November is here and time for me to start thinking about the Thanksgiving table(s). But, truth be told, I have been thinking about those tables for a long time now! Thanksgiving Day is my favorite day of the year!
Even though we have a large family, it's important to me that everyone eat together on Thanksgiving Day. When we lived in The Farmhouse, that meant rearranging the furniture and having two tables (one year, there were three) in our large farmhouse kitchen. Here at Pineapple House, we add folding tables to extend our dining room table and the table(s) flows into the living room.
Thanksgiving Day is not a paper plate day for us. (Absolutely NO shade on people who do use paper plates! We all do what works for us and for our situation!) I love dishes and pretty tables . . . and we have plenty of helpers at clean up time which is a huge blessing. So we get out the dishes of choice: brown transferware or Blue Willow or even the Grandmother Dishes. If there aren't enough, we sometimes cobble together coordinating plates or layer a smaller plate on a white one. We get out the cloth napkins, again, varying every other one if we don't have enough of that year's pattern. We pull together flatware from several sets. We get out the crystal and mix that with dollar store goblets. (Yes, there is a lot of cobbling with our gobbling!) And we always use place cards on the Thanksgiving table to add a special touch of individuality. (The cousins invented games to play with the place cards, so I can't stop now!)
Decorating the l o n g table can be a challenge. Sometimes I feel like it's much of the same every year, but as I look back, the color scheme, choice of candles, and variety of mums or pumpkins or gourds give each year a slightly different feel.
For reflection and inspiration, I gathered photos of our Thanksgiving tables from past years.
🦃 Do you wing it or do you think about it all year as I do?
🦃Are you a paper plate family, an heirloom china family, or something in between?
