Rudolph on the Christmas Tablescape

I had been thinking about trying to create a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer tablescape for a while. I decided to try and find a Rudolph centerpiece and if I could find one, I would then look for everything else. I found the centerpiece fairly quickly and the tablescape was on its way. I bought the green tablecloth on Amazon a few years ago. I wanted a Christmassy green color and this one was perfect.

I found these Rudolph salad plates on Ebay and I bought them one at a time a a few years ago as I saw them. They were made by New Seasons and the plate was illustrated by Sue DiCicco. I love this version of Rudolph. I was trying to figure out what other colors should be on the table and I was fixated on the blue background color on this plate but I wanted the table to be Christmas colors and more blue just wasn’t working for me with the centerpiece colors. I was talking to my daughter about it and she suggested a green tablecloth and a red charger and that worked perfectly.

I added my green Shamrock Fiesta dinner plate to the plate stack. This is one of my favorite green plates, I just love the bright green color.

I haven’t used this red charger much and when Hubby was pulling things for this table for me he brought this one in instead of the one I have used several times and I decided to use this one instead. The pattern was Ruby Berry and Thread and they were made by Juliska. Several years ago I bought these chargers a few at a time over several months from various places online until I had the number I needed. I like the simple design on the rim and it is a bit larger than some of the chargers I have.

This flatware was made by D & D Inox in Italy and the pattern was called Roma. I bought them at Neiman Marcus or Bloomingdales during a major sale a few years ago. There are similar patterns available online now. I really like the marbleized design on the handles. I used this same flatware on my Gingerbread People tablescape. You can see it here.

These plastic Rudolph napkin rings are actually Christmas ornaments that I found online at Target a few years ago. An ornament napkin ring would be a fun party favor for your dinner guests. The Christmas napkins probably came from HomeGoods, they were designed and signed by Vera. Vera Neumann designed many fabrics for home use for many years in the 1960’s and 1970’s and her work is being reproduced now. Some people collect her older designs.

I love these Rudolph place card holders! They were made by a British company, Ginger Ray. I bought them online somewhere a few years ago but I can’t find the order so I am not sure where I found them.

The green glass goblets come from The Vermont Country Store online. They are made by Mosser in the U.S. and the pattern is Georgia. They are really heavy glass and very good quality. I have bought a few at a time over the years. I also have them in cobalt blue. I used my red Waterford Marquis Brookside goblets for this table setting. I bought them at HomeGoods several years ago. Hubby and I were there and I suddenly saw a few and quickly found twelve and bought them all! I buy dishes in sets of 12 usually since there are 11 of us now when we are all together. If you read the tablescapes section on my blog you have seen this red goblet on several tablescapes.

I found this Rudolph cookie jar at Mercari online. He has such a sweet face! He’s called Rudolph and the Island of Misfit Toys and the design was copyrighted by The Rudolph Company in 2001. Rudolph is sitting on a red Rhodes stoneware drink dispenser stand from Pottery Barn. I bought these stands in a few colors several years ago to use when I need to add height to a centerpiece. Under the stand is one of my vintage Christmas hankies with Santa and his reindeer. This is a smaller hankie, probably made in the 1940’s or 1950’s, and they were usually made for children. About 30 years ago I started collecting holiday hankies after I found one in my mother’s things and I have a few hundred of them. They were a dollar or two and something fun to look for on a mom’s day out at antique malls because you didn’t see them that often and they don’t take up any space. Then Ebay arrived and suddenly there were hundreds of them right there and the demand for them raised the prices considerably so I stopped collecting them. Some of the signed and special design hankies can sell for over $50 each now, crazy!

I added my two sets of scarlet Fiesta salt and peppers to fill the table space a bit. They remind my of Rudolph’s red nose!

I have always had a soft spot for Rudolph. I’m glad he ended up on a tablescape this season!

To see 260+ tablescapes that I have created including 13 other Christmas tablescapes please click here. If you are on Facebook, join my Tablescape Ideas group! Just click on the Facebook Search box at the top of the page and type in Tablescape Ideas. Don’t miss my Tablescaping How-To section at the top of this blog post for more tablescaping tips and tricks.

I put a new tablescape on my blog every week so please check back!

Gingerbread People on the Christmas Tablescape

I did a another Christmas tablescape with a gingerbread house centerpiece, you can see that one here. I love decorating with gingerbread at Christmas so I started looking for a salad plate with gingerbread people a few years ago and I finally found this one. The red gingham tablecloth is one of my favorites. It is heavy cotton and I bought it at Sur La Table several years ago.

I started my gingerbread people salad plate search online by googling gingerbread salad plate. There were many out there but it took a while to find these. I found one at Mercari online and then checked Ebay and got lucky and found the other five there. They were made by temp-tations by Tara. I love cute happy gingerbread people and these are just that. I knew I had dinner plates and chargers that would match so I quickly bought them all before someone else could!

The dinner plate is made by Fiesta and the color is Lemongrass. I think I bought them at Macy’s several years ago.

This plate stack has an extra plate because I wanted to mix the colors a certain way. This red stoneware charger or dinner plate came from Pottery Barn. I love this plate, I also have it in a pale blue and a sage green. The pattern is called Cambria. It is the perfect size to be either a dinner plate or a charger plate, I love plates that have that kind of versatility. I use it as a charger more than I do as a dinner plate. It is often in use on my Christmas tablescapes, 4th of July tablescapes, and for Valentine’s Day.

These chargers were made by Mikasa and the pattern was Color Spectrum, this one in Hunter Green. I have several different colors of this charger and I really love the size, design and shape. They were all discontinued but I bought them all on Ebay a few at a time over the years. It is actually a prettier hunter green than this photo shows.

This flatware is made by D & D Inox in Italy and the pattern is called Roma. I bought them at Neiman Marcus or Bloomingdales during a major sale a few years ago. There are similar patterns available online now. I really like the marbleized design on the handles.

I found these metal gingerbread napkin rings online at Mercari as well. The lemongrass green napkins were made by Fiesta, I can’t remember where I bought them. They match the dinner plates. I have had the red napkins for a long time, not sure where they came from.

I found the gingerbread boy and girl place card holders at Hobby Lobby online a few years ago. There is just something so festive and cheerful about gingerbread people!

I think next Christmas I will do a candy themed table! I did one several years ago but the photos are too dark.

I used my red Waterford Marquis Brookside goblets for this table setting. I bought them at HomeGoods several years ago. If you read my blog you have seen this goblet on several tablescapes. I bought the green spiral goblets at Pier 1 several years ago. I really like the design of both of these goblets and the colors are perfect for this table setting.

I added some gingerbread salt and pepper sets to fill in some space on the table. I found both sets on Ebay several years ago. I often add small salt and pepper sets to a themed table for more fun.

I knew I wanted a cookie jar as the centerpiece on this table and so I googled gingerbread cookie jar and looked at many of them before I found this one online at Mercari a few years ago. It was originally bought at T J Maxx and it was made by Potter’s Studio. I love the icing and the bow design, and the happy face! I scattered a felt ball garland around the bottom that I found on Amazon, they remind me of gum drops and they match the buttons on the gingerbread man. The gingerbread man is sitting on a red Rhodes stoneware drink dispenser stand from Pottery Barn. I bought these stands in a few colors several years ago to use when I need to add height to a centerpiece.

I have a great ginger spice shaped cookie recipe, definitely need to serve them with this tablescape!

To see 270+ tablescapes that I have created including other Christmas tablescapes please click here. If you are on Facebook, join my Tablescape Ideas group! Just click on the Facebook Search box at the top of the page and type in Tablescape Ideas. Don’t miss my Tablescaping How-To section at the top of this blog post for more tablescaping tips and tricks.

I put a new tablescape on my blog every week so please check back!

A Christmas Tablescape with Ornaments

This tablescape was two years in the making. I bought the centerpiece bowl on sale a few years ago and then looked for ornament salad plates that were the right colors to match it for a few years until I found these. I bought the green tablecloth on Amazon a few years ago . I have several green tablecloths but I wanted this Christmassy green color and Amazon had just the right shade. I added my Depression Glass Circle pattern cream and sugar and salt and pepper set to fill in the empty spaces on the table a bit. I thought about adding small ornaments there but I decided they would make the table too busy looking. The Believe sign on the hutch came from Grandin Road online a few years ago.

I wanted the colors on the salad plates to match the centerpiece colors and it took me a few years years to find these salad plates. I looked at many different plates with ornaments on them but none of them had the right colors. These plates originally came from Crate and Barrel several years ago. As soon as I saw them on Ebay, I knew they would be a good match. I love the whimsy of the ornament designs.

I added an extra plate to this plate stack because I wanted to alternate the red and green colors. This Fiesta salad plate is part of our every day dishes set. The color is scarlet. They came from Macy’s several years ago.

The dinner plates are made by Fiesta and the color is shamrock. I bought them at Macy’s a few years ago.

This stoneware charger or dinner plate came from Pottery Barn. I love this plate, I also have it in a pale blue and a sage green. The pattern is called Cambria. It is the perfect size to be either a dinner plate or a charger plate, I love plates that have that kind of versatility. I use it as a charger more than I do as a dinner plate. It is often in use on my Christmas tablescapes, 4th of July tablescapes, and for Valentine’s Day.

This Milano Red flatware is Ginkgo International LePrix. I have had this set for several years. Not sure where I bought it. I use it several times a year on tablescapes. I also bought the set in black and I use that set often too.

I was so lucky to find these napkins with an ornaments design on Etsy a fewyears ago. I looked for a long time and they are a perfect match for the centerpiece and the colors on this table. Meg at ME2Designs on Etsy has made me many sets of napkins over the past few years and I am so glad that I found her! Sometimes I tell her what subject I am looking for and she sends me photos of samples of fabric to choose from! I bought the ornament napkin rings on Ebay a few years ago. They were burgundy with a raised beige snowflake design but I knew Hubby could paint them for me. I was looking for a simple design because of the busy pattern on the napkins and they are perfect.

They can be used as place card holders as well.

I found these ornament place card holders/napkin rings on Ebay a few years ago. They were made by Mud Pie in 2010. The colors are perfect for this table, I got lucky!

I am using my red Waterford Marquis Brookside goblets again on this table. If you read my blog, you have seen these goblets several times. I think if I were starting a tablescaping hobby, a set of red goblets would be one of my first purchases. They can be used several times a year. I bought these goblets years ago at HomeGoods. I bought a set because I love the fact that they are a bit taller than other goblets and the design goes well with everything. The green goblets came from Pier 1 several years ago, I use them several times a year. I like how tall they are and the simple spiral design.

Grandin Road online had this Ornament Serving Bowl with a ladle in their catalog for a couple of years. I bought it a few years ago on sale. I love the Christmassy colors and the peppermint ladle. It will probably sit out somewhere during part of the holiday season just for decoration. The first time I saw it I knew it would make a wonderful centerpiece for a Christmas tablescape. It just took me a few years to pull it all together! I bought the Kurt Adler garland to scatter around it on Amazon a few years ago to add a bit more interest and match the peppermint pattern.

You can see one of the other ornament designs on the salad plates here.

This salad plate has another slightly different ornament design. I love the red and green colors on this Christmas tablescape and how everything ties together.

To see 260+ tablescapes that I have created including 13 other Christmas tablescapes please click here. If you are on Facebook, join my Tablescape Ideas group! Just click on the Facebook Search box at the top of the page and type in Tablescape Ideas. Don’t miss my Tablescaping How-To section at the top of this blog post for more tablescaping tips and tricks.

I put a new tablescape on my blog every week so please check back!

Tablescaping DIY, Part 3, Choosing what Plates to Buy, Dinner Plates

This is Part 3 in an ongoing series about how to create your tablescapes. You can read Part 1 about developing a theme for your table here and Part 2 about Choosing what Plates to Buy, Chargers, here. There are some similarities when choosing chargers and dinner plates so there will be some repetition in this blog post.

The dinner plate is really the most important plate on the table from a practical standpoint. You can do without a charger and you can do without a salad plate but you need a dinner plate. My tablescapes tend to have at least three plates in the plate stack, a charger, a dinner plate, and a salad plate but if you are just starting to tablescape you can start with just a dinner plate on the table and still create a perfect tablescape.

There are five things to think about when buying dinner plates; size, color, shape, material, and price. Dinner plates tend to be about 10 1/2” in diameter. You want a dinner plate about that size so that a larger charger will show below the dinner plate and a smaller salad plate won’t cover the dinner plate completely. This provides a nice balance for the plate stack.

I don’t buy sets of dishes, I buy individual items. If I bought a compete set I feel like I would be wasting my money because I don’t use a full set of dishes on the table ever for my tablescapes. When I buy individual pieces I can mix and match hundreds of different combinations.

I bought these yellow dinner plates on clearance at Sur La Table online several years ago. They were part of their Fresh Squeezed Lemon Collection.

When I first began tablescaping several years ago the first dinner plates I bought were plates that were solid colors so I would have basic colors that I could use to start with, red, white, black, green and blue. I go back to these colors and use these plates over and over when I am creating tablescapes. This is a red Fiesta dinner plate, I have several of these plates in different colors and I use them often. This red dinner plate is actually part of our every day dishes set.

I think this black dinner plate came from HomeGoods several years ago.

Later I started adding dinner plates to my collection that had unusual lip and rim designs to add interest to the plate stacks, and dinner plates that had an overall design that would pop when the salad plate was removed. As I added these dinner plates I tried to keep in mind the charger plates and salad plates that I already had so that whatever I bought would match something I already owned. I also bought plates thinking about the tablescape themes I was working on and how the plate design could add to the theme. One thing for you to keep in mind, if you plan to always use a salad plate, the center design on the dinner plate will not show until you remove the salad plate. The salad plate design is key to helping define the theme of the table if your table has a theme. This black and white plate is called Miss Blackbirdy, you can see the black bird in the center of the plate. The creator was a Dutch fashion designer and artist, Merel Boars.

This yellow and white ironstone plate came from Pier 1 several years ago, the pattern was called Chloe. It is a smaller dinner plate, probably about 9” across and it could be used as a dinner plate alone or a salad plate on a plate stack.

I like to find dinner plates that have unusual rim designs because they add interest to the plate stack. I seem to gravitate toward plates that have a symmetrical pattern around the rim, I just think it looks better. It seems odd when only part of a design shows, something seems missing. I found these white dinner plates at HomeGoods several years ago. They were made by Fitz and Floyd and the pattern was called Oakdale White. HomeGoods and Dollar stores are great sources for inexpensive dinner plates. If you live in an area that has thrift stores and garage and estate sales, they can also be great sources for inexpensive plates too. I have read about tablescapers who buy glass plates at a Dollar store and then draw on them or add fabric to them to create a new design. Check on Pinterest for information about how to do this, I am not crafty and I have never done it but they look great!

When I started tablescaping I bought round plates but after a few years I added some square plates to my dish collection. These Fiesta plates come in both dinner and salad plate sizes and I really like their basic design. They can add an interesting shape to whatever else you are creating on your tablescape.

Depending on the theme of your table it is fun to find unusual shaped dinner plates. I often find them by googling whatever it is that I am looking for, something often pops up. This white shell dinner plate was made by Bordallo Pinheiro in Portugal and I bought them on Ebay.

I never buy sets of dishes. But over the years when I found a plate design that I really loved (after I made sure it was available in all sizes) I slowly bought matching chargers, dinner plates and salad plates until I had the number of place settings that I wanted. Sometimes this took me a few years to accomplish depending on the availability of the plates. I often bought plates a few at a time on Ebay as they came up for sale. Some I am still looking for! This three plate set of blue shell plates was made by Bordallo Pinheiro in Portugal and I bought them on Ebay a few at a time over several years.

This three plate set of red Christmas plates was made by Bordallo Pinheiro in Portugal and I bought them on Ebay a few at a time over several years.

My dinner plates are pottery, ceramic, glass and melamine like this turquoise plate. It really doesn’t matter what the plate is made of and I am amazed at how many wonderful plastic dinner plates are available now. These turquoise melamine plates came from HomeGoods several years ago. They were made by IL Mulino New York.

This orange plastic dinner plate is one of my favorite Halloween plates. I bought them several years ago online at Dillards.com and they were called Summer Oasis Zoie Vintage Dinner Plate. Keep in mind what the washing requirements are for the dinner plates you buy, some are hand wash only, and you need to be aware of that.

If you are lucky, you may have inherited a set of china from a relative. This was my Nana’s Haviland passed down to me from my mother. I cherish it and I try to use it on a tablescape a few times a year at least.

To see over 260 different tablescapes that I have created please click here. If you are on Facebook, join my new Tablescape and Table Settings Ideas Facebook group for lots of tablescaping inspiration! Just click on the Facebook Search box at the top of the page and type in Tablescape and Table Settings Ideas or click here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2553689988183392

If you live in Southern California join our Facebook tablescaping group Southern California Tablescapers BTS Group. https://www.facebook.com/groups/440356398581157 We are planning a gathering for tablescapers in January in the Los Angeles area..

Don’t miss the Tablescape How-To tab at the top of my blog for DIY tips and tricks.

I put a new tablescape on my blog every week, please check back!