Thanksgiving table...

This Thanksgiving Mr. W and I hosted our first family holiday. Not only was it our first holiday to host, but it was also the first time that our families came to stay at our new house. We had so much fun planning, organizing, and just figuring out how to feed and sleep seven guests. One thing that we had to decide on was where all nine of us would sit for Thanksgiving dinner. Our house has an eat-in kitchen with a table that seats four, a bar that seats three, or a dining room that we use a reading / sitting room. Umm...that doesn't really add up to nine very well.

This will all make more sense once I show more pictures of our new house, but we ended up moving the big chairs, coffee table, and end table out of the sitting room to make room for a "dining table." The table actually consisted of two six-foot long folding tables from Lowe's and the tablecloth was a drop cloth from Home Depot. I had this all planned out in my head and kind of completely lucked out that it worked as well as it did - the tables fit perfectly in our dining room, the drop cloth was the perfect size, and the people fit perfectly.

A few days before Thanksgiving, Heart of Light posted about her holiday table planning, including that "You can squeeze in with 18" of space per person around the table if you all like each other - if not, you'll want 24-30" instead." This was the perfect information to put me into full nerd mode - I mapped out our table in PowerPoint to measure that we would in fact all fit and plan how it would look. Here is what I came up with:

As you see, we didn't have enough of any one color of plate or glasses for everyone, but since it was planned out I was able to make it look intentional. The horrible wrinkles in the drop cloth were not so intentional...oops, probably should have ironed. The finished table did end up looking very similar to the plan though. 

We kept it very, very simple and didn't even have a centerpiece so we could all see each other easily. And so we could easily clear the table to start playing our favorite game. :)

 

This last photo has nothing to do with the table or planning, but it is us with our amazing family the day after Thanksgiving at the boardwalk [and random photos and posts in weird orders seem to be my thing lately]. It was such a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend with our families!

[P.S. In case you're just dropping by, I do realize it is now January, but it's better late than never, right? :)]