Never Too Festive: Parenting with More Joy & Less Mom Guilt

25. Get Ready for Fall Hosting with My Top 5 Tablescape Tips

• Elizabeth Hambleton

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Can a beautifully decorated table transform your dining experience? Absolutely, and on this episode of Never Too Festive, Elizabeth walks you through five foolproof tips to make your tablescape the talk of your next dinner party. From choosing the perfect theme or color palette to utilizing what you already have at home, Elizabeth provides actionable advice that won't leave you feeling overwhelmed or out of pocket. Discover how simple touches like using your best china and cloth napkins, or sourcing affordable decor from Dollar Tree, can make a world of difference.

But that’s not all! Elizabeth reveals how to add thoughtful details and personalized touches to elevate any special event. Imagine the elegance of calligraphed place cards or the charm of incorporating a guest of honor’s favorite treats. Learn about layering elements like chargers and placemats for an eye-catching display and get inspired by memorable moments, like filling a restaurant ceiling with balloons for a bold statement. Tune in to gather all the creative and budget-friendly tips you need to make your next celebration truly spectacular.

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to another episode of Never Too Festive. I'm your host, elizabeth Hambleton. For many of us, the fall is our peak season of entertaining. That's kind of starting now in October maybe September if you're a go-getter and going through the holidays. If you've ever struggled with putting together a beautiful table, this episode is for you. The table at a dinner party or any kind of party, can really set the mood and create a fun and festive ambiance. We're going to be going through five super easy tips for making your next table a wow-worthy moment without breaking the bank or spending tons of time.

Speaker 1:

Hey there, mama, and welcome to Never Too Festive, the podcast where we celebrate the extraordinary in everyday motherhood. I'm Elizabeth Hambleton, your host and fellow mom, on a mission to help you rediscover your sparkle, redefine your style and reclaim your sense of self in the midst of motherhood mayhem. Do you ever feel like you've lost touch with the stylish, confident woman you used to be before kids? Are you tired of living in yoga pants and feeling like you've gone from thriving to just surviving? Well, mama, it's time to reclaim joy, creativity and style, while embracing the fabulous mom you were meant to be. So grab your iced coffee and join me as we embark on a stylish adventure together, Because here on Never Too Festive, there's no such thing as too much sparkle, too much flair or too much celebration. Get ready to shine bright and live your most fabulous, joyful life, because you deserve it.

Speaker 1:

I think one of the most common things that I hear from people who are struggling with creating a tablescape or getting ready for a dinner party is that they just feel overwhelmed. So if that's, you know that you're in good company. Lots of people feel that way, and these five tips that I'm about to go over are going to help you feel focused and pulled together and know exactly where to start. So with number one, my top tip is that you should be creating your tablescape around some sort of theme. Now, when I say theme, I don't mean that it has to be hokey and super specific, like a Harry Potter movie night, which could be awesome, but it doesn't have to be nearly that specific. It could just be that it's a birthday party in these three colors. I think you want at least a color theme, and if it's just sort of a general get together like a fall dinner party with friends, it doesn't need a theme like birthday or you know a certain activity type thing. It could just be colors.

Speaker 1:

The important thing about colors is just that it narrows you down, it gives you direction. I think that when you feel overwhelmed, it's because a lot of times you're looking at inspiration on a place like Instagram or Pinterest and you see something and you think, oh, that looks so cute. And then you see something else that's totally different and you think, oh, that looks cute too. I see this a lot when I work with branding clients in my business. They see so many different brands and they like all of them, or they like aspects of all of them, and then it leaves them feeling really confused because they don't know how to start narrowing down. Committing to a color palette of roughly three colors will help you do that.

Speaker 1:

One very practical way to start is looking at what you have. If you have a set of nicer china that you would like to use for this occasion, then start from colors that work in your china or work with your china. If you have a set of nice cloth napkins you would like to use, work with those. If you are doing something a little more casual and you want a themed paper plate, matching paper napkin type vibe. That can be really cute too. Look at what you have or what you can find easily or what's in your budget. So just pick some sort of element as a starting point, a starting place, and then work from that. If it's a birthday or a holiday, obviously your theme is going to be a little bit more focused, but even for those, a birthday party dinner could look like anything. So pick some sort of starting point, typically plates or napkins or some sort of table linen, like if you have a beautiful tablecloth you're wanting to use. Anything like that is a great starting point and then work from there, because it will at least start narrowing down your options and giving you some direction. So, number one pick some sort of theme, even if it's just a color theme. Number two any great table has something in the middle, and I think this is true for an at-home dinner party, and I also think this is true for a restaurant party.

Speaker 1:

If you're hosting an event at a restaurant but you want to take it up a notch and have it feel more like a special event and not just like going out to dinner on a regular night, bringing some sort of centerpiece is, I think, pretty crucial. Typically this is flowers a lot of times, but it doesn't have to be flowers. It can be anything that gives the table height and texture. So this could be a collection of different candles. Taper candles are really having a moment right now and you can find cool ones at slightly higher price points at places like Anthropologie. But you can also find some great ones at places like HomeGoods or Target and they add a lot of drama and some texture to your table and they're relatively inexpensive if you go with a Target or HomeGoods type of candle.

Speaker 1:

I love a floral moment. I think flowers just have that way of elevating any occasion. If you are trying to keep your floral price point down a bit, I suggest clumping more smaller vases rather than trying to do one large arrangement in the middle. I also think the large arrangements tend to require a bit more skill, a bit more expertise and a bit more confidence. Anyone could do collections of smaller bud vases. My favorite place to get those really inexpensively is actually at Dollar Tree. They have a lot of simple, clear glass vases and they're only $1.25 each, so you could go and get a few of those.

Speaker 1:

If you're feeling a little overwhelmed by flower selection, one hack is to stick with all one color. I love like an all white moment and you get maybe white roses and some like white hydrangeas and just all different styles of white flowers and just group two or three each in little bud vases. You do typically want to do an odd number of vases if you are doing grouping, so get three or five or seven, depending on how long your table is, how many people you have seated. If you just did a little grouping of three vases and you got them at Dollar Tree at $1.25 each, that's only $3.75 for the vases. You could go to a place like Trader Joe's and get two, maybe three little bouquets of flowers that are in like the little grab section where you can choose different flowers. I mean you could probably get that for $10 total, maybe 15, and you could have a great elegant centerpiece for under $20.

Speaker 1:

Another cool option for flowers if you aren't feeling confident with them is to do shades of the same hue. So do maybe if it's a birthday party, you could do shades of pink and mix and match some blush flowers with like a little bit of a deeper rose and you're doing kind of what's an ombre type effect or just shades an ombre type effect or just shades, and the fact that you have limited yourself to all pink, it's going to naturally feel more edited and more stylized and more elegant than if you just did totally random flowers. Of course, it doesn't have to be pink, it could be any other color that matches your decor and matches the occasion. I love bringing some small florals to restaurants. Like I said, if it's a party, they can really make it feel more elevated and more like a special occasion. That brings us to our third tip, which is personalization. Anytime you add personalization, personalization Anytime you add personalization, the evening is going to feel more special.

Speaker 1:

One of the ways I like to do that is with place cards, even if it's not a large party. I'm helping host a friend's 40th birthday and there's only going to be four of us and we're just like for a little dinner and I'm still doing place cards. There's only four of us. It's really not a big issue where anyone sits, but it's not about that. It's about adding that extra touch. I styled them with a motif that the birthday girl likes and so it adds in a little bit of specialization. It's a nod to her.

Speaker 1:

I did my brother's 40th birthday earlier this year and we did origami airplanes. He's a huge airplane buff. He's loved airlines since he was a kid and so my husband helped me with this. We made origami airplanes for all I think it was about 25 people and then we attached their name to the wing. This was actually inspired by my own wedding. We did origami paper cranes as the seating cards.

Speaker 1:

So origami is a fun and unexpected and very inexpensive way to make a really personalized police card. If you go on YouTube, there are millions of origami videos of all levels of difficulty. You can even buy origami already done on Etsy if you don't want to DIY anything. But with maybe an hour of time and a pack of origami paper from Amazon or just a local craft store, you can make something a little bit more unique, a little bit more special. Touches like that don't necessarily cost a lot of money or a lot of time, but they can really make an event or a table feel intentional and make people feel special and welcomed.

Speaker 1:

I actually heard a genius idea on a podcast that I was listening to recently, and the lady who was on the podcast recommended hiring a professional calligrapher to make place cards for all of your core people, so the people in your immediate family, the people who come to Christmas so that might be, you know, your brother and sister and their families or, like your parents and in-laws, whoever in your life tends to come over year after year. She actually has a professional calligrapher make a nice white kind of simple place card but in a beautiful calligraphy script, and she just does the names of all of her main family members and maybe she doesn't use every single place card every time, but she just has a little stash and then she reuses them year to year, event to event, and she always knows that she has a beautiful, professionally done place card ready for all of her core people and then she can just change out the little place card holder to suit the occasion. So maybe you know you use the place card at Thanksgiving and you have, I don't know, a turkey or something, maybe gold that matches your tablescape, that has pumpkins and oranges and gold, and then she just uses the same place card, but in maybe a Christmas tree holder for Christmas. I thought that was genius. I've never even thought about having that done. And then she just uses the same place card, but in maybe a Christmas tree holder for Christmas. I thought that was genius. I've never even thought about having that done. And she said it's worth the investment because, for the people who are always there, like for me, my husband and kids are always going to be at my major dinner parties and holidays. So well, maybe not my kids at my dinner parties, but you get the idea. My kids come to Christmas every year, so I could always reuse that, and so it's maybe a tiny investment one time, but over time, like you, are really getting a lot out of it, which I thought was actually really genius. So something to consider.

Speaker 1:

If you don't feel confident writing out place cards, or you don't feel like they're going to be cute, or you just want to take it to the next level and have a professionally done calligrapher, do it. And again, if you don't know a calligrapher, you can order this kind of thing online. You can order them from Etsy. There's all kinds of options if you just do a little Google search for that, a little Google search for that, and even just thinking more simply if your friend or whoever is like the guest of honor for an event loves a special candy, you could incorporate that into your tablescape, have little tiny bowls set out with an assortment of their favorite candies or their favorite nuts. Or if they're known for a certain type of food or a type of drink, you can incorporate that. Like if they love martinis, you can have some nice martini glasses out. Whatever creates that little spark of I thought of you and your taste and your preferences. Those kinds of things are what people remember at an event. That makes them feel really welcome and it just makes it so memorable. So number four is adding patterns and texture. I think table linens are probably the easiest way to do that. Easiest way to do that.

Speaker 1:

I love a cloth napkin situation. We actually use cloth napkins daily in our house. We do use paper for parties if it's like a cute, like the brand Mary Mary, if you're familiar with that, that kind of thing for a kid's party or a family party, but other than like a very festive party napkin, we use cloth all the time here and I actually love cloth. If you get into it you'll realize probably that they're very low maintenance. We just throw them in the washer, fold them on the weekend and we've had some of the same cloth napkins for a decade and it is a little more eco-friendly too than paper. But we have over time, invested in some sets of nicer cloth napkins that we use for nicer events that don't have stains or don't look worn out or frayed or anything. So the nice thing about a cloth napkin is that it is maybe a little bit of an investment the first time you use it, but if you take care of them and store them you can use them for many, many events to come, so you really get a lot of longevity out of them.

Speaker 1:

I also love taking a custom napkin to a restaurant If it is a special event, if it is a major milestone, birthday or something like that. I have definitely been known to take my own napkins. Usually restaurant napkins are pretty generic. Often they're white. They don't usually have any sort of interest to them. So bringing some florals and then a beautiful patterned cloth napkin with a napkin ring to put on the plate or at the place setting can really add a huge amount of personalization to a restaurant dinner.

Speaker 1:

I know when I did my brother's in New York we had a restaurant we rented out and we did bring our own table linens, we brought different napkins and it just it coordinated with the colors of the event. It coordinated with the florals. We actually also brought balloons. That's a little, that's going a little extra, and we'd rented out the entire restaurant. So I think you would have to do have your own either have it your own space you're at your house or you've rented out the entire restaurant and you've talked to them about it beforehand. It doesn't work if you're just doing a table at a restaurant, but if you do have a dedicated space or a dedicated event room.

Speaker 1:

We actually bought I can't even I think it was 200 balloons, maybe it was 150, which obviously would depend on the size of your space. But let's say we bought 200 balloons, we covered the entire ceiling of the restaurant in balloons and then the strings were hanging down to kind of just over head height. So they created a really nice swishing kind of feel, yeah, in the ceiling. It added obviously a ton of color to the room, made it feel so festive and magical, and that's kind of an extreme example of adding color, pattern, texture to the space. But I will say it's actually fairly economical compared to some options. It's a lot cheaper than tons and tons of florals. If you were at your house, filling your ceiling of a dining room with balloons probably wouldn't really take that many maybe 20 or 30. It depends on your space. But just thinking creatively about how you can add some texture. You don't have to go that over the top, you could just have a lovely napkin. But if you like to go all in, that is a fun option. So I'm just throwing it out there for anyone who wants to feel extra, but for everyone else, some florals and a custom napkin that you bring to a restaurant or just a nice place setting with napkins.

Speaker 1:

The look right now tends to be very maximalist in tablescaping, which brings us to our fifth tip and that's layers. Just like in fashion, an outfit has more interest when it has more elements, when it has a little bit of jewelry. It adds shine and texture. Well, think of your table the same way, when you can layer in that extra touch with, maybe, chargers. For anyone who's not familiar, chargers are the larger plates that you put under. Well, they're not always plates. Actually, the larger, usually circular element that you put under your plate. They are typically larger plates, but not always ceramic. They could be lots of different materials. Sometimes they're metal and they're not meant to be eaten off of. They just add texture and layer to your table.

Speaker 1:

Anytime you can add that extra little touch, something like a charger, a placemat, placemats I feel like were out for a long time but they have really come back. There are so many cute circular placemats that have scallops or different edging, different layers. I've even seen really cute paper ones. There's a brand called Hester and Cook and they make disposable paper placemats that can add a lot of personality to your table. So if you think about how do I add, just like one more element, one more piece of color or texture, if I can add a layer, then it can add a little bit more interest.

Speaker 1:

In general, when a tablescape is looking a little flat or uninspired, if you're looking at what you've done and you don't love it, I would say as a general rule of thumb obviously this won't be always, since I can't see what your table looks like, but often it just needs a little bit more, a little bit more elements. If you look at inspiration or product photos on a site like Tucker Nook, where they do a lot of beautiful tablescaping, you'll notice that there's a lot going on in the photo generally. So if you're looking at your table and you feel like you don't love it, just try to get creative with things that you have around your home. You may have little interesting objects on your bookshelf that you use to style your bookshelf, that you could incorporate into a tablescape.

Speaker 1:

We were at an Airbnb once in Napa and I was trying to create a floral centerpiece, kind of essentially a runner, out of florals. I was just laying the flowers directly on the table in the pattern as if they were a runner. And I borrowed some. They were kind of gold orbs that were on the bookcase that they'd used for styling. They were like round, they were in a bowl You've probably seen this on coffee tables like a bowl and it had all these different orbs in it, just as kind of an objet, like just for styling. There's no real purpose to it. So I borrowed a couple of those and interspersed them amongst the florals for texture, because they were painted shiny gold, painted shiny gold and it really added that extra element, that little unexpected hit of texture. So just look around at what you have.

Speaker 1:

Also, food can be great for incorporating. I was at a bridal shower years ago and the sister of the bride had made a gorgeous fall-inspired tablescape with mini pumpkins and she had grapes and she had some greenery laid down on the table. She'd incorporated some gourds, some other sort of kitchen-type elements, so she had worked in just some food that she had Things like grapes for color and texture, the gourds, the mini pumpkins, some candles, and it looked amazing. So there's lots you can add that you already have and the more you can think creatively about it, the more you can find some inspiration all around you.

Speaker 1:

Also, if you can think creatively, buy really simple, neutral building blocks Like if you're going to invest in candle holders but you don't want to be someone who has a lot I would say pick one metal tone, like gold or silver, and pick one or two fairly neutral colors, like white, and use that as the foundation and just add in other pieces to make it more seasonal or specific to the event. So this could mean that you're getting clear glass vases, white china or white dinner plates and gold candle holders and from that super basic starting point you could customize for pretty much any occasion, whether that's Thanksgiving, whether it's Christmas, whether it's a birthday party or a book club or anything you had people coming over for. If you don't want to have a huge inventory of pieces which I understand because a lot of us don't have the space or the budget for just tons of customized pieces, then you know, stick with some neutral foundations and add in the festiveness or the more like occasion specific touches with your napkins, your flowers, things like that. So I hope that this gave you a few ideas and some quick and easy tips that you can implement to make the next time you have people over feel a little more special without feeling more stressful. And the thing I would really say that's most important is just have fun with it. It does not need to be perfect. People will remember that you were warm and friendly and welcoming and that you opened your home to them more than they will remember the perfect tablescape. So give yourself lots of grace. Remember that the important part is just making memories with the people you love and the rest is really just details to add joy. If it doesn't bring you joy, then simplify and don't add stress. So I hope that's fun and I hope that you take this as a little inspiration to reach out and invite someone over soon so that you can make more lasting memories around your table. Thank you for joining me today on Never Too Festive. I hope you are leaving feeling inspired and refreshed.

Speaker 1:

If you've loved what you've heard. Don't keep it to yourself. Share this podcast with a friend who could use a little extra sparkle in her life. And hey, while you're at it, why not leave a review on your favorite podcast platform? Your feedback helps us continue to grow and inspire more women like you. Have questions or feedback you want to share directly with me? Simply click the link in the show notes to send me a text. I'd love to hear from you. Until next time, remember, all we have is today, so let's choose to live our most fabulous, joyful life together.