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.

Deck the Halls 2009

Our holiday decorating challenge this year is to work with what we have and as it turns out, Michael and I have quite a lot in our Christmas treasure chest.




Last year we did an alphabet tree made out of gingerbread cookies for the play room. This year Nick and Linus are very much into trains, so trains it is. I chose a blue and green palette for decorating the cookies; following a color theme keep the tree from looking too cluttered and the cookie decorating is more refined. Because we will be away during Christmas week we decided to use a tree from our artificial tree collection, a 6 foot winter white tree that I love. After the cookies were hung (with fishing line, not an easy job) I dug through the boxes and boxes of vintage ornaments and added some of our favorite blue and green balls to give the tree an extra shine. I’m thrilled with the results.






While digging through our ornaments, I also pulled out my absolute favorite silver, gold and glittered beauties and hung them on a faux feather tree in the more formal living room known as the “daddy room."


Last year we asked our über talented friend Teresa to make Christmas stockings for Nick and Linus. They love these candy cane and snowman stockings so much.


Wreaths, pine cones and nuts add a little more festive feel around the rest of the house.

Happy Holidays!

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.

Alphabet Christmas Tree

The idea of a Christmas tree decorated with alphabet cookies has been stirring in my head for several years, and recently adopting two kids made for perfect time to bring this idea to life. Michael and I have been collecting cookie cutters for several years which include a set of all 26 letters. Our three year old, Nick, and I both share a love of the ABC’s and are quite happy to sing their praises any chance we get. With these elements and a little extra free time at the end of November I seized the opportunity.

Like many projects I take on, this one proved to be a little bigger than I had expected. It took three batches of gingerbread cookie dough and a LOT of rolling (doing this in small batches was key) to ensure the tree would be properly decorated. Cutting the cookies was easy but remembering to make a hole at the top for string wasn’t. After all the baking was done I lost my free time; thankfully the cookies sit around without trouble and made the kitchen smell wonderful. We decorated at least two dozen of the cookies late one night and tying all the red string so they would hang “just right” took me about three hours. But it was a labor of love and I am thrilled with the results.



In all the projects around our house, I strive for a twist of modern luxury and I think this happened so nicely on the tree. A simple color palette was used to decorate the cookies: white icing, white sanding sugar, peppermint pillows and silver drages. By keeping many of the cookies in their natural state the tree is kept from being too folksy.



Nick is so excited about the tree and he can pick out the ornaments that spell his name … which I’m sure will impress Santa when he comes for a visit.

Sausage Fennel Stuffing

Celery and onions sautéing in butter are one of the first things I think about as Thanksgiving approaches. I have very clear memories of sitting in the kitchen early Thanksgiving morning, watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in black and white on a little orange TV while mom cooked up these vegetables as she prepared her stuffing. Sage was one of the most important ingredients adding a complexity of flavor, and another important scent to my memory of this day. Mom stuffed the bird and without fail the stuffing always turned out perfect, both wonderfully crusty and moist. I've never been as lucky. The few times I've tried to stuff a turkey, the filling has steamed more than baked and soggy bread wasn't what I was after.. I've gave up on Mom's way long ago and now always cook the stuffing separately.

My friend Marina turned me on to this Sausage Fennel Stuffing from Epicurious a few years ago and I've never looked back. I've made a few changes, including adding celery and sage just like Mom's version. The combination of sausage and fennel is a great accompaniment to the turkey and the rest of the trimmings. This year we are going to celebrate Thanksgiving with Michael's family in Olympia, WA. I volunteered to make the stuffing months ago.

Sausage Fennel Stuffing

1/2 lb sweet Italian sausage, casings discarded
1/2 lb spicy Italian sausage, casings discarded
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
2 medium onions, finely chopped (2 cups)
3 celery stalks, chopped fine
1 1/2 lb fennel, 2 medium bulbs, stalks discarded, coarsely chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 teaspoons fennel seeds
2 teaspoons dried thyme, crumbled
3 teaspoons dried sage, crumbled
7 cups packaged corn bread stuffing
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth


Preheat oven to 325°F.

Cook sausage in a dry 12-inch nonstick skillet over moderate heat, breaking up pieces with a fork until browned and cooked through, 6-8 minutes. Transfer with a slotted to bowl. Add corn bread stuffing

Melt 6 tablespoons butter in skillet over moderate heat, add onions, celery, fennel, salt, and pepper and cook, stirring frequently, until vegetables are softened, 10 -15 minutes.

Finely grind fennel seeds in coffee/spice grinder then add to vegetables along with thyme and sage. Cook, stirring, 1 minute.

Transfer vegetables to bowl with stuffing and sausage and toss gently but thoroughly. Spoon stuffing into a buttered 3 to 3 1/2-quart shallow baking dish. Drizzle with stock and dot with remaining 2 tablespoons butter, cut into bits. Bake covered in middle of oven 30 minutes, then uncover and bake until browned, about 30 minutes more.

Makes 8 to 10 servings or about 10 cups