I hope that you all enjoyed the holidays! Shortly after Christmas, I started working on our New Year’s meal; it is the Greek tradition to continue this season’s holidays with a big celebration on January 1st, St. Basil’s Day, with family and friends, and a festive and well prepared meal! Every household that hosts on New Year’s takes time well in advance to plan a rich menu and an elegant tablescape. It is the perfect occasion to take out our best china, crystal glasses, table linens and silver flatware.
To decorate my dining table this New Year, I am mixing my china with a humble item from the farmer’s market …
… a few plastic mesh berry baskets!
I spray painted a dozen of them gold and filled them with goodies appropriate for all ages. Every basket is placed on each of my guest’s dish and serves quite a few purposes:
(1) The baskets are mostly decorative and when gathered all together, they fill the table in such a glamorous but inexpensive and effortless way.
(2) Everyone can take home his/her basket! I love seeing my guest leaving with something from my home!
(3) It’s also a great idea to use the baskets in lieu of a place card holder. Each of them holds the monogram of every guest and makes sitting at the dining table an easy and fun process!
I filled these little baskets with only a few items, but enough to add some holiday glam: A wooden monogram which I spray painted with gold glitter spray, two shiny little ornaments (one gold, one silver), a chocolate wrapped in gold foil and a small pine branch that I cut from an artificial garland. Inside the basket I placed some gold tissue paper and the entire basket is wrapped in a long golden sheer ribbon that forms a generous bow on top. Nothing expensive, but all very impressive, mostly because of the color choice.
In the center of the table, a three-tier cake stand decorated with gold shiny Christmas balls, votive candles and pine branches completes the festive look.
The clear glass votive candle holders are nothing more than super-market chocolate pudding jars which I’ve been using to decorate on so many occasions, such as this one.
As I’m using placemats instead of a tablecloth, I added a length of wrinkled gold fabric on both sides of the cake stand to add the texture that was missing. No need to sew the fabric as the unfinished edges are well hidden, tucked underneath the fabric. These larger votive candle holders placed on the table along the fabric are an another super market treasure – a crème brulée glass jar! What I especially like about these jars is that they hold larger votive candles.
Happy New Year!
Materials used for the baskets: ** plastic mesh berry baskets from the local farmer’s market spray painted in Rut-Oleum Metallic Gold ** Wooden Letters spray painted in Rust Oleum Glitter Spray (spray paint in advance as the glitter has a strong odor for a few days) ** Ferrero Rocher chocolates **
