Thanksgiving Dinner (2014)

We had a very good Thanksgiving holiday last week.  

Come on in and I'll show you how we celebrated:

 A sneak peek of our table.....keep reading....keep reading!  :D

Pumpkin pie mix, pumpkin spice cookies, perfectly pumpkin cake mix, miniature pumpkin candies to top the cupcakes....can you figure out what my theme was?

 How I kept from losing my mind:  Post-It notes!

Any time I entertain, I rely on heavy-duty organization in order to pull everything off smoothly.  I start making notes weeks ahead of time with a separate page each for the guest list, menu, shopping needs and decor plans.  Then I plan out what I'm going to do each day the week of the event.  For example:

Monday:  I cleaned the house

Tuesday:  I did the baking

Wednesday:  I decorated, set the table and completed all of the food prep.  

And by food prep I mean I measured and mixed the ingredients, for each and every dish, and had them all ready to go for the big day.  I even had all of the appetizers ready to go. All I had to do Thanksgiving day was pop each dish in the oven at the right time.  (Make sure to take your glass dishes out of the fridge ahead of time so that they can reach room temp.  You don't want any cold glassware cracking in a hot oven!)

The only other things I had to do the morning of the holiday were last minute things like turning on the Scentsy warmers and straightening up.  It really makes a big difference when you don't feel stressed to remember everything.  Having the notes meant everything I needed to know was right there available to me, and I didn't need to clutter my mind.

The notes on the left reminded me what food items needed to be heated up (not cooked).  The middle notes included each dish that needed to be cooked, at what temp and for how long.  (I was smart and put these in time order so that every dish would be ready at the same time.)  The notes on the right were my 'day of' important things like; empty the trash, spray febreeze and take the Little Man's photo!  He turned 10 months old on Thanksgiving day, and I didn't want to forget his baby album picture!

Who's up for crackers?

The package of crackers that I bought had six different flavored crackers; some that would be good with cheese, some with summer sausage and some perfect for the homemade preserves.  The trouble was being able to tell them apart.  I decided to fix this by cutting the picture of the crackers out of the box to make a label.  I used a sharpie to write what each cracker was and tied it on with a little bit of yellow curling ribbon.  It worked out nicely, and nobody accidentally used a peppercorn cracker for their apple butter, gah!

If you remember my kitchen decor post from last summer (you can find that here) I shared a picture of this exact same domed platter as it always sits on my kitchen table.  The thing is I keep it filled with cheese and crackers....but they aren't real.  Needles to say my Brother was hesitant to try my crackers at first.  I had to assure him that they were, in fact, real food.  Hahaha!

Appetizer Station

I used the kitchen table as the spot for all of the appetizers, and had the drinks on the nearby counter.  This made a nice spot for everyone to grab a drink and a bite to eat while they waited for the main course.

Our appetizers included:

A port wine and almond cheese ball

Garlic summer sausage medallions

A variety of flavored crackers

Italian bread

Uncle Joel's preserves; Crab apple jelly, plum jam and apple butter 

In order to decorate this table up a bit, I used the same chocolate brown covering that I had in the dining room.  On top I placed my two  leaf shaped place mats and added a few fall leaves.  I pulled the bowls that I used for the preserves from my Thanksgiving decor.

Never before have I been so thankful to have such a collection of pretty glassware!  The more I cooked, the more I kept pulling out dishes, and I never ran out.  There was enough to house all of the food still some left over to look pretty on my dining room shelves.  See, I need all of these pretty dishes, haha!

(You can read about thee place mats and the rest of my fall decor in this post from September)

(You can read about the fall bowls and the rest of my Thanksgiving decor here and here)

Pumpkin Spice Cookies

A bit of cream cheese icing and cinnamon sprinkled on top made these cookies delicious.  Again, I used the packaging from the cookie mix to make the cute labels.

 Pumpkin Cupcakes

All of the cupcakes were made with Perfectly Pumpkin cake mix and frosted with vanilla icing.  I did use a little variation in the decorating though.  I thought it would be pretty to divide the batch into thirds and make some green with gold sprinkles, some orange with white sprinkles and the rest I left white and added a pumpkin on top.

The miniature pumpkin candies are from a bag of Brach's candy corn and pumpkin mixture.  I needed a bunch of candy corn for a Halloween photo shoot that I was doing with the kids back in October and figured I better get a big mixed bag.  Once Halloween is over it's nearly impossible to find this type of seasonal candy in the grocery stores, so planning your holiday decor a few months in advance is always a big help!

Tip:  Use extra icing on the bottom of your pumpkin to hold it in place.  When I started making these, I iced the cupcakes and stuck the pumpkin flat on it's bottom, right in the middle of the cupcake.  Let's just say they ended up looking a little too 'anatomical' for my tastes! :P

I quickly figured out that turning the pumpkin slightly askew made things a whole lot better looking, but they kept falling off.  A little more icing was just the trick to keep them secure.

 Dessert Station

All of the desserts in one place.  Again I added a few artificial fall leaves and pulled my decorative pumpkin pie plate as a backdrop.  The Scentsy was warming up a ginger spice wax cube ;)

 A Welcoming Harvest Table

You have already seen these white plates and gold chargers from this post in November, but let me tell you about these table 'cloths'........ 

I often sell items we no longer need on Craigslist, so when my Mom was cleaning out a few closets, she dropped by some bags of unwanted items.  I was going through the bags and found these..........wait for it........living room CURTAINS!.........and realized they would be the perfect color for my harvest table.  I had planned on using my green table linens, but this chocolate color is so pretty. 

These paneled curtains were the perfect length and width to cover the table without a lot of fabric hanging over.  This was a good thing in this case because I needed to fit a lot of people in and extra fabric would have made an already tight squeeze even tighter.  (We had four large men at this holiday table and ample leg room was a must!)

But maybe you don't have space issues, or maybe you prefer the look of fabric to the floor.  No problem, you can still find a treasure like this and make it work!

If I wanted my table coverings to go to the floor, I would have put my larger linens in place first (let's pretend they are white).  Then, if I was set on incorporating these brown curtains too, I would have folded them length-wise into thirds and laid them diagonally on top of the white linens.  Then you would end up with the pop of color on top, and still have the more luxurious look of excess fabric.  By placing the chocolate color on the diagonal, the white color underneath would be visible from both the top and sides of the table.  This makes the table setting look more 'planned' instead of haphazard as in, "oh I decided to randomly throw a rectangle of chocolate on top of my white lines" type of thing.  When designing with unexpected items, everything should look intentional, not random ;)

Speaking of intentionality; I was also faced with the challenge of seating so many people at once!

  While our dining table is a nice size, it can't hold 10 people at once.  This meant I had to bring in a card table from the garage.  The table was no problem, you can see it was easily covered with the same fabric.  However, I was not looking forward to using blue folding chairs!  Instead I grabbed the chairs from the kitchen table (they wouldn't be of use there anyway as that was the appetizer station).

  The issue was that while both my dining room and kitchen chairs are white, they look very different.  Here is where designing with intention again comes into play; by simply staggering the two types of chairs on each side (as opposed to putting all of one type together) the two styles of chairs are now blended together.  This tiny little detail makes things look seamless and planned.

Harvest Table Decor

Here you can see that I used a chocolate table runner (Dollar Tree) and layered it with pumpkins, leaves and berries that I already had out as part of my fall decor.  The entire table scape cost $2, as the runners are the only thing that I purchased.

Remember how I mentioned being grateful that I had enough glass serving ware?  Well every time I needed something I ran to the dining room, selected a piece and emptied it's contents.  I started to worry about what I was going to do with all of these pumpkins that no longer had homes, but then I realized that I needed to decorate the table top anyway.  I love it when everything comes together!

Side Note:  Just for fun I had a couple of bottles of sparkling grape juice at the table, and needed fancy little cups so the kids to do their 'cheers'.  I used these disposable plastic cups as dual purpose.  They worked for the juice, and served as place cards.  You can't tell from the photo, but each cup has someone's name written at the bottom.  It was a cute and fun way to bring a little more fun to the table as well as establish a seating chart.

Why a seating chart?  Well, lots of reasons!  For one thing, my Sister is pregnant and needed a really comfy chair.  I made sure she got one of the cushioned chairs and had an extra snugly blanket (in chocolate brown, of course!) on top.  For another thing, I needed to make sure that I would be seated in a position that was both near the kitchen to serve as hostess, and close to my hungry, food throwing Little Man.  Not to mention Baby Girl, who was insistent that she sit next to both her daddy and my niece.  Or my niece who would prefer to sit with both Baby Girl and her brother.  And her brother who would prefer to sit next to his mom....who is pregnant and needed a soft, comfy chair........and on, and on, and on.....:D

You can also see that I didn't have the table covering pulled down far enough when I pushed the card table up against the dining table...oops!  I didn't notice it until after I had set and decorated the table.  It was late, I was tired and sometimes, you just have to let things go ;)  Other than that, everything went perfectly!

How was your Thanksgiving holiday?  Let me know how you decorated your harvest tables in the comments section below.  And make sure to come back soon, later this week I'll be checking in with the first of my Christmas tree decorating posts.

Thanks for stopping by!

-Jennifer

© Jennifer Adams Flowers 2014