Dare to DIY... Dare to Entertain

There were about a million reasons why I was going to skip this week's Dare to DIY challenge. This week is Dare to Entertain, and the idea is to show off your table settings.

1. I am not cooking Thanksgiving dinner. I honestly don't know if I will ever cook Thanksgiving dinner. It's not that I don't want to, it's that the Mister has a HUGE extended family (his mom is one of 9 and his dad is one of 8) and we live fairly close to them. They have big coordinated dinners where people bring dishes, have cake walks, play BINGO etc. It's not weird for both sides of the family to have holiday dinners of over 50 people. (my family is much smaller: 10 is a huge gathering for us.)
2. We don't have any "nice" China- well, that's only kind of true. I inherited my great-grandmother's China when my grandma passed away. But, it's not a whole set, and its packed away until we get a hutch to display it in.
3. Our table sucks. It is small, and we only have two real chairs. There is a folding chair that we keep at the table too. If we have another couple over for dinner, we bring in a patio chair. I'm kind of embarrassed that I just typed that.

But here is the real reason I was going to skip this week:

Our table is a dumping ground for junk mail, bills, random papers and keys/jackets/my purse/my lunch box. As soon as both of us get home, stuff from our pockets/in our hands goes on the table. I go through it every month and a half or so, but I get frustrated/overwhelmed with it all.  So when I saw what this week's theme was, my immediate thought was, that's nice, but not for me.

Then I decided to use it as motivation. This challenge gave me a reason to find homes for previously homeless items. I went through papers, put a bunch in the shred pile and others could go straight to the recycling. And just like the spare room, it really didn't take that long. Then I got to the fun part.

Our dishes are Fiestaware, which I love. The place mats were actually a set of 3 gigantic cloth napkins (A gift from Crate and Barrel or Willams and Sonoma I think). A friend of ours cut them each in half, hemmed them and then viola, we had 6 place mats. The center piece is a basket of paper mache fruits and veggies. I am slightly obsessed with these bad boys.

Guacamole anyone?

How cute is that banana??

Here is the rest of the collection. Sometimes I switch out the
small baskets with different combos of fruits and veggies. Is that weird?

The Mister was very happy that the table was cleaned. I figured he would want me to put all the dishes away after my little photo shoot, but he said that we should leave it out for awhile. Then the fat cat jumped on the table, and after shooing her off, we cleared it.

Besides for the napkins turned placemats, there isn't any DIY involved in our table. Except the cleaning and organizing of the stuff that was on the table. That was enough DIY :)

So there you have it, our everyday table. Someday I wold like to have a holiday table scape, but it will probably be awhile.

Are you hosting any holiday dinners this year?