Thanksgiving 2015 Tablescape

Yesterday I shared the pumpkin-themed invitation I sent to our guests for Thanksgiving this year. Today, I'm showing you my tablescapes. I think they turned out beautifully!

I hit the motherlode several years ago when I found my Friendly Village dinnerware by Johnson Brothers. If you haven't heard this story, you can get up to speed here. I use these for Thanksgiving each year, so I try to make the rest of the tablescape new and fresh. I swap out flatware and stemware and use various tablecloths, and try to buy as little as possible. This year, I spent very little - mostly just on a couple of crafts, and I'll share those over the next few days. I'm really pleased with the results!

I was able to get all the ladies at my dining room table. I borrowed a couple of chairs from my mother to make it work. It was a little tight, but we enjoyed being able to sit together. We lingered at the table for quite a while after lunch.

The gold chargers came from Big Lots years ago. Now you can get them at Dollar Tree. Good thing as I broke one as I was cleaning up Thursday night. The flatware (Abigail Gold by Hampton)  is a set I got at Target years ago. Not an expensive set at all, but the gold accents picked up the detail of the pumpkins as well as the chargers and the brass candlesticks. The stemware is part of my everyday set I got when we married. It's called Sweet Swirl by Noritake.

Here's a close up of my pumpkin craft as well as the centerpieces with tiny, dried baby pumpkins! Aren't they sweet?! I'll post more about these later.

I borrowed these pretty delicately detailed brass candlesticks from Mama to supplement my own collection.  You can also see the pretty table runner in the picture above. I found these at the Dillard's clearance center a couple of months ago. I think they were $3 each. I snagged two!

I used my white linen tablecloths, as usual, and then layered them with some new napkins I made. I have a set of unbleached cotton napkins that I have used with everything for years, but they've started to show their age and had a few lipstick stains I couldn't lift, so I decided it was time for new ones. I found this beautiful muslin at Walmart for $3 a yard. That's right! I said muslin! I cut generous 18" napkins and then hemmed them with natural thread. I got 4 napkins per yard, so .75 cents each! When I got them out of the dryer Friday after laundering them, I was so excited, because they washed and dried beautifully! No shrinkage! I made a dozen of these for less than $10.

Several of the men ended up in the living room in front of the TV, but my husband, my Daddy and my FIL, along with a few others, sat at the kitchen table. I can only get six at that table, so I adjusted my decorations a little.   

I didn't have enough gold chargers to go around, so the men got these pretty wooden looking ones by Better Homes and Gardens that I got on clearance at Walmart after Christmas last year. I also used my everyday flatware set (Austen by Yamazaki) for them.

This view of the kitchen table gives you a good look at the swags I made for the backs of my chairs. I loved the ones I made for my last Miss Manners party so much that I left them hanging on my chairs for over a month! I always hang our Christmas stockings from the chairs during the holidays, so I decided to come up with something special for Thanksgiving. I love the fabric I used - it's so earthy. I will be taking these down soon to hang our stockings, but I think they'll be back up again next fall. They were so simple. I'll show you how to make them later this week.

Finally, I took some time to decorate the mirror in my dining room. I like it a lot, and I think I'll leave it up through the holidays. It reads...

THANK YOU

for the food

BEFORE US

the friends and family

BESIDE US

and the love

BETWEEN US.

I hope you enjoyed a look at my Thanksgiving 2015 tablescape. Over the next few days, I'll share several of the projects you saw today. They could be easily adapted for Christmas or other holidays. I hope you'll be back to see them!

I'm so glad you stopped by my neck of the woods!

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