{all images are from my personal camera or iPhone}

Little do my friends know that when we plan a dinner party, they are my design guinea pigs :). I love to break out the classic wedding china, fancy wine glasses (what, you don’t have an A and B set of wine glasses depending on what kind of party you’re hosting?) and deck our dining room table to the nines, even if it means half the people will end up sitting on the couch, with the before-mentioned china sitting just as pretty on the coffee table. Thanksgiving is probably one of my most treasured holidays - to me it means home, warmth, coziness, and a whole lot to be thankful for.

{my pumpkin pies, using mom’s recipe.}

This will be the second year we have celebrated Thanksgiving apart from our friends and family back east, and even though it’s never quite the same to be apart, we are blessed to be able to spend quality time with my cousin and her husband, and their two kids who call Pat “Bat” (short for Batman, which they were convinced was his real name “you’re the real Batman!?”). My aunt and uncle are out visiting this year too, so we will eat and laugh and celebrate together, participate in an ornament exchange, create new memories, and we might even possibly get in a skype date with the family back east if technology allows.

{my little cousins eagerly waiting for us to arrive, camped out on the sidewalk in front of their house}

Last year we hosted Friendsgiving on Thanksgiving and had all of our San Francisco orphan friends over for a day-long feast. This year, we chose to host Friendsgiving the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and we actually almost canceled it at the last minute. But then my friend Chelsea said something that really meant a lot to me “You can’t cancel Friendsgiving! It’s a tradition I look forward to every year!” Chelsea (and most of our friends out here) is also from the east coast, a fellow New Englander even, and she made me realize something that I had never considered: every event you put together, whether a small dinner party or a blowout “lets-pretend-we’re-still-in-college-even-though-we-can’t-really-hang-anymore-and-tomorrow-morning-will-probably-not-be-fun” get together, is something that might mean more to your attendees than you imagine. Think about it - every party you’ve been to has the potential to be the start of a tradition, something you look forward to, something that gives you a special memory to think back on and remember, whether with happiness, laughter, or bittersweet emotion. It is those memories and traditions that make up the most important things in life, and something I will to add to my list of things to keep in mind. Thank you Chelsea for reminding me of that :)

So on to our tablescape…

I wanted to bring in the essence of New England in to our decor somehow, because 90% of our guests are from the east coast. I purchased wheat stalks from the flower market and trimmed them down so they would just stick out of the folds in the seafoam green napkins. Then, using my favorite metallic ribbon, I tied a pretty bow around the folded napkins and added my “calligraphy” place cards. To top it all off, I added a Vermont maple sugar candy to each place setting, something that reminds me of home, and two fluffy and textured fragrant peony blooms that I scored from the flower market.

I thought this could be a simple and pretty way to set up your wedding place settings as well, to add a bit of sparkle to your otherwise muted color palette, and bring in that essence of New England rustic-ness. I could have probably added about 15 more details to it all, but I thought leaving it simple would make it classic and pretty, and I was happy with the end result. Besides, it all matched perfectly with our mason jar chandelier ;)

Most importantly though, our guests thoroughly enjoyed themselves and at the end of the night, just as we did the year before, we all settled in to our spots on the couch/loveseat/floor and watched National Lampoons Christmas Vacation over glasses of steaming hot peppermint schnapps-spiked chocolate (complete with mini marshmallows), laughing away at scenes we had seen a thousand times. No matter the decor, we were all thankful to be together.

I hope you all have a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving with your friends & family! See you back here next week :)