Another Christmas has come and gone, but all the same Merry Christmas. This year my cousin, husband, and baby girl welcomed us into their home, and we were joined by my aunt and uncle. Wanting to continue our Christmas Table setting tradition, Mom and I decided to bring it to them.
Mom and I wanted to use the traditional Christmas colours of red and green and needed to find two table clothes, one for my cousins square table, the other for their rectangular fold out table. So, we decided to look online to find matching tablecloths. We found, of all things, a black tablecloth with red, green, white, and brown, acorns, branches, berries, and snowflakes. It has been years since we purchased contemporary tablecloths, but we fell in love with this pattern and knew we had our starting point for this year’s setting.
Next, we had to decide which dinnerware we wanted to use for this setting. We needed to use one of our larger sets and wanted the base of the plate to be white to match the tablecloth and not cream. This narrowed it down to our white & silver Johnson & Brothers set. With scalloped edges and silver scrollwork along the edges this set is very traditional. Unsure if this China would suite the contemporary tablecloth, we decided to mock up our table setting. Once we added the red charger and green table napkin, we knew the dinnerware would work. To ensure the setting felt cohesive Mom found silver cutlery featuring scrollwork (Birks Regency Plate Carillon) amongst her collection of silverware to use. A dish for our cranberry sauce, also with scrollwork rounded out the table setting nicely.
Not wanting to worry about transporting flowers we knew we needed to go in a different direction, and we also needed enough pieces for two tables. So when Mom and I went thrifting we kept our eyes pealed. First on a joint thrifting trip Mom spotted a silver snowman snow globe on a silver pedestal. We both agreed we had a winner. On another trip we found a glass vase, and a bag of some silver decorations to fill it with. Then on one last final trip Mom came across a perfect piece for the centre of our setting. A black, blingy ceramic Christmas Tree. Mom and I are still amazed that she managed to find it for our setting. We also used a pedestal not shown in this picture to hold more ornaments for one of the tables on Christmas day. Once we placed the pieces in the centre, we realized that it needed something else. Mom had the brilliant idea of adding silver garland around the bottom of the pieces and it really made the setting special.
For the glassware we used the same wine glasses with black stems for last years setting. For our water glasses Mom found a set with acorns and mistletoe which tied in with our tablecloth and the gorgeous Christmas Crackers Mom found with a muted mistletoe pattern and silver accents. Mom and I love pretty Christmas Crackers and they really finished off our setting.
Mom and I really enjoyed sharing our setting this year with more family members this year. It’s always fun to come up with new settings and to continue this fun tradition for hopefully many more years to come! We hope you enjoy our Christmas setting as much as we did, and that your Christmas was spent in good company, with great food and lots of laughter!
