Thanksgiving Tablescape

Thanksgiving, I've come to realize, is my favorite holiday. It's similar to Christmas in that there is a spirit of celebration while we enjoy festive food and spend time with family. While I do enjoy exchanging gifts with loved ones, the shopping, excessive spending, and agonizing over token gifts can add enough pressure to the Christmas that I long for the simplicity of Thanksgiving, where we simply take a day to celebrate what we already have. 

This was the first holiday of any sort that Brad and I have celebrated in our own home, just the two of us. It was quiet and restful-- our "Old Fashioned Thanksgiving" we called it, invoking thoughts of a mid-century lifestyle where we watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on television, enjoyed a constant flow of our favorite cocktails throughout the day, "dressed for dinner", and finally feasted on a traditional, home-cooked Thanksgiving meal.

I kept the table design simple but elegant by restricting the color palate to grey and frosty green. Our antique dining room table is too lovely to cover with a tablecloth, and I love how the wood gives a rustic feel to our tablescape.

Thanksgiving is still autumn, but adding some evergreen foliage and eucalyptus to the pumpkin hanging around from Halloween ended up being the perfect way to transition into the holiday season.

The menu itself was pretty simple, but these kinds of things make a lot of food for just two people. I cooked a couple of cornish game hens, along with a small turkey breast, covered in a cranberry, orange, and rosemary glaze.

The rest of the menu included a traditional southern favorites like dressing, and sweet potato casserole, as well as cranberry sauce (recipe here), mashed potatoes, green beans, and rolls. 

It was all a wonderful, exhausting success and I can't wait to do it again!