I took a break from my tablescaping hobby for much of the year, once the gardening season really got going, but “re-booted” in time for Fall and Halloween. I bought a new-to-me dining table for my eat-in kitchen in March – this was a consignment store find, and it came with two leaves for expansion if needed. Still trying to talk myself into matching chairs… I love my little mismatched farmhouse chairs, but if I find the perfect French Country matched set at a great price, I could be persuaded.
Look at those sexy curved legs!
First tablescape at the new table was set for two, featuring Martha Stewart Everday dinner plates, Christopher Stuart “Melody Hill,” and flatware by Wallace called “Napoleon Bee.”
Here are some sneak peeks at the tables I set this year – I’ll do full posts on these eventually. It’s time for Thanksgiving and Christmas ideas already!
I started using my grandmother’s “Flair” silverplate in table settings this year – this pattern is from 1959 and is by 1847 Rogers Brothers. The first table I set with it used my powder-blue “fairytale chargers” and Homer Laughlin Eggshell Georgian “Marilyn” dinnerware.
I have a pretty good-sized collection of Heisey Glass in Sahara Yellow, but I’ve never used it. I set this Spring table with some April Cornell napkins, a bedsheet tablecloth, and green as the coordinating color.
St. Patrick’s Day table featured Haviland Limoges with a shamrock border, and Edwin Knowles dinner plates, set atop burnished-gold chargers. Each place setting included its own little pot of gold!
Classic Johnson Brothers “Rose Chintz” played well with Fire King swirl salad plates for a late-Spring table.
Inspired by the great Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess in “Downton Abbey,” I set an elegant gold-themed table using “Rosemead” by Mikasa and wide-shouldered gilded dinner plates that are unfortunately umarked.
Speaking of gilded… in March I acquired a wonderful book by food historian Suzanne Corbett called “The Gilded Table.” It features a historic house/museum in St. Louis called Campbell House, including recipes that were prepared for family and guests in this Gilded Age high-society home. I set this table as an homage to Mrs. Campbell, the lady of that house during its social heyday.
For Halloween I had a little fun with Dollar Tree dinner plates and restaurant salad plates that gave off a spider web vibe.
I used Hutschenreuther “Maple Leaf” – and two different iterations of Kings Crown Thumbprint glassware – on this subtley-hued Fall table.
Going for a sort of French Country vibe with this one… I bought the tablecloth on a Saturday, and quickly realized I had no dinnerware to go with it. So I went back out on Sunday, and found four dinner plates for a dollar each in the perfect color.
When the theme is Autumn Abundance, count on Johnson Brothers “Windsor Fruit” to convey the message along with a whole patch of handmade velvet pumpkins 🙂
Now that all my tables for the year are rounded up in one post, it does feel like I did more than I originally thought. And even if dining alone, I try to always use a pretty plate and placemat – they may not be full tablescapes, but they do give an added lift even to simple meals. And of course, I enjoy adding to my stash of dinnerware and table elements using secondhand and inexpensive finds from thrift, consignment, and discount stores!
For the past few years I’ve been working on building a walk-through garden in the sideyard between my house and garage, and this year I got a lot closer to that goal. I joined together two flower beds by the house that created an actual path flanked by beds on both sides, and started to fill the new joined bed with perennial plants. I added a beautiful cement statue to one of the beds, and for a backdrop I used a printed fabric shower curtain that features a scene from an “old world” villa. It looks amazing when photographed! I’ve done pretty well establishing perennials all over the property, and filling in with annuals where color was needed. Flowerbeds on either side of my front door also looked lush and healthy all season, and I had fresh mum and sunflower blooms as late as the first week of November. Here are a few photos from the garden this year!
Statuary in the new stroll-through garden. I think the shower curtain backdrop was a brilliant idea, shared by a friend over on Instagram!
My stroll-through area with gifted seating at the far end sits between the house and garage. This was right after adding the mulch to the new connected beds on the right – I began to fill in with plants shortly after, so next year it’s going to look full!
This bed near the front door did the best job of showing off color in all three seasons, thanks to the long-blooming Coreopsis “Moon Glow” at the back, Balloon Flower at the front, large hardy mums over to the left (not in bloom in this photo), and seasonally updated cement planters.
My “Knockout Rose” lived up to it name with gorgeous blooms in June, followed by an influx of Japanese Beetles in July, followed by a major cut-back and incredible re-bloom in Fall. The photo above is from October!
Here are a few “random bloom” shots just for fun…
Lobelia and bright pink petunias in a curb-picked 10-gallon vintage crock.
Tradescantia (Spiderwort) “Sweet Kate” – I planted three of these last year and they came back very strong!
Blush-pink peony “Sarah Bernhardt” – this one doubled in size from last year and had six gorgeous blooms this year!
Curb-picked statuary surrounded by Bachelors’ Buttons – all re-seeded from last year.
As the walk-through garden in back took shape, the view from the front steps became increasingly inviting!
One of the things I like about gardening in Iowa is that Winter is “break time.” I’m always ready for a rest both mentally and physically by October, and then by February I’m ready to get started again. I already have a “seed plan” for next year!
Hi friends! Well once again I seem to have gone most of the year without doing ANY blog posts – save for one, back in January. I am determined to do better in hopes that my blog truly becomes a place where you can derive some inspiration for your home, garden, thrifting adventures, DIY’s, and just “living lovely” in general.
I’ll be sharing a few round-up posts to get us all caught up together, and then resume some sort of regular blogging. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you! What have you been up to this year in home decorating, tablescaping, gardening, thrifting/antiquing, DIY, self-care, and all those home-artsy things? Please share in the comments!
I really don’t blame you if you thought this blog had been abandoned… I mean, who doesn’t post for an entire year? Me, apparently! Because I did indeed take a whole year off not only from blogging but even from setting pretty tables at home. Instead I spent my year going through the exhaustive learning process of a new job, and when that wasn’t using every last remaining brain cell, I was outside enjoying my patio and working on my cottage garden. Greg and I also took a lot of wonderful road-trips this year, including one to the Gulf Coast area of Mississippi with side trip to Pensacola Beach in Florida.
2022 has started off with a snowy bang. Weather at Christmas was very mild for Iowa, but it started snowing on New Year’s Day and we got six inches in about 4 hours. January 2nd dawned bitterly cold but with a bright blue sky, so the day was… picturesque, if not “beautiful” in the traditional weather-sense of that word.
For this year’s “new year” table, I decided to go with a theme of sunshine because … well, it was -9 (yes, MINUS NINE) overnight and a high of 7 above today so, I was craving a sense of warmth.
Back in March I had changed my kitchen over to a yellow and orange color scheme, and in my thrifting adventures I’ve lately found several sets of yellow and/or orange placemats. I decided to also use Fiestaware coffee cups in what I call “breakfast citrus” colors of lemon, orange, lime, and grapefruit, so in my mind this became a breakfast table.
Dinner plates were a deep-discount find at Home Goods a few years ago – I love the sculpted “stitched border” pattern and these go with so many other casual pieces!
I found these adorable napkin rings – I popped them into my cart one day thinking they were suns… but on second thought I wondered if they were supposed to be sunflowers. No matter, to me they will always be little individual rays of sunshine, perfect for my yellow and orange “rise and shine” breakfast table. The napkins are actually dishrags, on clearance at TJ Maxx several years ago, but still brand new because I’ve never used them.
Forks are my handed-down Oneida “Chandelier,” and the steak knives (for cutting our breakfast ham, of course!) are a brand called Palm. The centerpiece is a small yellow container used for holding a pot scrubber at the kitchen sink – though mine has flowers in it – in the shape of a chirping bird. He’s corralled onto a small salad plate along with the salt and pepper.
Here are the Fiestaware colors – back when I was in the antique mall booth business, I bought a large collection of cups and saucers in many of the newer Fiesta colors from a person who was selling them dirt-cheap. I kept all the citrus colors for myself, and sold the rest in my booth over time.
Here are a few more views around the table…
Here’s the birdseye view – you didn’t think I would photograph a pretty table without climbing up on the step-stool, did you? 🙂
And the put-away shot, with everything gathered up and ready to go back into the cupboards.
And finally, here’s an image to Pin in case you would like to save any ideas for this post 🙂
The new year always seems to bring out thoughts (and images) of classic blue and white in the decorating world. Probably because that particular combination has a crisp and clean feel about it, unencumbered by the fullness and abundance so prolific in Christmas decor. I think it’s actually the white – or more accurately, the contrast with white – which creates the clean, crisp appearance, and that any color becomes a perfect New Year color when paired with white.
Case in point, I’ve had a collection of eight salad plates – “Carnivale” by Noritake – for quite some time now that I’ve never used. I set them for New Year’s to prove a point: that “purple and white,” “aqua and white,” even “green and white” … actually “anything and white” – can give the same fresh, clean feeling.
As you can see I have a hard time getting completely away from frou-frou, even when going for a “crisp and clean” new year’s vibe. My cutwork tablecloth is the closest I have to solid white, and my snow-white perching doves in the centerpiece seemed appropriate for January. (The perching crows were a simple craft I made myself, using thrift-store bud vases and Dollar Tree doves. Very easy to make!)
My own failings as a minimalist aside, it’s really the salad plates I wanted to share anyway. 🙂 These were an incredible bargain a couple of years ago directly from Noritake – as you know I rarely buy anything brand new, but these were so deeply discounted I couldn’t help myself. And I could NOT choose just one color, so I chose four! Carnivale has that beautiful stripe around the border, with just a bit of dotted detail. It reminds me of colorful awnings at a local fair. I love how it looks with my stitch-border solid white dinner plates – a Home Goods purchase about three years ago.
Flatware is my handed-down Oneida “Chandelier,” and glassware includes both Longchamps and snow-themed stemware.
Hard to capture in a photo, but the place setting also includes a footed crystal bowl in the middle for dessert.
Here’s a bird’s-eye view of things:
This table looked lovely in candlelight with all that sparkling crystal.
Here’s the put-away shot, everything gathered and ready to go back into the cupboards.
And an image to Pin in case you’d like to save it for future inspiration! Meanwhile, come join us over in the Thrifty Tablescapers Facebook group for more ideas that will inspire you to set lovely tables on a budget!
