my simple, farm-style Christmas tablescape

My husband and I hosted Christmas at our house this year, which meant I needed to whip together a tablescape. We had 17 people in attendance, so we also had to add another long table to our formal dining room, which added another element of challenge for the design I wanted to accomplish.

I did quite a bit of Pinterest searching for inspiration, but I couldn't really find anything that I was 100% sold on, and I didn't feel like buying two $65 table runners* to create my "dream" tablescape, so I modified it a bit with things I had around the house, farm and in storage at my store.

Here were the results:

I can't get over how simple this was. Simple, cheap, but really festive--that's my kind of decor!

I purchased two polyester tablecloths on Amazon the week before. I knew I wanted white tablecloths, so that was the simple part.

In my mind, I had pictured a 12" piece of reclaimed barn wood spanning the length of the table instead of a traditional runner, but I couldn't find a piece without dismembering the chicken coop. Our table was about 13' long and I couldn't find any cloth runners that I liked that would work for such a length, so I made my own with some burlap I had in my craft room.  I cut it about 15" wide. I normally don't measure and am a big fan of "just winging it," but I wanted this to look nice, so I measured and tried my best to cut straight.

The centerpiece was a large silver Wilton Armetale platter with a cake stand perched atop with a floating cranberry globe and two large white pillar candles. Around it, I arbitrarily placed some greenery that I snipped out of our pasture's tree row (while a herd of goats looked on while licking their chops).  Nothing smells better than fresh evergreen. Delightful!

The Mason jars were really simple--some of them were just Epsom Salts with white votives, the others were Epsom salt with fresh cranberries and greenery.

I scattered around some pinecones from the tree row in our front yard, and finished off the table with some red foil plates from Hobby Lobby, plain white napkins accordion-folded and tied with thick jute, silver flatware and crystal wine glasses. 

So there you have it! An affordable, (I spent somewhere in the neighborhood of just $40 for this whole tablescape) festive tablescape that seats a large number of people. Currently, hosting another Christmas is not something I want to do next year (there's way too much cleaning involved for this lady!), but I'd be happy to help whip together more holiday decor for any one of our family members. 

* The plaid runner I love from Pottery Barn is on sale right now, so you don't have to spend $69! 

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