Monday, November 23, 2009

Easy Thanksgiving Centerpieces


Using whatever service pieces and other small objects you have around your house, along with nuts and fruits from the grocery store, you can pull together a stylish and affordable Thanksgiving centerpiece in no time. After you’ve picked whatever produce you need for your recipes, take another pass around that section, this time with an eye toward the center of your table.


I love white on white. Here I used a white table cloth and a few favorite pieces from my white pottery collection to show off an arrangement of decorative cabbage from the farmer’s market and nuts from the grocery store.



Green apples tend to show up a lot in my arrangements. I love their shape and bright cheerful color. I paired them with some very inexpensive silver trays I picked up at a consignment shop along with hazel nuts. Red pairs and walnuts also work great.



You can’t beat the beautiful orange color of Satsumas this time of year and my kids love to peal and eat them (after their job as the centerpiece is done). This time I’m showing them off in a footed white ironstone dish and each place setting gets a lady apple in an ironstone salt cellar.


Keep everything low so guests can see each other and keep the conversation going. Make sure you take the labels off the fruit and don’t forget lots of votive candles.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Weekend Project: New Shelving


Our cook and design books had been sitting on the floor in our office far too long while Michael and I looked for shelving we both liked and was affordable. We’ve been in the same shelving cycle for years: move into a new place, buy some “temporary” shelving (that we always weighed a ton had to be assembled!) until we found something we liked. Inevitably we always ended up selling that before we moved into a new place, thus keeping the cycle alive. While we still haven’t found a unit we both agree upon, we decided to set up track shelving in the office and so far are thrilled with the results. I love that we still have floor space beneath the shelves, and having something on the wall adds a nice touch when looking in from the kitchen. All in all, I think it turned out to be a stylish and affordable solution.