12 Days of Christmas: Creating a Vintage-Style Table for Christmas (Day 6)

Hello and welcome to Day 6 of our 12 Days of Christmas, dear friends!! Creating our jolly vintage-style holiday table is a real treat! With our grandson coming down, I wanted to share all of the small Christmas ephemera we have collected since we were first married ~ a happy collection of one Santa off a cake to small hot cocoa ornaments! Let’s check out our festive Christmas dining table…

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Vintage style table inspiration

I was at HomeGoods (not sponsored) sometime during the early fall when I spotted this tablecloth in their linens aisle. It immediately jumped into the cart! I loved it with the little vintage-style Santas and the whole 1940s-1950s look.

And wouldn’t you know it? This is a Rachel Ashwell Shabby Chic tablecloth! I have loved all of her linens, books, and home decorations over the past 35 years she has been designing beautiful things for the home.

Rachel made the decision this year, and probably with the cost of materials and import taxes figuring heavily into her consideration, she has closed down her Shabby Chic brand for now. 50% off sales are going on, if you wish to have some lovely bedding from her really couture line.

If you check out her blog on the Shabby Chic website, it says more. Makes me kinda sad that there won’t be any more flowery bedspreads, but with these last of a few things available anywhere, I am grateful for this beautiful, vintage-inspired tablecloth. Shabby Chic goes out with a Christmas-cracker bang!

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Using our now vintage tableware

For one of my birthdays in my late 30’s, Mr. Ethereal bought me the dinnerware set of roughly 35 pieces of Royal Albert Old Country Roses from the RA seconds store at outlet center in Lake Elsinore, California. This was in the 1990’s or very early 2000’s. The pattern is still available at Macy’s (linked) and at Replacements.com.

I love this set and it is my go-to china for the holidays when I wish to set up a really fancy dining table for our family! I hope one of our kids will want to take this set home someday for their own families. We have a lot of happy Christmas memories shared on these dinner plates.

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Natural woodsy centerpiece

Getting back to our table inspiration, our little guy is into Legos and Hot Wheels, Super Heroes and all the stuffies kids love to play with and use in their imaginitive play. So, here I’ve pulled out the little fachwerkhaus (half-timber house) given to me by an old boyfriend’s mother, a piece they had collected while living in Weisbaden, Germany, in the later 1970’s.

I think it may be English, though, as Gailen and her husband Karl often traveled to England as well as all over Europe. Gailen had a small collection of these tiny ceramic houses. She is the reason I fell in love with traveling and love European culture so much! 🙂

All around this centerpiece of little Christmas trees, we have a Santa one of my kids I think found somewhere. It was blank and meant to be a placecard, probably from a set, so I wrote on it in permanent ink “Merry Christmas” years ago. The little hot cocoa ornaments were something I probably picked up for each of the kids to tie on their present. I still get at least one new ornament for each of them every season.

Now I do that for our grandson, too. <3

Bringing out the “smalls” to this vintage-y Christmas tablesetting I hope will enchant his 5-year-old heart!

For glassware, I used a mix of crystal drink glasses and pretty wine glassware. I don’t have a complete set of tumbers anymore as three were broken while in storage (crushed boxes). But, like life, we go on and use what we have!

When we first moved to Texas, I wrote a post on spray-painting old silverplate platters to use as chargers. I only created four, so I guess I need to be on the hunt for more! I used those four here and one place setting is sans charger and red napkin (I am just noticing), as I didn’t have more either… It’s one of those photo shoots, lol!

I am glad that you get to see the whole effect with the Christmas hutch (12 Days – Day 4) in the background. Mr. Squirrel might move over to the table before everyone comes home. 😉

Just a little greenery went up on the chandelier this Christmas season. I may swap out the crystals as I bring out more baubles to decorate our tree. We shall see!

This 1990’s Avon Christmas plate has finally found its Christmas home!

Both of these art pieces were found at thrift stores (love the frames!) ~ the pheasants while antique browsing in Huntington or St. Ives with my sister-in-love Linnea, when they still lived in England (2005). The fruit still-life I found actually when I was back gathering some tableware from our storage unit before we had everything moved here.

Our household goods stayed in California for four years during the time we lived in our two RVs.

Packing tip: Did you know that when you pack dinner and salad plates to move, stand them upright? They are strongest on their edges. The sheer weight of plates stacked one on top of each other, when rattled or crushed in their boxes, will crack at least one of them.

Here is the whole Christmas table facing the very fleeting afternoon sun. When I started photographing this tablescape, the sun was streaming in the window. At this time of year, the sunlight only hits the table for maybe a half-hour or forty-five minutes, if that.

See how the light is leaving at the end of the table? I was QUICK laying all of the plates, silverware ~ everything was flying! so I could get these photos for you. 💜  I was going to find some napkins to mix in, honestly, but forgot.

Too busy photographing and the light was going… Oh, well! 😉

I will get one on there before whomever sits in that spot arrives over the Christmas weekend!

Thank you for stopping by today! I hope you have enjoyed our vintage-style Christmas table. Leave a comment or two, if you did, and please share how you are decorating your holiday tables with a link, if you have decorated yours. I’d like to see them over the Christmas week!

Also, Share Your Style #480 for next week is still open until Monday, 6:00pm, if you’d like to share anything there. I hope to feature a few New Year’s tablescapes at our final SYS for the year.

Thank you! And…

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Merry Christmastide to you,