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Labor Day weekend is our local Apple Festival, the biggest event of our year. For four days, we celebrate our county’s apple orchards. North Carolina is the 7th largest producer of apples in the US, and Henderson county provides 85% of the state’s production. Downtown is closed to traffic and set up with orchard booths and vendors. Downtown merchants dress their window displays with fun apple scenes. Dozens of varieties of apples as well as treats of every kind imaginable are for sale. The orchards open in mid-summer offering additional fun to patrons such as picking apples, hayrides ...

America’s 250th Independence Day is tomorrow so let’s get ready to celebrate. We’ll need some patriotic decor, and some great food to last through the holiday weekend. I started the decorating outside, by placing flags in the flower baskets.

Shop your house for red, white and blue to make a festive table. For this table, I used red chargers with white stoneware dinner plates topped with red salad plates. Crystal water glasses and everyday flatware make up the settings. The centerpiece is my melamine flag theme platter with silk flowers and dollar store star sprays.

The napkins ...

It’s been a fairly quiet week making for good days to putter around the house. Time for a new tablescape for summer. I decided on a chicken theme with fern green chargers and napkins.

The bowls have roosters on the sides. These are mostly for salad in the summer, but a bowl of my Chilled Corn Crab Soup would be good too. Or ice cream after dinner!

Green napkins are held with white ceramic chicken rings. Every day flatware is used.

The centerpiece is my white ceramic bowl filled with a riot of silk flowers. The colors are matched ...

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend, as we celebrate our freedom today, and remember those who gave the ultimate sacrifice tomorrow. I have an exciting announcement today! My Freedom Waves quilt made with Benartex fabrics will be on display at Beginnings Quilt Shop in Hendersonville, North Carolina this coming week. They also have the McCall’s Quilting Summer 2026 magazine which contains the pattern. It was so great of Todd and Kathy to want to show this quilt. It is sized to be appropriate for a Quilt of Valor, and goes together really easy with scrappy fabrics.

We ...

What is it about warmer temperatures that make me want a table full of yellow? Is it the sunshine? Maybe. But whatever the cause, it made me smile to bring out the yellow dishes and chargers to create a fresh table for spring meals.

The salad plates are called Chloe and they came from Pier 1 some years ago. I do miss that store. They are on white stoneware dinner plates and yellow chargers.

Yellow napkins are gathered into yellow flower pot napkin rings.

The setting is completed with everyday flatware, individual salt and pepper shakers and a crystal water ...

The Great Backyard Bird Count has begun, and I’m doing a count every day through today. The first day of the count, the local squirrels made an appearance for the first time in a couple of weeks. I had stopped making sandwiches for them as they would run off when I stepped outside. But this time, one came up to the door, paws folded, looking cute. I decided he hadn’t been here in a while. So, of course, I got out the makings and made two sandwiches just in case someone else got the idea while I was ...

This week, I’ve been working on some small projects, and was really looking forward to the guild meeting on Thursday. Unfortunately, this is what I awoke to that morning. It wasn’t much, maybe a half-inch, but enough to keep me from backing the car down that hill. At dawn, the golden light glows behind the mountains on the east side. The snow was continuing to fall briskly.

It stopped later, with under an inch total of the pristine beauty. Still, it was enough to keep me home, so I missed the guild meeting. Sadly, I missed seeing friends ...

During the month of December, I like to have my Christmas everyday dishes on the table for use all month. A few years ago, I found these stoneware salad plates in a design called Vintage Christmas and was just enchanted with them. I love the motifs and the black background. I looked back at previous Christmas tablescape posts, and the best I can remember, I got the plates in 2014. I think I found them at a thrift store. I use the set in different ways each year. For about 5 years, I only had the plates, and didn’t ...

Our Thanksgiving table is set for two, as we spend this day with each other. Starting with a special breakfast, we spend the day relaxing and enjoying parades, football and food. I place the settings so we can look out on our wonderful mountain view during the meal.

I put my Turkey Talk Placemats and table topper on our pub table and selected turkeys and pilgrims to create the centerpiece.

This year I put white stoneware dinner plates on copper chargers with the turkey salad plates on top. Crystal water glasses, individual salt and pepper shakers, and our good silverware ...

Now that Halloween is past, we turn our attention to Thanksgiving. For the final project post of Fall Fortnight, I’ll show some fun ideas for placemats and tablescapes to make our holiday celebrations special. Today’s post will have the final drawing entries for a Fat Quarter Shop $50 gift certificate!

From 2023, these Turkey Talk placemats and centerpiece are the ideal base for a Thanksgiving table. The placemats are a square in a square center set on point, with coordinating print on the sides. See the tutorial on how to make them on Turkey Talk Placemats.

Using them ...

Last week I promised to get my autumn theme tablescape done to show you and inspire you to set a pretty table at your home. This year, I wanted rich color, so I began with a dark burgundy tablecloth and a hexagonal table topper.

The place settings have copper color chargers, white china plates and my autumn leaf salad plates.

I got out the gold tone flatware as the warmth of the gold is wonderful with the autumn colors. Crystal glasses and individual salt and pepper shakers are on the right side.

On the left, gold napkins are held with ...

As August draws to a close, the harvest begins. It isn’t quite fall yet, but I am ready for cooler days, and the flavors of fall. Apples are my transition theme for cooking and decorating this time of year.

Labor Day weekend is our local Apple Festival, and it was gorgeous weather for it with clear skies, cool temperatures and low humidity. The four day festival in downtown Hendersonville has apple orchards from all over the county setting up booths to sell fresh apples and apple treats.

The King Apple parade on Monday is the highlight of the event ...

Moving into August, the hydrangea is starting to turn color to the muddy pink it usually takes on in the fall. But there are still a few blooms with the pretty clear lavendar I like best.

One blue bloom came out this week. The muddy pink can be seen behind it.

On the veranda, the orchid loves this hot humid weather. The single bloom is still lovely, and has been like this for three months now!

Unfortunately, the smaller bud behind it has never progressed beyond this point after the same three months. Sorry for the blurry picture, I could ...

Last week I got farther along on Koi Pond, and then was stymied once again. I finished beading all the fish, and they look great, but the purple beads do not shine as much as I had hoped. You have to be fairly close to the piece for you to notice them.

The last element I wanted to add was a water lily in the open space in the lower right corner. I pulled fabrics, trying to find something with a subtle print to add some dimension to the applique. Deciding on one that seemed to match the pebbles in ...

As the weather warms, more green is coming out on all the trees. It is lovely around our place, as well as on the drives we’ve been taking. The redbud has finished its flower show. Several mornings this past week have been foggy like this in the early morning.

The purple petunias in the hanging baskets are apparently very happy.

With all the spring green outside, I decided to bring that color inside for a nice tablescape. Spring green chargers and napkins provide the color, with a centerpiece of green, white and pink.

The settings have white china plates ...

The azaleas came into bloom this week with about half of the shrubs well into their spring show, just lovely! We have a lot of bushes inside the driveway island and down the edge of the meadow along the driveway. My favorite ones are the white ones. Luckily, the cold nights do not seem to have damaged the blooms significantly.

There are a few brown edges here and there, but mostly they are pristine.

I love the soft pink of this one, and it was full of big bumblebees busily collecting pollen.

On another white azalea, there is always one ...

Now that spring is here, lightening up the home decor with fresh flowers and garden themes suits me. Today, I have a roundup of ideas for tablescapes along with some delicious ideas for meals. So, let’s start with setting a table. I did this one for Easter dinner in 2017. It has the fun Easter Egg plates and bunny crackers I got at Pier 1. See the whole thing on the post Easter Tablescape.

Warmer days means being able to eat on the veranda. This tablescape from 2020 is set for two. Spring green placemats with yellow chargers hold ...

Warmer weather brings out the desire for lighter dishes and interesting flavors for meals. I love Asian influences in food and tablescapes, and today I’ll share a new table along with some of my original recipes for the food. This would be so fun to share with friends! A few years ago, I did an entire month of Japanese inspired posts, and I’ll link a few of those here today, along with a brand new tablescape. From time to time, I am contacted by companies to see if I would like to try their products. Sometimes I say ...

I have a couple of days to sew this week, and I am looking forward to Virtual Retreat on Friday as a sew day too! I have started a secret project, and all I can show you for now is this. It is going to be so fun! More details later when I can reveal it. But, it will have embroidery as you can see. It is National Embroidery month, see the bottom of this post for a special sale at Sulky on all your embroidery needs. This is a great time to get that stabilizer!

The mail has been ...

This week, I planned to have a couple of friends over for a day of sewing and chatting, and maybe just a touch of stitch-and-bitch. My Sweet Babboo always calls this a Hen Party, so I got out my chicken table topper for a nice tablescape for lunch.

I put my gold chargers at the places, topped with white plates and rooster bowls.

The chickens on the bowls are similar to the ones on the table topper.

Gold napkins are held with rooster napkin rings.

In the center of the table, a chicken trivet will be used to hold a ...