ancient ritual • time-honoured tradition • comfort of your home
Coming together to share a meal is an ancient ritual. But, too often, we let our busy lives prevent us from observing this time-honoured tradition and we lose our connection with family and close friends.
Sharing a meal with your nearest and dearest in the comfort of your home is a wonderful and meaningful way to reconnect and relax with the important people in your life. It doesn’t have to be a big event. Keeping things simple, modest and inexpensive means you’ll be inclined to entertain more often. Just add a few special touches that can be easily achieved without too much fuss.
Create a simple country setting for a casual lunch, brunch or family breakfast by using brown paper along the centre of the table instead of a runner. Add a vintage touch with the addition of small and large doilies.
Set the table with a minimum of crockery and cutlery and use painted cans, filled with loosely arranged flowers.
Providing each person with an individual flower posy is one way of showing your guests how special each of them is to you. The posies can also double up as place name settings.
Instead of vases, use recycled tins that have been painted to suit your setting. One coat of acrylic paint and about half an hour of drying time is all that’s needed to achieve this rustic container.
Place individual miniature flower arrangements next to each setting. Tuck place name cards into the arrangement and encourage your guests to take the posy home. Everyone will appreciate the care you’ve taken to make them feel welcome.
Always bring cohesion to your settings. Here the same rustic ribbon was used around the flower cans and to tie the cards and pencil together.
Make a get together meaningful by providing each person with a pencil and a few small, blank cards (about the size of a business card) on which to write a gratitude message. You can ask guests to share their message with everyone around the table or simply allow guests some time to reflect, and encourage them to take their cards home and refer to them from time to time.
Make your book club dinner memorable by adding a few special touches to the table setting. While romance novels might not feature in your book selection, this playful adoption of romance novel imagery is a fun way to break the ice before dinner.
Keep floral arrangements to a minimum and allow books to take centre stage.
To make themed serviette rings, thoroughly wash small tomato purée tins once you’ve emptied their contents (use a can opener to remove the bottom of the tin). Print a reduced version of the collage created for the place mats (see page 28), cut it into strips the width of the tin and wrap the strips around the tins, glueing the ends securely. A quick spray with clear varnish will finish them off beautifully.
Let your guests know where their contributions will be donated by printing out a card for each place setting.
Tie place name cards to pencils made from recycled materials – a gift your guests can take home.
A wonderful conversation starter: these placemats were created from a collage of old romance novels and printed on a colour printer.
Tea parties were popularised in the 1830s by the seventh Duchess of Bedford after she asked for tea and light refreshments to be served in her room one afternoon. The Duchess enjoyed the ‘taking of tea’ so much that she regularly invited friends to join her. Elegant tea parties soon became fashionable among the English aristocracy, whose wealth and leisurely lifestyle allowed for an extra daytime meal to be served. The association with aristocracy meant that ‘high tea’ became quite a formal, lavish affair. Nowadays, it is usually only prepared for special occasions.
Tea parties tend to be the prerogative of ladies, so the ideal table setting is very feminine, often with the inclusion of lavish flower arrangements.
Choose pretty crockery and delicate china, preferably with floral motifs, to create the perfect tea table.
The mix-and-match approach adds a vintage feel. Add an element of surprise by using everything from silver tea pots to bone china milk jugs to old biscuit tins used as vases and serving dishes.
Strings of faux pearls add a glamorous touch. Find interesting objects to hold place name cards. Both the card holder and the beautiful name card can become a quirky keepsake for your guests.
Special touches, like hand-made tea bag holders with personalised tags, make for an unforgettable occasion and will have your guests declare you a truly remarkable hostess.
There’s simply no end to the pretty touches you can introduce for a tea party. A whimsical floral tablecloth, an abundance of pretty roses, sparkly adornments ... too much is simply not enough and more is definitely more.
Explore your local patisserie for pastel coloured macaroons, scrumptious butter biscuits and traditional iced buns to create a visual feast.
Glamorous, sophisticated and a little more masculine, a whisky and wine evening need not involve a lavish table setting or even necessitate serving a full meal. As with the ever-popular cocktail party, it’s a wonderful way of getting people together where the emphasis is more on socialising than it is on food.
Candles, decanters, cigar boxes, poker chips and playing cards create impactful table décor. Use bottles of whisky and wine in different shapes and sizes to create height on the table.
Create a simple centerpiece by placing a votive glass candle holder inside a round or square glass vase and filling the space with corks.
Candles with a subtle masculine fragrance, such as sandalwood, coffee or cinnamon, will help to create the right ambience.
Use cut-glass tumblers, brandy snifters and wine glasses to add glamour. If you don’t have these, consider hiring them for the occasion.
Coming together at the end of a busy day to share a meal and the day’s news was once a regular family tradition. However, as our lives become ever more frenetic, shared weekday meals are less of an occasion and more of a chore. Putting a bit of effort into your table settings from time to time can inject some fun back into family time.
These three settings will give you some ideas for quick and simple mid-week entertaining, even if it is just for your own pleasure.
If you’re grabbing a take-away on your way home from work, try this fishy theme. Cover the table with newspaper topped with clean brown paper and serve sides like chips and salad in disposable containers, like these recycled pilchard tins. Not only do the tins add a burst of colour, they make a quirky change to the usual crockery and serving dishes – and there’s no washing up!
Yellow or red serviettes complement this setting, while a bright red bucket becomes a handy container for drinks or ice.
If you want to personalise place settings, use a black marker pen to scribble people’s names at the top of their piece of brown paper.
If you have a flourishing rose garden, adding a little pizzazz to your dining table can be as simple as picking a few buds or blooms and displaying them a little differently.
Create impact with single roses nestled in traditional Martini glasses that are placed in a row along the table.
While you wouldn’t use paper serviettes for a formal dinner or special occasion, using them for a family dinner makes for easy tidying up afterwards. Open them out, gather up the middle and push through a serviette ring. Tucking a rose into the ring adds a really special touch. Instead of serviette rings, use pretty ribbon to tie the serviettes in the middle and tuck a rose into the ribbon.
Mix and match crockery to add interest. When using all white crockery, play around with shapes and textures. Here we used a scalloped-edge bowl to contrast with the round under plates.
Don’t be afraid to use colour accents, but keep most of the table décor white to accentuate the roses.
Use a colourful tablecloth or piece of fabric to inspire you. Choose flowers that complement the colours in the linen. Bursts of pink and green will liven up your table and set the tone for a joyous affair. Large single flowers, bright ribbon and coloured glass add vibrance to this setting.
Giving a small surprise gift to family members is a wonderful way to say “I love you”. To save time, the children can decorate the boxes while you cook.
Buy plain boxes from gift shops or art stores and spruce them up using bits and bobs gathered from scrapbooking suppliers.
