There’s hope for all of us who have yet to focus on the holiday tables.
Sure, there are those domestic dynamos who have been planning their centerpieces for weeks. But most of us wrack our brains for ideas that don’t take a lot of time, money or a hot-glue gun.
“Sometimes, being in a hurry forces you to come up with some great ideas,” designer Taylor Wells says. “I like to make my table settings personal by adding family things. Place cards also signify a special occasion.”
If all you have is white china and white tablecloths, he says, invest in some inexpensive underplate chargers in gold or silver or some colored napkins.
To dress a bare table for Operation Christmas Joy, a Bethesda, Md., display of 20 festive dining tables, trees and holiday home decor created by Washington-area designers, Wells pulled out a glam cocoa-brown embroidered silk tableskirt that had arrived too late for his own vignette. At Macy’s, he picked up oversize chocolate-brown pottery plates and snagged a dried evergreen wreath from Pier 1 Imports.
Designer Christina Dutton went home and returned with a bag of pine cones, some to heap into a clear glass bowl set inside a wreath and some to be made into napkin rings. (She took a large pine cone and wired it around the napkins, then tucked in a few sprigs of boxwood.)
Their inventive use of simple materials was exactly what designer Kelley Proxmire had envisioned for Operation Christmas Joy.
“I knew everyone could use some fresh ideas for holiday decorating,” says Proxmire, who asked designers to decorate 42-inch-round tables or Christmas trees with ideas people could duplicate at home.
Other great tips from designers:
– Choose a lively and unexpected accent color, such as pink and assemble a variety of fun objects in that color for your table: pink M&Ms, pink candles, pink cocktail napkins, pink Christmas tree ball ornaments.
– Make a red linen skirt for your table and add Velcro banding along the hem. This makes it easier to alter the look for special occasions–Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, the Fourth of July–by adding borders in green, red and blue or any color you like.
– Make your own old-fashioned paper ornaments using scissors and interesting papers. Or make paper crowns for your Christmas ball ornaments and write family members’ names on them.
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Edited by Cara DiPasquale (cdipasquale@tribune.com) and Kris Karnopp (kkarnopp@tribune.com)
