christmas eve dinner party

{GUEST POST}

christmas eve dinner party!

remember this party? and this party? 

then you are going to love this party by fete a fete

{again... same problem as last time - accents on blogger?? not sure how to do those...}

anyways you will love every amazing detail-

i LOVE the ornament placecard holders & 
the jingle bells napkin rings & 
the FOOD! it all looks amazing!

i don't usually host a christmas eve dinner party... 
but now i want to!!
enjoy!

******************************************

I love Christmas. I do. However, I get a little blue around this time of year, but that's because my whole family (minus husband, kids and dogs) is far, far away.
I think the last time we spent it together was back when I moved to the United States.
The year was 2000. Yep, quite some time ago.

But even though I think Christmas is being "rushed" on us earlier and earlier each year (plastic trees and glittery ornaments decorate store display windows even before Halloween!), I love when I start hearing Christmas songs and merry wishes everywhere. It always puts me in the holiday mode :-)

For the past few years I have been spending Christmas Eve at different friends' houses, but always wanting to host it myself. So it finally happened. We'd recently moved to a new city, didn't know a lot of people, but had already made some good friends. We thought it would be nice to thank them for their warm welcome by inviting them to dinner at our new place. This way we would feel a little more at home as well, and with our kid growing up (and another one on the way) maybe start our own holiday tradition - based on the memories from our childhood, but making new ones as well.

Since we didn't have much time to plan and didn't want to spend much on decorations (we had just donated lots and lots of boxes of stuff that didn't fit into our new pad), I started looking for things I already had in the house. I ended up with a few different glass vases and candle holders in shades of green and red and arranged them on our buffet table.

The same "decoration rule" went for the dinner table. Which is pretty much one of my favorite 

"green mantras": reduce-reuse-recycle (or even, "upcycle")

The place card holders were purchased from Pier 1 many years ago at an "after Christmas" sale and I had been waiting to use them ever since. I've never had marked seats at the table before, I like to leave the guests confortable enough to choose where to sit (and change their minds mid-dinner if they choose to do so). But... I admit it, I just wanted an excuse to use these adorable ornament look-alikes.

Jingle bells napkin rings also from Pier 1 big sale…

Inexpensive plastic ornaments and some garland purchased at Target (at their dollar bins) 

nested inside clear vases looked pretty good too!

The table runner is from West Elm, and the wine glasses from Crate & Barrel

I like to play around with different uses for jars, glasses... this time, 

the martini glass was reborn as a nut dish for the table.

Clockwise from left: Coconut brown rice with Brazil and cashew nuts, apricots and raisins; 

Herb-butter roasted turkey; Brown-butter, lemon-scented green beans with almonds; 

Rosemary-olive oil roasted fingerling mixed potatoes.

The kids couldn't be more ready for their gifts...

******************************************

thanks so much flavia for sharing this dinner party with us!

i am always in love with decor that uses things you 

already have - ornaments, glass bottles, votives...

and everything just looked so beautiful!

to see more of the details from this party click here

{YES there is more! she is amazing!}

be sure to follow along to see all her amazing parties

{blog}

{facebook}

merry christmas!

mindy starr