Holiday Dining Room on Mackinaw Road

Hi! I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving Weekend!! This post is probably 10 days too late, but here it is just the same. I do think that it is versatile enough that some of the ideas could easily be incorporated into a Christmas table, too. Here is our Holiday Dining Room.

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Last year for Thanksgiving, our table was on a much more traditional level. (You can check it out here.) This year, however, I was scrambling. Gretchen and I added picture frame molding to the room and I also painted it my favorite white paint color. All within days of hosting Thanksgiving.

The Picture Frame Molding

While I don’t have a tutorial (and won’t) for adding picture frame molding, you can easily find blogs that will describe how to do this in a much more detailed and coherent way than I could. I will say that using a tile (just a 3×6) to help keep things cohesive (e.g., measuring a “tile’s length” away from the windows and a “tile’s width” away from the chair rail was my kind of measuring and made it much easier for me. We had to adjust the plan around the sconces, but other than that, it worked quite uniformly.

I also bought a long level (my new favorite tool- it has a ruler on it too!) and will be hiding this so it doesn’t get lost by other family members. This is the molding we used. I love it and think it works perfectly in the room. Because it is so small, we ended up using a hand saw and mitre box and then sanding the edges with a sanding block.

The Table

I found this table cloth at Target for under $30! And it is 120″ long!! It is a beautiful color and is even more perfect in person that it was online. I complimented the color with this planter from The Counting House and my dried stems (that were dried absolutely and completely on purpose- wink). I used my grandmother’s brass taper holders with black candles. Black candles are sort of one of my new favorite things. Against the brass, it all feels very elegant to me. We were so happy that my parents and aunt and uncle were able to join us for Thanksgiving. I believe that they gave us a set of our wedding china 16 years ago. It felt like a nice to touch to use that dinnerware paired with flatware from my grandmother. The kids used some more festive plates with turkeys on them (not pictured) adding a cheery vibe to the neutral table.

The Artwork

My sister and brother-in-law lived in Chicago for several years before moving back to Michigan. We loved visiting them and walking down to Wells Street. This drawing of the Old Town Art Festival is a nice reminder of those times.