A Look Back at Thanksgiving 2016

Happy Thanksgiving y’all!

This year we decided to host our first holiday at our farmhouse. We have been in the house a little over a year ago and we were beyond excited to host my husband’s side of the family for Thanksgiving. I knew, being our first holiday, to make it something people raved about. The only problem I have is that I am a teacher and I know all about needing a budget. Time to brainstorm.

Where did I start?

I knew that we were having 11 people, me included. We have our farmhouse table and it fits 6 people. This clearly not enough room for guests. Then I decided that I wanted to be able to have a functional space for people to move around the house without squeezing passed the long dinner table.

First, the tablescape

My idea was to have a beautiful tablescape with items I already had in my house. I knew I had fall decor throughout the home so I gathered them up and placed them on the table. Perfect.

As soon as I was allowed to buy fall decor I raced to Michael’s and picked up some bouquetdecorations to place around the house. This bouquet are little accent pieces and they were on sale for .47 cents! Then I grabbed a candle holder bouquet that you place on the bottom of the candle. I laid this around the mason jar, which is SO pretty, to fill out the bouquet. The gold plates and pumpkins were $1.00 a piece from Michaels as well. Score.

The bigger center bouquet is also, from Michael’s, but I had to pay a whopping $10 for it. Compared to the normal prices I was winning.

Paper or glass plates?

I toggled with this decision all week. On the one hand, paper utensils are easy to assemble and clean up. The cons to having paper plates is it not being aesthetically pleasing. Paper plates, in my opinion, are used for cookouts and parties. Holidays are for the nice dinnerware. You can thank my old-school upbringing for this logic. Once we have a few holidays under our belt we may switch to paper, but for now glass plates were on my list.

So looking through my cabinets I only had 7 white and red plates. I found our fall glass plates from the Dollar Tree that actually held up pretty well. My idea was to create a pattern of white/red, orange, then fall striped plates.

What to do when you don’t have formal napkins or napkin holders.

If the plates weren’t bad enough, We have no cloth napkins or napkin holders. I needed to think of a solution.

Having this many people over I wanted a simplistic concept to the table. I didn’t want knives and forks set on the table because people could bump them off the table or lose them. When the bird was done it should be a grab and go type of utensil.

Overall, I feel that I pulled this Thanksgiving together with items from my home. Dustin’s family found the decor beautiful and a smart idea to make it simplistic, but rustic.