We successfully hosted our first Thanksgiving this year with both sides of our family! We had 15 people all together include three children. When we initially proposed having Thanksgiving at our house, I immediately envisioned a calm, simple tablescape for Thanksgiving dinner. I even thought that what I was planning on doing could easily be done for Christmas with just a few tweaks.
Our table has a leaf so we added that in, which seats 6. We borrowed a foldable table from my parents that seats another 6 and we pushed them together to form one long table. We wound up just popping a small table onto the end of that for the kids because they wanted to sit at the table with everyone.
Since we live at the beach, I wanted our table to just have a coastal inspired feel with a touch of warmness rather than all out Thanksgiving. I opted not to do a table cloth for our main dining table and did a slightly off-white table cloth on the foldable table. I used white-washed natural woven placemats that I found at our local At Home store to bring the coastal feel. These can be used year round so it was a good investment even though they were only $5 each.
The dinnerware is actually all pieces we registered for at Pottery Barn from our wedding 5 years ago. We got a couple sets of them so we had 12 each of the large plate, medium plate, and bowl in the gray color. We had soup and salad so we did the bowl for the soup and the medium plate for the salad if people wanted and then had the large plate for the actual dinner food. I stacked them all on top of each other and just a basic nice white napkin under the bowl. If you wanted to use linen napkins, they can definitely be placed length wise under the bowl hanging off the front of the plate. We use these dishes and bowls every single day for our daily use and absolutely love them so we were glad we could use them for our Thanksgiving dinner! They still look very nice but are more useful for us than fine china. I did buy new glasses (because I have an obsession with glassware) that gave a vintage look but can again be used for any gathering at any point in the year. I got the vintage style goblets in clear on Amazon but I found the same company on many sites like Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Wayfair, Walmart, etc. Amazon was just the cheapest plus had the free 2-day shipping. I set the glasses up at each place setting for dinner so guests can use them for water or drink of choice. Throughout the day we had other glasses that guests were using for wine, champagne, beer, water, etc.
One very special piece of our tablescape was the real silverware my Grandma let us use! She brought over her entire set of silverware along with the accessories like ladels, pie servers, butter spreaders, and so many other cute pieces. We used this special silverware specially for dinner and it just added that extra special, vintage, original touch to our tablescape.
Our centerpieces were a mix of a few items including things we already owned and one that I purchased specifically for the tablescape. Since I wasn’t planning on having a tablecloth, I thought about a runner. After seeing some options and thinking about it, I decided to just go with a piece of fabric that can be loosely draped down the center in a nice, deep color to give the fall and Thanksgiving feels. Our closest JoAnn Fabric store is kind of out of the way now so you could very easily DIY your own but I chose to buy a hand-dyed gauze, cheese cloth fabric from Etsy. I purchased it in rust orange in a 7 foot (84in) length. I used candlestick holders that we have had- 3 of them are from Magnolia and they are insanely beautiful, so well made, and heavy, the other 2 were actually from a friends wedding centerpiece and we were able to take them home! I used 2 different sized white ceramic pumpkins and 1 woven straw pumpkin, all from Target last year, in the center of the two tables. We picked up 2 bunches of fresh eucalyptus and I just broke branches off and sprawled them across the 2 tables, laying on top of the piece of fabric.
And that was really all our tablescape consisted of! It was not overly fussy or difficult and can be easily used at any time of the year with just a few tweaks. For Christmas, I’d opt for some darker greenery like dark green filler or even some fresh garland like cedar garland since it’s soft and moves easily as opposed to sharp, stiff evergreen branches. Faux greenery is always something that can be used as well! OR keep the eucalyptus and just swap the rust orange fabric for a nice, dark, rich green. The pumpkins can be swapped for some faux small Christmas trees, bottle brush trees, or even neutral ceramic Christmas trees! Candles really make it cozy, warm, and inviting so this table set up and decor can easily be your go-to tablescape!
