How to Create a Centerpiece for any Season in 10 minutes

Setting a beautiful table, or tablescape,  with a centerpiece has always intimidated me. I don’t have china and silver tucked away in cabinets, and I am not very good at arranging flowers. I have used my everyday dishes, eucalyptus cuttings and fruit to create this tablescape. It is very easy, no skills required, if I can do it anyone can. If you happened to see my Moody Fall Home Tour I included this tablescape and mentioned that I would share how to put it together in 10 minutes flat. Of course that doesn’t include pillaging the neighborhood trees and ironing the linens.

If you are just wanting to see how to do the centerpiece then skip ahead to Step 4.

Step 1:

Gather your  supplies, then start your timer.

For this 6 person setting I used: goblets, dinner plates, salad plates, my everyday flat ware, mix matched white cloth napkins, a tablecloth made from a drop cloth cut down to fit the 10 foot table, 2 scarves turned table runner, pomegranates, plums, olive stems, eucalyptus cuttings, and candles. See how to use drop cloths as tablecloths HERE

Step 2:

Lay out your tablecloth and runner if you choose to use linens.

I like to lay out my place settings before I do the centerpiece so that I know how much room I will need.

Step 3:

Lay out your place settings: I chose to lay the napkin between the salad plate and dinner plate. No fancy folding needed.

If you are like me and have a hard time remembering what goes where this little word association trick that I saw will help.

It is fork on the left, knife and spoon on the right. Remember FORKS in order from left to right…..F:fork O:the O shaped plate R:pretend there is no R K:knife S:spoon

The serrated edge of the knife faces the plate. Lastly, the glass goes on the right because that is right. If you had a bread plate it would go on the left, but I left that out…too far with the word association?

Dress it up by placing a simple sprig of greenery on the plate. I used an olive stem but some other ideas are rosemary sprigs, lavender buds, a piece of fruit, a name card, a favor, an acorn, just about anything goes. .

Now that the place setting is done it’s on to the centerpiece.

Step 4:

The centerpiece is a simple formula of candles + greenery + fruit

• Start by spreading your candles down the middle of the table. You can use pillar candles, votives, tall taper candles like these or a combination like I did.
• Then lay your sprigs of greenery like a garland through the candles. I used eucalyptus but I think that ivy, evergreens or magnolia would be beautiful too.
• Then add in your fruit using odd numbers and creating small little groupings. This is where you can bring in any season. I used pomegranates and plums for a fall feel but some other ideas would be: apples, mandarin oranges, pears, peaches, figs, even pinecones for winter or shells for summer.

 

See the rest of my Moody Fall Home Tour

My hope is that this step by step makes setting a beautiful table less intimidating and makes entertaining a breeze. Happy creating.