Hot Date? I sure hope so! Valentines Week, Table Settings

Well, I hope you have plans for Valentine's, whether it is a hot date, hanging out with good friends or a family night.  Either way, you need to eat right?  Good, cause at our house we have this joke, that goes something like this,
Person 1 "What do you want to do?"
Person 2 "I don't know, just sit around and eat."... 

Anyway, this is my first attempt at showing you all some holiday table settings, and for this, I needed help!!  So, I called my awesome friend Em (you may remember her from the how to build a floor mirror and her master bedroom remodel) to come over and help me create a beautiful table setting.   Meet Em:

See, technically I have more dishes than a person should be allowed to have, but I am just not as sure of myself when it comes to the actual accessorizing.  Should I admit that if it were up to me, I wouldn't really have anything on my kitchen counters at all! But designers are supposed to have stuff on their counters and tables and stuff.. Oh boy!!

Back to the task at hand, I scoured my house for anything red, pink or just cool and she brought over a box of all the little things that I just don't even have, we pooled our resources, and came up with a great date night table setting. 

(I will also be posting a group/family table setting, and a kids setting... please stay tuned!)

We had a few goals, let me explain:

• Huge table (a con in this situation!)
• Intimate feeling setting
• Soft light
• Grown up feeling

1. For the huge table. How do you make a huge table feel intimate? Break up the space. But how?  Em created at about 2/3 of the table a decorated "wall" of sorts.  We used a paint can, and a few other things to create different height layers under a billowed black table cloth.  In this picture you can see the beginnings of the "centerpiece" that is obviously not exactly center!

2. I don't know about you but I really love the color black, can I call it a color.  It really grounds things, and has some impact, and can be a great neutral, in my mind.  It also feels a little more grown up than hot pink, for some reason!

I don't actually have a lot of table cloths that lend themselves to holidays, and this little black table cloth is actually a round one, that wouldn't cover even half of the table.  But by puddling it, we were able to create a grounded centerpiece that feels luscious and looks beautiful. The color is also very saturated and rich so it already feels more mature.

3.  While the "wall/centerpiece" helped to make the table feel smaller and our space feel more intimate,  we still wanted it to be very festive, and so the way we accomplished that in a small space was layering!  Layers!  Layers!  We layered the place mats, and then used a "runner" (which by the way is left over fabric from Justin's Gomez Adam's family costume from about 5 years ago.  It is a crushed black velvet with red flecks) Then layered another place mat on it and continued stacking plates on from there.  As you can see here, not only are the runners and place mats layered, but the plates, utensils and glasses

4.  Soft Lighting, was accomplished by dimming the lights and lighting a bunch of candles, and what could be more romantic than candle light?

Are you ready for the finished product?  And picture overload?  Good, cause here you go:

Don't forget to link up to Remodelaholic's Anonymous!!

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