Simple but stunning centerpieces look good on kitchen table
No matter how crazy our schedules get, several nights a week Dan and I try to enjoy a family meal at home. We invite my mom over, and Dan cooks up something wonderful. Then the three of us relax around the kitchen table, catching up.
I think some of my fondest moments are of times spent at that little table, connecting with those I hold most dear.
Why not make such an important family-gathering spot as beautiful as it is welcoming by dressing it up with a stunning but simple centerpiece? Here are a few ideas to get you started.
Sometimes, I like to tell stories with my centerpiece designs. I’ve come up with some whoppers for my dining-room table. But on my kitchen table, I try to keep things simple since this is a hardworking spot where function is paramount.
Your centerpiece must not only be scaled appropriately for your kitchen and the table itself, it must also allow ample room for place settings and serving pieces. In addition, be sure it is short enough to see over so it doesn’t create a barrier to good discussion.
One possibility includes a wooden dough bowl and pays tribute to the sea. Featuring the soft color palette of a restful beach, it pulls together iconic yet interesting accents that seem to have a tale to tell: a weathered hurricane lamp, a bowl made from driftwood and a stack of seashells.
You could use all sorts of decorative tools to serve as the base of your kitchen-table tableau, like a tray or a framed mirror. Then, use your creativity to come up with a scene that speaks to you and your family.
People have been using flowers to dress up kitchen tables since the dawn of time, and no wonder. Beautiful blossoms make everything lovely. I think simple bouquets of yellow flowers, unceremoniously scattered in a cluster of green pottery vases, can be the perfect finishing touches to a great kitchen table.
To pull off this super-simple look, pick out a quartet of similar green pottery vases. The variations in size and shape will give the display more movement and visual interest.
If you like, snip some blossoms from your garden and tuck them willy-nilly into the vases. Or, pick up an inexpensive cash-and-carry bouquet from the grocery store. The key is to make the bouquets look freshly picked, not styled and fussy.
For a variation on this look, get three to five matching vases and line them up at regular intervals down the middle of your table. Then, fill them with cuttings from your garden, from budding branches in the spring to evergreen boughs in the winter. By keeping the vases low and the bouquets tightly cropped, you ensure that your overall display won’t be intrusive.
On my kitchen table right now I have a single white urn that’s holding an ivy topiary. It’s the perfect scale for my narrow kitchen table and fills my need to have a live plant in my house — even though with my brown thumb, it probably won’t last very long.
Hurricane lamps are one of my favorite decorating building blocks because you can reinvent them over and over again. Perfect chameleons, they instantly take on the look and feel of any display they are used in.
Try making a simple-but-spunky centerpiece using three hurricanes, each filled with a few fresh lemons and limes. To give the grouping more visual interest, place one hurricane on a riser.
Another fabulous way to use fresh fruit in a kitchen-table centerpiece is to simply place it in a lovely bowl. I like to fill a blue-and-white Asian pottery bowl with green apples in the summer; in the fall, it’s red pears.
Another look that’s grabbed my attention right now is placing a long, narrow tray at the table’s center and filling it with a line of fruit, like a row of apples.
(The column has been adapted from Mary Carol Garrity’s blog at www.nellhills.com. She can be reached at marycarol@nellhills.com.)