Christmas Table Decorations

Happy New Year to you all! I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas! I ate far too much of everything and now need a few long and brisk walks to appease my guilt! My Honeybee will be leaving the nest soon to go back to her own little nest in the south where they are enjoying temperatures of around 36C …but we can’t complain either.  We've had the mildest winter ever apart from the rain which does not seem to want to stop, but my thoughts and prayers go out to those further up north where the rain has been relentless and caused mass destruction of homes and businesses. Here in my town, one of the roads along the promenade gave way under the strain of the recent weather.

This year I really had fun doing my Christmas table, and this one is my favourite so far! I had a piece of vintage Sanderson fabric which when I bought it two years ago, was going to become cushions, but I shelved that idea as a tad too granny for me and packed it back in the box.  I wanted a slightly bohemian painterly Vermeer meets an eclectic modern day 21^st century look and I think the floral fabric and the quirky elements like the black parrots add to that feel as well as the lovely baubles.  I bought a few blousy flowers and with some greenery made a free flowing flower arrangement (the best kind as far as I'm concerned) as a centre piece.  To balance out the red tones, I picked out the blue in the fabric and used my blue Willow pattern dinner plates with white damask napkins and vintage brass napkin rings.

Our family don’t do a traditional Christmas lunch, so that’s a pecan nut pie you see on the edge of one of the photos, a family favourite, as well as a vanilla Panna Cotta with raspberry coulis. I’ll share these recipes in a later post.

Apologies for the bad photos, I really need to improve my skills, I found it really hard to take photos as our Christmas tree was covering the window with the only natural light I have in my dining room. A photography course is on my want list for 2016...

So a little resource list if this kind of table appeals to your bohemian spirit:

• Floral Fabric: Vintage Sanderson; try vintage fairs for big pieces.
• Gold Melamine chargers: available from a variety of places, I got mine from eBay a few years ago.
• Dinner plates: Blue Willow Pattern available from vintage fairs and this Italian Spode is also very pretty and collectable here
• Face plates: these I found at TKMaxx but they were available also available at the National Portrait Gallery shop.
• Black Parrots: an ebay find.
• Hexagonal brass napkin rings: Etsy:   here
• Gold plated cutlery: ASDA.
• Pretty baubles from John Lewis online.
• Flowers by moi!

Wishing you all a healthy, happy, contented 2016, filled with new adventures and happenings!

Sharon

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