Orange & Silver is the New Thanksgiving

~Nantucket Island~

Thanksgiving 2015 brought a much larger crowd to our island home! We arrived on the island to celebrate Thanksgiving with our daughter’s in-law family from Cincinnati, who had never been to Nantucket! Our journey began with a tailgate for thirty at the Yale Harvard game in Connecticut, and continued on up to Massachusetts and out to sea, in all of its fall regalia! The more the merrier for me!

My table this year was a bit more formal than usual. My design and color scheme was based on the gorgeous charcoal, silver and orange Jacquard linens I found at Williams Sonoma in Winter Park, Florida. I just drooled over them.

Antique silver bun warmer. Saint Louis crystal. Ralph Lauren china

Pillared candles perched on walnuts.

Our day begins with a 5k race road race, followed by the Turkey Plunge and followed by the annual "Bloody Mary" party at my brother-in-law and sister-in-law's home. Then we have our soup and once again, meet up for a walk on the beach with the other Lyons family.  So, our dinner is always in the early evening,  a candlelight Thanksgiving dinner after dark, with the fireplaces roaring and lots of wine.

Time to pour the wine...and get this party started!

NOTE TO SELF: RELY ON YOUR INSTINCTS! Try to fall in love with your design way in advance! I found these linens two weeks before the holiday. I was jittery about relying upon on-time, on-island delivery. So I hunted down every store I could physically go to, and was successful in finding what I needed. It was too late to cancel the order… which arrived four days after the holiday! INSTINCTS! Rely on them!  

The first order of events was to put a rush online order in for monogram cocktail napkins!  They are inexpensive and make a big statement. Having fun with the color scheme, I ordered silver raised damask paper napkins with our monogram in burnt orange foil, from my “go-to”, The Stationery Studio. Shop online at www.thestationerystudio.com.

Silver damask cocktail napkins with burnt orange foil monogram.

I decided to get out all of the Christmas silver and get polishing! It was bold, elegant and formal! Different from my usual Thanksgiving themes… My candle design this year, using the same candle holders I used last year, included bright orange pillar candles perched atop large walnuts and placed them between scattered ORANGE PUMPKINS. I brought out silver ice buckets, and vintage silver pieces that included our antique bun warmer, and placed everything around the table as I would a collection. And, of course, I used our autumnal Ralph Lauren china and our Saint Louis “Tommy” patterned crystal.

The colors of the food from our feast, popped with this palette.  Here is my Butternut Squash Soup with apples and bacon.

                                                                                       I loved it! It was a wonderful Thanksgiving!