here at our very own home. Our extended families will be elsewhere, and we will miss them as we chow down on a Celebration Roast instead of the turkey they’ll be eating. Last year we had a guest, but this year the roster of diners will be limited to ourselves and the baby who can eat just enough real food to enjoy her own Thanksgiving feast.
Our table? Will be simple. We resist the urge to serve up the mashed and stuffing on plates and in bowls embellished with gaudy cartoons of pilgrims and Indigenous Americans. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, though if you were to ask me I’d tactfully suggest steering clear of that whole bushel of iconography. The holidays should not be an excuse to lose one’s sense of good taste.
So what have we got here…
Personalized napkins are awesome, eliminating as they do the need for place cards. Plus, guests can take them home at the end of the meal! Country Living has simple directions for the DIY crowd.
Printing coordinating menus, place cards, wine glass labels, and other paper goods for the table is easy. Just choose a color palette to coordinate with your tablescape and clip art to jazz things up a little. Conversely, sites like Paper & Cake sell print-at-home kits that make printing everything you need for your Thanksgiving table easy-peasy.
Martha Stewart’s Thanksgiving tables range from the fresh and cool to the modern to the downright dowdy, complete with pine cone turkeys. Note that pine cone turkeys are fun for the very young and the very young at heart, but do look silly. Can’t help that.
This table was DwellStudio founder Christiane Lemieux’s American Thanksgiving design, featuring plenty of DwellStudio products, natch. It’s sort of busy and understated at the same time, which isn’t entirely off putting.
Love the pitcher. Like the use of leaves. Love the chairs. Love love love the sunshine! My ideal Thanksgiving would be hosted by someone else (preferably a vegetarian, but I’m not picky) in a sunny and very warm locale. Screw autumn.
Finally, here’s more of what you can do with printable templates from Paper & Cake. Yum!
November 16th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
This brings back memories of the Very Important Job of Correct Table Arrangement at my family get-togethers, from cutlery placement to seating order – if you were lucky enough to be entrusted with that gig, you had to draw up the perfect table (male/female order, no partners sat next to each other). So much fun.
November 16th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
I don’t know where people all that flat space for all the decorative stuff on a table after all the place settings?
November 17th, 2009 at 12:46 am
I am constantly in awe of people who can pull something like that off! We’re planning on having over 20 people staying at our house (4 bedroom!) for Thanksgiving and finding and affording matching table ware, tables, flatware, etc, is almost impossible! Sooooo darn beautiful, though . . . eeks. If only.
And ditto, Little Red – where the heck do you get all that flat space? Is there room for food anywhere?
November 17th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
@Margo That would be some people’s idea of hell! I’d love it, though. We never had much order to our holiday tables at my family home. It was a free for all where everything was concerned… people, plates, food…
@Little Red and @Elisabeth Maybe they have a buffet set up? My paternal family almost always has huge holiday meals with tons of guests, and plates, glasses, and everything else take up most of the room on the table. All of the food is kept on a sideboard. Granted, most people — The Beard and I included — don’t have a convenient sideboard in their dining rooms or kitchens.
November 18th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
It was not done wit the most po of faces, it must be said…
November 18th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Though, actually, come to think of it we barely have room for plates with all of the people we stuff at a table – even with a buffet. It usually takes something like three tables lined up end to end stretching halfway across the house to fit all of us – 12-13 down each side!