No Pressure Holiday Tables

I love all the preparations leading up to Christmas, but when the big day arrives I’m ready for things to be easy, easy, easy. The 25th should be about spending time with my family and playing with the kids not stuck in the kitchen or fretting over the perfect holiday tablescape. To help take some of the pressure off, I plan as much ahead as possible including quick table decorations from the grocery store or my own storage boxes.

Gather a few decorations you haven’t used elsewhere, selecting an array in one or two colors. For a holiday dinner party I put three candy striped candles and silver balls on a glass cake stand filling in the gaps with fake snow. Candy canes were tucked into white napkins for an extra sweet touch.

This family dinner table was set with pomegranates, satsumas and little lady apples placed on white platters down the center of the table. The colors from the fruit perfectly matched the vintage Christmas table cloth and red candles.

The table for this Christmas dinner is still undecided though my snow woodland theme will include pinecones and candle sticks made out of tree branches. And my white Christmas will definitely require more fake snow.

Deck the Halls 2010

I have flocked, glittered, hot glued, dremmeled, hammered, sawed, baked, hung, re-hung, arranged, and rearranged for nearly two weeks but I’m finally ready to show off the Christmas decorations.

I’m particularly pleased with the vintage pom-pom tree decked out in silver and blue. The winter village underneath is home to 60’s pinecone elves, bottle brush trees and glittered houses we’ve collected over the years. Nick and Linus helped me glitter an inexpensive plastic farm set adding more sparkle to the Daddy tree.

For the main floor I created a snowy feeling with the garland for the banister and flocking wreaths myself that I hung in the dining room with blue and silver faux bois ribbon.

This time of year I love to fill my favorite white pottery pieces with either yummy things to eat or pretty things to look at, like my collection of pinecones.

We always do a kid tree for the playroom and this year’s was cut down by yours truly. The beautiful and fresh Noble Fir is hung with red and gold ornaments, Peanuts characters and gingerbread Ls and Ns.

Merry Christmas!

12 Days of Christmas Decorations

I'm always surprised how quickly home Christmas decorations go up, including the tree, so soon after Thanksgiving. Not in my house as a kid. Mom always trimmed the house two weeks before Christmas and then took everything down the day after – and if the tree was dry, down that came after gifts were open. A practical sentimentalist my mom who liked a clean house as much as her Tom and Jerry punch.

When it comes to my own holiday decorating I take after my mother. The planning and watching for new ideas begins in October but nothing is ever put up until December. I favor settling on a theme or color pallet when decking the halls to keep the house from feeling like an elf exploded everywhere. Sticking to a theme means on any given year some decorations get displayed while others are repacked for next time, giving us something different to enjoy each year. While we don’t dismantle everything on Boxing Day we do begin the New Year with a clean house and not a trace of glitter.

Since we’ve become parents I have made a point of doing a kid’s tree in the playroom, the one Santa leaves his haul under. The past two years I’ve decorated the boys’ tree with homemade gingerbread cookies: the alphabet decked out in red and white candy followed by green and blue trains. They boys were charmed by them, they made the room smell good and were safe for a 2 year old to occasionally snack on.

One of my favorite themes was a woodland Christmas, when I glittered and spray painted plastic deer. Another year I made wreaths from gum drops. Color pallets have ranged from silver and gold, gold and brown and blue and brown. In my book, the color choices or decorations can be centered around just the tree, one room or the entire house.

Visions of red, white and silver are currently dancing in my head. Visit next week to see how my halls are decked this year.

Preserving a bit of autumn

The boys and I drove up to Leavenworth, 2 hours east of Seattle, to meet out of state family. Along the drive through the Cascade Mountains, yellow, gold and red started to peek through the green leaves and I was wishing I had brought a saw and cut a few branches for a leaf preserving project I’ve wanted to try out. As luck would have it, there in park in the middle of Leavenworth was a pile of tree branches bursting with autumn colors. Always a good sport, my Aunt Lora Lee helped me load some rather large branches in the back of the car. Then the real quest started. My leaf preserving project required glycerin which helps keep the leaves pliable and keeps their colors from fading, sometimes for years. Finding this agent (a by-product of soap making) was not easy, and after 3 days of phone calls, visits to every craft and natural store I could think of, I finally found it at Zenith Supplies in Seattle. By now, even though I kept them in water, my branches started to dry out a little. Still I crated these two arrangements in the house, mixing glycerin with water and a little dish soap to help break up the surface tension and to allow the glycerin to be more easily absorbed. I’m very pleased with how the leaves look and if it they don’t preserve this time, there’s still a few weeks to head to the hills and try to find a fresh batch of leaves. I’ll let you know how things turn out. Happy autumn!

Flower gig: commitment ceremony

Arranging flowers for the dinner table is much different than coordinating arrangements for commitment ceremony, but I was up for the challenge when good friends asked for my help for their July celebration.


The couple wanted to balance the traditional with the masculine -- the sturdy but soft colored lily was their flower of choice and fit the bill.


The boutonnieres and corsages tied in with the blue and brown color scheme and complimented all the guests of honor. The couple was thrilled, the view was spectacular and the evening was perfect . Congratulations Christopher and Jim!

Inspired by Green

When it comes to flower arranging, I like to exercise some restraint. While it would be too easy to buy everything that catches my eye at the flower shop, I resist that urge and stick to one or two color combinations. Green and white are one of my favorite color pairings. I love how crisp and clean they look together. The long stems of this viburnum flower compliment the tall piece of pottery nicely.

This small piece of white pottery is one my prized possessions. I use it in table settings, holiday decorations and flower arranging any chance I get. I’ve often thought it would look great full of white rinoculous and I am not disappointed.

This seemed like a timely opportunity to introduce Nick and Linus to the shamrock. I put this plant on our dinning table and it has inspired a lot of conversations.

This Spring Think Pink

We are enjoying an early spring here in Seattle. The plum trees have peaked, magnolia flowers are opening and the cherry trees are just about to pop. This time of year my color of choice turns to pink and I look to bring splendor of the blossoms inside. While the blooms only last a few days, why not enjoy their beauty and promise all year long? You may think green in spring, but the hue after winter is in the pink.

Hadley Hutton Print

Roost Cherry Blossom Glass

Birds of a Feather Plates

Cherry Blossom Screen & Needlepoint Pillows



Orchard Blossom Wallpaper

Benjamin Moore Paint: Pale Cherry Blossom

Stationary

Consider Carnations

I adore carnations, but I understand their bad rap --- they hardly stand out in the grocery store and as a gift, if you keep that bad plastic wrapper and the baby’s breath, they come off as cheap. But it’s precisely because carnations are budget-friendly and have a long bloom that you can buy several bunches and create a big-impact, even chic, arrangement. The shape of carnations allows you to create soft, lush and substantial displays; it’s all about playing up their strengths and packaging them the right way. Plus, carnations come in so many cool shades. I like to group them in one color, such as this pink arrangement I did for Valentine’s Day. The next time someone tries to disparage the dear old flower, remind them that the carnation is scientifically known as Dianthus caryophyllus, the "flower of love" or "flower of the gods."

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!

Outdoor Fall Arrangements

I finally decided to stop pining for warm weather and embrace autumn by putting out mums and pumpkins. I love to decorate our front porch: it’s a classic set up and so welcoming for company. Pumpkins of all varieties are placed around a potted mum and an articulated skeleton on the front door provides a nod to Halloween. We don’t often use the front door, so I wanted another arrangement that we could enjoy from inside. I set up a centerpiece for our patio table just outside our dining room, now we can all enjoy the colors of the season from the warmth of the dinner table. Someday, I will get my wish to put out a GIANT pumpkin worthy of the great pumpkin himself.



Look for plants with just a few open flowers and lots of buds to ensure that they will last longer, perhaps even till Thanksgiving! Don’t forget to water your mums and other fall plants…though that’s not an issue in Seattle this time of year.



When it comes to pumpkins gather them in all shapes and sizes, and pick ones with the longest stem as they stay fresh longer. Don’t carry the pumpkin by the stem or it will break off. I added several squashes to the arrangement which provide various shades of green.