Tag Archives: tablesettings

Table settings with a touch of whimsy

07 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by in Dining Room, Entertaining, House and Home, Party Planning, Trends

≈ 37 Comments

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Before today’s post I want to invite you to join me, and a talented group of others, this Friday [March 11th] for the next installment of Project Design #ProjectDesignNow.  We will be sharing “How to Style Your Spring Mantle Two Ways”.  It’s sure to be fun and chock full of ideas for putting some spring touches in your home.

Garden, Home and Party: Design Project

Amber B. Design Studio

ciao! newport beach

classic ⋅ casual home ⋅ home

Dimples and Tangles

Katiedid

Lisa Mende Design

Lucy Williams Interiors

Rough Luxe Lifestyle

The Pink Pagoda

Now to Table settings with a touch of whimsey…

I have enjoyed setting a table since I was a little girl.  Once I moved into my own apartment I found any and every excuse to have people over for a meal.  It was very brave of my friends to accept since I wasn’t a very accomplished cook back in the day. The joy was, and still is, the creative process of setting the table.

Garden, Home and Party: setting the table

Once a new bride, I used my china, crystal and silver for every dinner party we hosted. With time, I realized that it was just as much fun, if not more, to keep it casual. Today, I still enjoy setting a formal table for the right occasion, but I mostly use my everyday pottery / porcelain dishes, and simple glassware.  I interchange my sterling flatware with a couple of other, more casual, sets of flatware depending on the dishes I’m using.

of course I have my ruler handy when setting the table to make sure the utensils and plates are the appropriate distance from each other and the edge of the table. 🙂

Garden, Home and Party: table setting

{via}

I enjoy the fun of thinking of new ways of setting a table, and find there are lots of out of the box ideas online that inspire creating a table the reflects a season or a theme. A bit of whimsey never hurts.

Last summer my friend Wendy hosted a birthday celebration.  I love her use of Lori Mitchell figures that reflect summer fun.

Garden, Home and Party: tablesettings

Shells were on the table as well as her beautiful crystal bowl filled with water and floating candles.

Garden, Home and Party: tablesettings

{table setting by Wendy M.}

My winter birthday was celebrated at Carla’s, where she used a winter wonderland theme.  It was lovely and worked well with our cooler than usual weather at the time.

Garden, Home and Party: table settings

Garden, Home and Party: table settings

{table setting by Carla W.}

One year for St. Patrick’s Day I planted little pots of 4-leaf clover that Trader Joe’s sold and then gave each guest a chocolate leprechaun.  I enjoy using nursery plants for the table, you can plant them in the garden afterwards. 🙂

Garden, Home and Party: table setting

Garden, Home and Party: table setting

Easter of 2014 I pulled out the Beatrix Potter figures and a few of the Beatrix Potter books I used to read to my kids (and now read to our granddaughters).  I planted a concrete planter with sweet pea and viola.  The violet china pattern was my grandmother’s, and a friend made the runner {thank you Gretchen}

Garden, Home and Party: table setting

Garden, Home and Party: Table settings

This image inspired a table setting of my own when hosting our birthday group.  The guests of honor, Tom and John, identical twins, enjoy an October birthday and I felt it called for something more masculine.

Garden, Home and Party: Table settings

This was my version… {sorry for the glare coming through the window}

Garden, Home and Party: table settings

Garden, Home and Party: Table settings

Last month I hosted a birthday dinner for Mr. B and our youngest son’s birthdays.  I wanted to keep it simple and decided this rusty urn went well with the rustic look of my Jan Barboglio candle holders.  I filled the urn with tree fern from the yard and added a bag of Granny Smith apples.  The candles could have been taller but we didn’t light them since we ate early.

Garden, Home and Party: table setting

Garden, Home and Party: table setting

Moss on a dining table is one of my favorite uses of the sheet moss sold at craft stores. I love the earthy feel to it.  Mixed with roses and other flowers, it’s natural and lovely and transports us to an outdoor setting, even indoors.

Garden, Home and Party: table setting

{via}

Setting the table in an outdoor “room” is where you can enjoy mixing things up a bit. Setting the table with a moss base and using terra cotta pots as the candle holders is clever and fitting for a autumn gathering.  The twigs and berries conjure up an image that a gust of wind blew these pieces to the table top.  This same setting could be recreated indoors.

Garden, Home and Party: table setting

{via Michelle Edwards ~ Sweet Something Design}

I’ll end with a table setting compliments of Martha Stewart.  Woodland creatures, birch tree-looking candles and small pots of moss or fern complete the look.  It’s whimsy at its best. 🙂

Garden, Home and Party: table setting

{via}

I’m out of time, but I’d like to invite you to visit my friend, Kelly over at “talk of the house” for further inspiration for table setting.  This talented blogger takes table setting creativity to a new level.

How do you entertain?  Is there ever a bit of whimsey to your table settings?

Simple Summer Meal

20 Friday Aug 2010

Posted by in Dessert, Entertaining, Food, Simple Meals for the Avid Cook

≈ 6 Comments

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I live in Southern California and somehow we were cheated our summer!  To be perfectly honest, I don’t miss the heat, but the sunshine, which SoCal is known for, is missing as well.  We get a burst of it sometime around 1:00 PM daily but honestly, is there anything better than waking up to a sunny morning?

So, I decided I needed to move my casual dinner for good friends indoors on Saturday evening.  We enjoyed our appetizer in the atrium and found it was relaxing and comfortable—but the idea of sitting on the patio for dinner seemed out of the question.  Its August for goodness sake!  We shouldn’t have to worry about cold this time of year.

My menu was:   Appetizer:  Skewered Greek Salad by Giada De Laurentis, roasted almonds.  Dinner:  Grilled Citrus Salmon (recipe below), Roasted Baby Potatoes with Herbs (Giada De Laurentis) and Barefoot Contessa’s Panzanella (from her Parties cookbook/her 2nd) and Dessert:     Mocha Alaska Pie (recipe below).

This is delicious and easy and you can assemble the skewers the morning of the dinner. Thanks to my friend Alison at paper{whites} for introducing me to this recipe.

Sorry for the slightly blurred picture.

This picture doesn't do this recipe justice---I really have to learn to take better photographs of food.

Since dessert was my favorite part of this particular meal I thought I’d start with that recipe:  Note, I couldn’t find my pie plate (I’m wondering if I got rid of the Corning pie plate in anticipation of purchasing an Emile Henri pie dish from Williams Sonoma, and then never got around to it?!)  In any event, I prepared this recipe and put it in a glass loaf pan—it really looked nice and the taste certainly didn’t suffer.  So here goes, super easy:

Mocha Alaska Pie (Loaf)

Mix:

1 cup finely crushed chocolate cookie crumbs (I used chocolate cat cookies from Trader Joe’s in the food processor and made crumbs).

¼ cup butter, melted

1 tablespoon sugar

Press into the bottom of a 9” pie dish or a Pyrex loaf pan or  (if you use a loaf pan, generously line the bottom and side of the pan with plastic wrap so that when you are ready to remove the dessert you can get it out of the loaf pan without problem, you will not be able to bake it using this method but it didn’t seem to matter.  The crust held together perfectly and tasted delicious)

If you use a pie plate you can bake the crust for 10 minutes at 350° then cool completely.

Meanwhile, let ice cream sit on counter for about 10-15 minutes to soften slightly.

1 pint of coffee ice cream (you can substitute the coffee ice cream with chocolate if you don’t like coffee flavor)

1 pint of vanilla ice cream

1 jar of hot fudge sauce

Once the ice cream has softened spoon the coffee ice cream over the crust and press to even it out.  Then repeat with the vanilla ice cream.  Freeze.

Just before serving add hot fudge sauce over top and serve—yummy!  If you wanted to kick it up another notch you could roast almonds and sprinkle those over the top of the fudge.

Grilled Citrus Salmon (recipe from a 2004 Bon Appetit magazine)

Serves 6

1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

4 cloves of garlic, minced

2 dashes ground red pepper (cayenne)

2 dashes salt

1 teaspoon dried basil (fresh can be substituted)

2 teaspoons capers

3 pounds salmon, fresh, cut into serving size portions

In a small saute pan over medium heat, combine the lemon juice, olive oil, butter, mustard, garlic, red pepper, salt, basil and capers.  While stirring, bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

Place salmon pieces skin side down on a piece of heavy duty foil with the edges folded up to make a pan.  Pour the sauce evenly over the fish.

Prepare your BBQ to medium fire/heat.  Place the foil pan (with fish) on the grill and cover with a lid.  Barbecue for 10 to 12 minutes, depending on thickness of serving portions.  The fish will be light pink and flaky when cooked.

More recipes next week.