Seated Dinner for 30

Welcome to our seated Thanksgiving for 30 (ok it was 27 but who's counting). I went with neutral dishes so that the accessories could shine, quite literally since I used silver and gold. Another bonus from using silver and gold is you can use a lot of pieces you already own, therefore cutting down on the costs. I rented the plates, which were ivory with a gold band, for 35 cents a piece. This meant we could scrape and load them back into their carriers and no dishes to be done! The silver chargers were on sale at Christmas Tree Shops for $1 each. I will reuse these next year when I host Christmas Eve dinner for my family.

We were chasing rain clouds the day I took these so some are quite shadowy I apologize! Here you can see the base linen round tablecloth's I rented for the three tables along with the gold toppers I bought at Christmas Tree Shops for $4 each! I think I will get miles out of the toppers for both autumn and holiday.

My candle rings for each table are actually the napkin rings from this post.

Each placesetting had a Thanksgiving cracker, caspari turkey napkin, and an ivory sheer bag which contained the flatware and was adorned with a gold acorn. I found the gold acorn's at Wal-Mart in the Christmas ornament aisle. Six for $1.96! Caspari napkins, while paper, are so beautiful I couldn't resist! More from the visit to their store in Virginia here.

After scattering some fall leaves around the tables, I filled the silver mint julep cups with roses and glittered gold and silver curly que picks. What would a Kentucky Thanksgiving be without mint julep cups! These were a gift from my Great Aunt Helen and I cherish them.

Hope you enjoyed the tour and will visit more tables at Between Naps on the Porch with our host Susan.

Telegram, Text and Twitter

While watching Boardwalk on HBO last night, one of the main characters travelling in Ireland received a telegram that he should return home immediately, due to the illness of his child (well not really his child, but you don't want me to go into all that detail). At that same time, my daughter sent me a text that said "call me if you're not in bed yet".
It occurred to me while technology has certainly come leaps and bounds from the age of the telegram, our use of text and twitter is not really any different.
Important news and message communicated thru short bursts of information.
I'm all for ways to communicate, but some of the best nights I have are relaxing on the porch or in front of the fireplace just talking with Mr. B sans phones, laptops or technology.
Hope your week is off to a great start!

Living Room Transformation

Thank you so much for all of your comments and suggestions

for table setup at our Thanksgiving.

I decided to rent three 60 inch round tables and 28 chairs to transform the living room into our dining room for the Thanksgiving day. As you can see below, it was all hands on deck for setup day Wednesday. Madison is, of course, in a supervising role.

We moved most of the furniture out of the living room and pushed back the remaining pieces to make as much floor space as possible.
With the linens pressed, silver polished and flowers arranged it was time for table setting.

More detail on Thursday of the table settings, which I hope will provide some inspiration for Christmas as well as your next Thanksgiving. I'm joining Susan at Between Naps on the Porch.

Thanksgiving Tables

I'm going to host my in laws again this Thanksgiving and I have a question for ya'll I need feeback on so please comment!
We have a very large family. My husband has three brothers and a sister and they have 14 children. This Thanksgiving we total 28 -12 adults and 16 children attending. In years past the children were smaller and either didn't have a seated place or I set up small tables and chairs. Now many are in high school and our youngest neice is two. Do I do three tables of ten or a table of 12 for the adults and send all the kids down to our family room? Is a sit down meal really practical for almost 30 people? I will buffet set the food in our dining room either way as serving would be a nightmare.