How to achieve THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS TABLE part 2.

Hi again. I'm back with part 2 of your Perfect Christmas Table.

Like I mentioned at the end of my last blog, the rest of the decorating now is pretty much done with food. Every time I do Christmas, I like to find different ways of putting everyone's names on the place settings. Because my whole theme had started with a pretty Christmas bauble that I liked, last year I decided that I would make Christmas baubles with everyone's names on them. But these ones would be edible! My idea was to make some slightly oversized chocolate truffles and cover them with fondant to look like baubles. I made them green like the rest of the table with little gold tops for the ribbon. I then dusted them with edible shimmer dust (available from cake decorating supply stores) to make them shimmer, then simply piped the names on with royal icing. I know this may seem difficult, but it was not at all. Find a good truffle recipe and buy some ready made fondant (also available from the cake decorating store). Roll out your fondant cut into large circles and drape over your prepared truffles and tuck any excess under the truffle where you can't see it. Don't be afraid. Give it a go!

As an extra treat, I also decided that a beautiful shortbread star Christmas tree would look stunning sitting at one end of the table. I bought a star cookie Christmas tree kit and iced each star with royal icing in the colour of my green theme and put it on a clear plastic platter that I bought at one of the bargain stores. At home I already had a floating candle bowl that rarely got used and placed battery operated lights inside that you can get very cheaply from most chain stores. I then placed my platter with the cookie tree on top. To finish off, I also found a battery operated light up star in my travels one day, so this sat proudly on top of the tree. It looked truly amazing.

The next thing I added to the table (also food) was a cupcake stand full of little hand made paper bags filled with chocolates. I found a pattern in the Better Homes & Gardens magazine to make these cute little bags and used some decoartive scrapbooking paper to construct them. They were all different designs and patterns, but the colour of the paper was the same. After filling them, I tied the tops with a ribbon bow and arranged them on my cupcake stand. You could do the same, or find some other way to display them. Just recently I had been doing my grocery shopping in Woolworths and found cheap cardboard cupcake stands that would be perfect, and you could also decorate the stand to match your table too! I decorated my cupcake stand with another string of battery operated lights like the ones under my shortbread Christmas tree.

The final addition to my table I've left to tell you about until last, but it was actually the first thing that I completed and which was the basis of all my decorating.
Hanging over my dining table I have a pendant oyster light. The glass slips into a metal  ring hiding the light bulb. I got hold of an old wire coathanger and bought a few rolls of different kinds of ribbon in green and gold to match my table theme and got a couple of cheap packets of plastic baubles in the same colours. I sat and tied varying lengths of ribbon to each bauble and hung them around the ring of wire until the whole wire was covered with baubles. I then tied the ring of wire to the metal ring on my light fitting. The effect was dramatic and beautiful. You may not have the same kind of thing hanging over your table, but if you let your creative juices flow a bit, I'm sure you'll think of something that works with what you have.

So now you've heard about the details of how I put together my Christmas table, the last thing to show is the end result. Remember that none of this cost heaps of money. And if you grab bits and pieces here and there over the course of the year, it will not feel like anything at all. Go shopping after Christmas and pick up some bargains on decorations in the sales following Christmas and you'll be able to save even more money, just by planning ahead a little. Most of all, have fun, include the kids, play Christmas songs and have a great time with it!

How to achieve THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS TABLE part 1.

Part One

Ever looked at the glossy mags of gorgeous Christmas tables adorned with glitzy decorations and beautifully folded napkins and wished you could get the same look? But then decide that it would probably cost a bomb and give it a miss?

Well I'm here to show you that you CAN achieve a beautiful Christmas table that will not only serve a feast for your family, but also a feast for their eyes! And you'll have them talking about it for months later. The only thing you need worry about is raising the bar so high that you'll soon become known as the "Hostess with the mostest"!

As I mentioned in my earlier blog, "Decorating the Christmas Tree", it all starts with a theme. Either colour or feel. Example: red & silver or perhaps an Aussie feel or tone. You're only limited by your imagination. And the brilliant thing these days is that there is so much available at bargain prices if you bother to go searching for it. And the colours in decorations has moved on from the reds and greens and now anything goes! Also, I'm the kind of person that if I can't find what I'm seeing in my head, I will happily make it. I will expand on that later.

In the picture above, is my Christmas table from last year. I begin thinking about my theme very early on and actually mentally plan my Christmas sometimes a couple of years ahead (only because I only host Christmas every 2 years). My theme for last year was chartreuse green and gold. I had seen a Christmas bauble in that colour and fell in love with it, and so that became my colour scheme. If you can't think of a colour scheme, take a walk around the shops. Get inspiration from the decorations isle, or from the Christmas fabrics available. Spotlight is a great place to go to get inspired. And be sure to take someone with you who won't quell your enthusiasm.

If you don't own one already, invest in a long plain white table cloth. I bought mine years ago and I use it VERY often and although it was on the pricey side when I got it, it has been well worth what I paid for it.
If you don't have the cash to get one right away, I like the Chinet brand paper with plastic back table cloths that you throw away after you use them because they don't look as cheap as a plastic table cloth, but not as expensive as a linen table cloth. Get a couple if you need extra length and overlap them.

 Now I will explain to you my table in detail, and you can use that to get your table planned in your mind. I find it helpful to write my ideas into an exercise book, complete with diagrams, pictures and even swatches as this helps me get a feel for the end result.

I need to seat 12 people at my Christmas table, but I only have a 6 seater. So we covered the top of our table with some board big enough to seat 12 and used 4 chairs from our other table, and 2 fold away chairs. To disguise the ugly look of mis-matched chairs at the table, I decided to cover the chair backs. But how to do it cheaply??? I discovered that a standard pillowcase slipped perfectly over the backs of my chairs, hiding the different backs at the table. But I needed 12. A shopping trip to The Reject Shop and I found pillowcases in packs of 2 for $2-$3 per pack, so there was a very cheap solution to that issue. Also at The Reject Shop I found some rolls of cheap ribbon to use to tie bows around the backs of the chairs to give them an opulent feel. And yet this all cost about $20.

The table runner was bought from Hot Dollar and cost about $3 for a roll of organza that was about 50cm wide and about 3m long. It was the right colour and gave the table a bit of sheen. You could also use wrapping paper in a design that you like. This could even be the basis of your theme. Or (as I've done before) you can cut the paper or fabric into placemats and omit the runner. It's up to you and your imagination.

The napkins I used I got from IKEA. If you have an Ikea store near you, they have napkins in all sorts of colours in huge packs at a bargain price of just a couple of dollars. I wanted to have my napkins folded in a way that was unique, so I used the most valuable tool any of us have...Google! On there I found some napkins folded to look like bows. They were rolled up on the diagonal and then folded in such a way they looked like bows, then tied with ribbon in the middle. I then added an ornament hook through the back and hung them on my glasses, but again, let your imagination prevail.

Christmas crackers. I LOVE crackers that look beautiful and decadent, but when you go shopping for them, the price of the nicest ones will near give you a heart attack! When I went shopping for my crackers, I wanted plain gold ones that wouldn't break my budget and I found...nothing. So, like I said earlier, when I can't find what I'm looking for, I make my own! I started collecting toilet rolls until I had 12. I went and bought the cheapest crackers I could find ($2 for 6, got 2 packs) then took them home and deconstructed them to get the cap, snap and motto out. I then got some gold tissue, ribbon and some decorations to make my own, using the stuff I extracted from the bought ones. And presto! Crackers that look beautiful and were CHEAP at just $10 for 12!

Next, decorating the middle of the table. I'm a bit of a pack rat. Pretty things that I come across in my travels have value to me, and I lovingly keep them because one day, I know they will be useful. I filled a bowl up with bead garland, bought some cheap tealight candlas and arranged them onto a paper plate in a circle, stuck them to the plate, then wrapped gold ribbon around the outisde to keep them all togther. I also bought 2 big brandy balloons from The Reject Shop and filled them inside with white lilies.

In my next blog, I will continue with the rest of the table decorating as already this is quite lengthy. The next part of this involves using food to make an impression. But NOT difficult. So stay tuned :)