Thanksgiving 2011

This was an epic Thanksgiving for me. Every year, since the beginning of time (or since the 1960s, when my mom moved to NYC), she has celebrated Thanksgiving with a long-time friend (and later, her family, which has always felt like an extension of my family). This year, our family friends had the opportunity to travel abroad over the holiday, so the tradition was put on hold. With that, my parents flew down to Austin for the long weekend. At first, I was planning to make reservations to go out. Oliver's and my jobs have been uber busy and the thought of spending hours in the kitchen over what was sure to be a lovely weekend didn't sound appealing. Then I remembered that I actually like cooking, and I especially love baking. It dawned on me that Thanksgiving for a small group could be less "maniacal party planning" and more "dinner for four;" simple, casual, relaxed and, most importantly, FUN. Let the planning begin!

Some favorite dishes came from Smitten Kitchen:
• Appetizer: Creamed Mushrooms with Chive Butter Toast
• Side: Sweet Potatoes with Pecans and Goat Cheese

After spending the morning and afternoon with Oliver and my parents, hanging out and strolling around our neighborhood (it was 75º and sunny!), I got to cooking. Can you believe I was too wrapped up in cooking and enjoying myself to remember to take pictures of each dish? Thankfully, I'm not a food blogger because I would have failed, friends. I didn't even get a good shot of the Thanksgiving table, even though I wrote a Houzz article on eclectic holiday table settings earlier that week, and took some of my own advice! Here are a couple of detail shots:

I am pretty proud of this bouquet. It was fresh and bright, just like the day!


I just wanted to show off the cute little owl napkin rings I snagged in Mineola a while back. 

I did, however, snap some shots of dessert (you know, the most important food group): Mini pumpkin pies with fresh whipped cream!


They tasted delish after brunch and leftovers over the next few days, too!
You like those green rope-themed napkins? My mom made them years ago – aren't they great? 


The rest of the weekend was spent exploring Austin. We hit the Blanton Museum of Art, roamed around the UT campus, checked out the first-ever Renegade Craft Fair Holiday Market in Austin as well as the City-Wide Garage Sale, drove to Wimberley for wine tasting, where we picked up a cute bar cart for pennies (post forthcoming), had happy hour at Hotel San Jose and popped into the shops along South Congress, and ingested way too many good dinners and brunches. I hope you all had wonderful dinners with friends and/or family – whomever makes you feel loved and thankful!

Giving Thanks

Image via Fiskars

The day is upon us; tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Hosts and hostesses near and far will soon no doubt be planning, scurrying around, sending family members out for last minute ingredients, testing the electrical loads of their houses by running the oven, stove, microwave, air conditioner and fans all day, kids will be hiding from parents so they don't get roped into doing chores, greeting guests (my least favorite task), fluffing pillows, replenishing plates of crackers while everyone munches and leading small-talk conversations.

For us, Thanksgiving is falling at a very hectic time. Not to worry; we'll have plenty of time to catch our breath when we're jobless and homeless in Austin (help!) I'll tell you this: I'm glad I don't have to fly this year, and be subjected to The Gov'ment's Great Junk-Touching Airport Security Experiment! (Hint: turn on the sound)

Dodged a bullet there, for real.

I digress. Thanks to the move and the most outrageous last few weeks of work, I've managed to get exempted from any Thanksgiving-related prepwork and/or participation. I couldn't tell you where our baking paraphernalia is right now and I've been working loooong days, making me pretty useless in the party planning realm. That doesn't mean I'm disinterested in what's going on in Thanksgiving Tablescape Land. Far from it – I'm seeing lots of lovely ideas this year. By now you know I'm not much for overly literal, theme-y decor, with the worst Thansgiving offender being decorating with root vegetables bursting forth from a random horn, por ejemplo:


This one has that we-are-the-world slash kumbaya slash vintage thing working in it's favor, so I'll give it a pass:


I have to admit I am a sucker for glammed-up, gold-flocked root vegetables, which is marginally tacky of me, but I think it's clever:


Wow. I digressed again, and I'm being totally snarks-ville. It's been that kind of month, ok? Forgive me. Onto the point: thanksgiving/fall/harvest-y decorations, of course! Here are some gems:

Image courtesy Martha Stewart

I'll never say no to burlap – or personalized napkins made of burlap:

Image courtesy Country Living


Martha's modern table

Eddie Ross is pretty much the reigning king (queen?) of tabletop styling. He pulls out all the stops every time. This is from a feature in Lonny:



Martha again. I can't help it – she's killing it this year! These cornhusk votives are so ethereal paired with the plum roses


As seen in House Beautiful, featuring Grandin Road wares


Image courtesy Country Living

Let's throw a bone to the kids for good measure. Those poor souls have to sit through the most boring adult conversations tomorrow:

Image from Fiskars

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!

Styling: Thanksgiving Tablescape

We were asked to design a tablescape for a client's ten-person Thanksgiving dinner. To keep costs down, we used as much of her own wares as possible, which was relatively easy because she had some great stuff to work with!

We decided early on to deviate from traditional Thanksgiving themes involving gourds and dried corn (although there's nothing wrong with a crazy, wart-y gourd every once in a while!) Instead, we took inspiration from the colors in the patterned porcelain dinnerware, pulled out a rich autumn palette of deep gold, red and yellow for the flowers and added a little sophistication and texture with teal linen napkins and cut glass Waterford vases.

On the client's black tablecloth, we arranged her grandmother's stunning Limoge china and her mother-in-law's silverware (beautifully engraved with an initial). We wrapped new napkins from Crate and Barrel with gold cords from Tinsel Trading Company and buttons from M & J Trimming for inexpensive, handmade bespoke napkin rings.

We filled her own collection of vases with a selection of fresh flowers from a sidewalk flower vendor and arranged her silver candlesticks among the vases to contrast with the gold accents on the dishes and napkin rings.

We love projects like this. We were extremely pleased with the result and, with all the winter holidays right around the corner, we hope to do more such projects in the future. See more images at FRISSON.