Entertaining in the fall offers a plethora of decorating options. Almost all of which are free or low cost.
Guests joining you for dinner last minute? Use what you have on hand. Head outside and grab fallen leaves or downed branches. Shop your pantry, tossing fruits and vegetables from your pantry into ceramic or glass bowls. Follow these five tips when arranging your found, foraged items and your tablescapes will be sure to wow.
Dressing your dinner table can be overwhelming, but it doesn't need to be. Follow Juan Montoya's advice for styling a room and you won't go wrong: "A room should never allow the eye to settle in one place. It should smile at you and create fantasy."
With the color palette that Dawn Smith of Not Just a Mommy chose for our coLAB project I have a lot of options. I can use items from our meal in the decor along with seasonal flowers. And when it comes to Texas BBQ, the decor is going to add pops of color and visual interest.
1. Follow a basic color chord. Pick items according to color harmonies. In the Fall, you can easily go with a complementary scheme, think red and green, or an analogous scheme, think red, orange, and yellow.
2. Vary heights. Centerpieces with variation are more interesting than those with a lot of repetition. Your goal is visual balance. If someone is looking down at the table, they see a visually pleasing arrangement. Likewise if someone is looking at the tablescape from the front or the back.
Look for one or two taller items to place in the center of your arrangement and two to four other items at two different heights. If your items are all about the same height look at how you can raise them--place a couple in champagne glasses or a top a basket that you've flipped over.
Try to find items for your centerpiece that don't block your guests' faces--you want them to be able to talk to each other and not reach for your centerpiece and move it off the table.
3. Contrast textures. Besides arranging items at different heights look for items with a mix of textures--smooth, shiny, rough, dull, feathery, glass, and so on.
4. Balance weight. If you're arranging winter squash with thick skins, you want more delicate items like leaves or herbs or crystal. The contrast is pleasing to the eye.
5. Arrange odd numbers of items. As you're choosing items to group on your table, think three, five, or seven depending on the length of your table. This principle is known as The Odd Number Grouping Technique. When you have an odd number of items there's more energy and your eye keeps moving.
Credits: All layouts designed by and images taken by Eden Hensley Silverstein for The Road to the Good Life.
