I bet you thought we hadn’t gotten around to doing a Valentine’s Day table setting this year. Well as you can see, we did! We like to find time to do something together as a family for Valentine’s Day and typically we would have done it the weekend before, especially when it falls on a Tuesday like it did this year. It just wasn’t in the cards last weekend. So we decided that this weekend would be the weekend to do it, and it just so happens it’s a long weekend in Alberta.
Alberta was the first province to name the third Monday in the month of February Family day in 1990. Now five provinces celebrate family day and have a statutory holiday in February. The family loves having a long weekend in February. After all that time off in December and January waiting until April for a long weekend would be daunting. So our table setting was done up in celebration of both Family day and Valentine’s day.
Today’s post will be our 14th table setting, which is perfect for Valentine’s Day, and was totally unplanned. This setting is one I wish you all could see in person. Some settings show up just as pretty in the pictures as they do in real life, but this one is extra special in person. The light was working against us when we took pictures of it yesterday, but Mom and I are still happy with the result.
Mom had this tablecloth in mind for a Valentine’s table setting for at least a year. Usually when mom finds them she has an idea of what it could be used for and this one screamed Valentine’s day and I whole heartedly agreed. We knew we wanted flowers for this setting so we had to find a vase that would work and decided one of the milk glass vases would be best. If you can recall, we used milk glass in last year’s setting. The colour scheme was so different from last years we figured it wouldn’t look too similar, so we went with it. In addition to the vase we decided to use some hobnail milk glass candle holders to hold some light pink candles.
At this point we had decided to stick with the white and pink theme so we quickly determined that the pink water glasses we had would work best with the setting. They too have a hobnail pattern and so it worked better than we could have imagined. Next we needed to decide which plates to use and decided upon some contemporary plates made in France by Luminarc. We actually used these plates for our August long weekend table setting in 2021. You should look at that setting to see how the same plates can work with two completely different table settings.
It had been a while since we used any table napkin rings so we knew we wanted to find some that would work well with the setting. We got lucky and spotted some white bone china napkins rings with a diamond basket weave pattern that worked perfectly. The light pink table napkins we chose almost didn’t make it onto the table. When placed directly on the tablecloth it wasn’t the right colour of pink, but as soon as we used the ring and placed it on the white plate it worked!
All we need now were some flowers, so Mom and I went out to look for some. Buying flowers the weekend after Valentine’s day is perhaps not the best idea but we managed to find some Gerber daises that worked. We had to cut them down pretty far so we thought for a moment there that they wouldn’t work and we would have to run out for some more but they turned out just fine!
Last, we decided to add some red heart chocolates on the plate, and of course placed them on the left. Mom’s idea, and I thought it was super cute. So we added a few more chocolates to a milk glass pedestal candy dish and we had ourselves a winner.
For dessert we wanted something simple and decided upon rice crispy squares. Then mom got the idea to dye the marshmallow pink and use a heart shaped caked mold. They turned our great! We will definitely making rice crispy squares this way again!
Mom and I hope that you had a lovely Valentine’s day and if you are lucky like us and get a long weekend in February, we hope you enjoyed that too!