Craftsman 1204: Simple Table Setting

When we aren't staging our home, we really like our dining table to look something like this:

However, we are in the process of selling, so we knew the table needed to be dressed for dinner. We've all seen those gorgeous place settings in magazines; chargers, multiple plates, and lavish centerpieces. They're undeniably beautiful, but for our table we wanted something a bit simpler that we could actually use. We didn't want to have to go out and buy much, since we'll be moving soon. What we came up with was very inexpensive, but (in my opinion) looks lovely. And it's functional!!!

We starteed by clearing everything off of our table. If you know us, you know that our dining table is unfortunately a catch-all for the stuff that I'm never quite sure what to do with. You can read more about all that here. We got all the crap off of it and gave it a good scrubbing:

I picked four very simple seagrass-colored placemats up at Ikea for about 2 bucks each.

We arranged them in a square, which didn't leave us much room on the table for a centerpiece. The hubby actually came up with the 3 small glass cubes filled with different small potpourri in brown, cream, and green. I love it, especially since it a) fits in the space allotted and b) doesn't hamper conversation, as so many centerpieces do.

We skipped the chargers and just started layering our dishes...dinner plate on bottom, then salad plate, then soup bowl.

We took our color cues from the centerpiece and found these yellow/green/white napkins with pear motif...I think a large napkin typically photograps better, so we actually bought kitchen towels made from a thinner fabric and put a simple napking ring on top and just sat them in the soup bowl:

The final touches were our wine glasses and silverware and we were done:

Ideally, I would have loved if our plates and bowls would have been different colors. And someday we'll have a table that is big enough for a runner and placemats. But, for low budget and small space, I'm pleased with the results. If you needa little more place setting eye candy, I've thrown in a few favorites...enjoy!