Sweet, romantic, and beautiful! With vintage vignettes down the tables and throughout the venue, the celebration of Katie and Ryan’s wedding was ready to begin. This week’s post features a quick peek of last night before the guests arrived – more coming next week!
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Our Easter surprise came as a last minute request to set the table for a Sunday family dinner – sweet!
Our design began with a vintage floral printed tablecloth, layered with bright green placemats and yellow napkins. We chose vintage stoneware patterns that featured green, yellow, and brown, and the sparkling jewels of the table were Sharon’s amber thumbnail tumblers – so gorgeous in the afternoon sunlight!
The centerpiece vignette included an eclectic mix of vintage gems – brass candle holders with yellow candlesticks, a mixed bouquet in a vintage vase, moss-covered egg cups and china purse, a vintage Easter postcard poised on a fork stand, and a cute ceramic basket filled with colorful jelly beans – so many fun, delightful touches to this stunning table!
Sharon absolutely loved her beautiful table and knew her Easter dinner guests would, too. As I am in the moment, writing this post about this intimate family dinner and thinking about our upcoming wedding this weekend, I realize once again why I love our business. Each event, dinner, affair, and occasion, small or large, grand or casual, is an opportunity for Southern Vintage Table to create a beautiful, unique, vintage-inspired table atmosphere for the most important guest list – yours!
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I had an epiphany this week worth sharing with any or all procrastinators out there – need something to motivate you to start that project that’s still on your list and has been for some time? Here it is – publicize your list and commit yourself to a weekly blog. Sound too extreme, a little wacky? Well, I can personally attest it has worked for me!
It was Thursday and I hadn’t settled on my weekly blog post topic. The week had been especially busy getting ready for three weddings coming up this month – ironing napkins, packing dinner plates, polishing silver – and I kinda lost track of time. I had to get going on something that day – especially if it was a project that might take a little time.
As I was mentally running through my long list of restoration projects, I experienced the epiphany – if I didn’t have this weekly self-imposed commitment, I wouldn’t be worrying about getting a project done in the next two days. Whoa. My blog is more than a way to share our adventures, new inventory, and events – it’s my push, my inspiration, and maybe more importantly, my reason to get things done.
So, it was time to tackle our final goal set at the start of the new year – restoring, distressing, and repurposing some of our vintage finds. I am pleased to reveal our first restoration and here’s the before and after. Not only does it have a new paint job, it’s structurally improved as well!
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Two years ago I found this metal mirror frame at a local thrift store. I covered the black metal with blue chalk paint, distressed it, and inserted a blackboard piece. It looked pretty good but the blackboard kept slipping out and it was so lightweight, it easily toppled over. So, I wanted to add a little heft, re-paint it, and glue the blackboard to the frame. It was time to check this one off!
To add the weight, I unscrewed the base and added kitty liter to the base using a funnel. Yep, clay kitty litter. I didn’t have any sand and didn’t want to go buy some so I used what I had. To keep the kitty litter from spilling out, I cut a wine cork – one of my favorite fix-it solutions – and stuffed it in both ends. I screwed the frame back together and painted it using three shades of gold, first painting with the antique gold color and then adding the lighter two here and there. After a light sanding in key places to the reveal a little black, I added a light coat of gold.
Before gluing the blackboard and to dress it up, I glued a strip of wall paper to the back of the blackboard piece. Some time ago, I picked up a few rolls of left over wall paper at a thrift store. It was a terrific purchase because not only did I use it in this project, I have used it several other times as well. My final step was to prevent the backboard frame from swaying. My solution was to add a few hooks to the back and create a twine design, connecting the two pieces of the frame.
So, one restoration project finished as well as our weekly blog posted. Done and done. Already thinking about what project to tackle next ’cause next week comes up pretty quickly! Here are two ways you might use this restored, and steadier, gold blackboard stand now in our inventory at Southern Vintage Table!
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In last week’s post we unveiled our new Vintage Centerpiece Packages! I must admit, I am super excited about this concept because now our wonderful collection of vintage decor can more easily harmonize with each other in unique table vignettes. After refining the concept last week, I wanted to design another set and it didn’t take me long to find my inspiration – my favorite signs of spring, forsythia and daffodils!
I love the color yellow – it’s warm, bright, and evokes happiness. With this joyful color of spring in mind, I gathered our vintage items of yellow and gold, picked flowers, cut sprigs, and began creating. Let’s test the steps from last week’s post with our new spring-inspired vision:
Step 1: Determine how many clusters you’ll need for your vignette.
3-5 clusters on each table.
Step 2: Decide on the number of different groups of vignettes.
8 tables with 3 different designs – Group A – 2 tables; Group B – 3 tables; Group C – 3 tables.
Step 3: Create a formula for each vignette grouping.
Goal – Gold metals, two sets of flowers/greenery in each setting, candle lighting at each, ceramic vases, yellow candlesticks
Here are three ideas for a bright, cheery look for a table featuring yellow!
Step 4 – List the items needed by their three groups.
Step 5 – Let Southern Vintage Table select, pack, and deliver your items!
We’d love to help you create your unique table centerpiece! For yellow lovers, check out last year’s post, Happy Yellow Vintage China, And, for beautiful, locally grown NC flowers, check out the flower offerings at Fernrock Farm which provided the lovely daffodils in our arrangements. Thank you, Carrie and Bill!
This was way too much fun – look for another set of vignette inspirations coming soon!
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One of life’s happiest events is a wedding and right up there with it is the traditional celebration for the upcoming nuptials – the time-honored wedding shower. And, Katie and Ryan’s shower was even more special because Katie is our delightful niece. She and our daughter, Taylor, grew up together which means this day was pretty special for many of us!
The event took place at the Schley’s Grange Hall – a wonderful facility north of Hillsborough that is an affiliate of the NC State Grange and National Grange organization. Their mission is to serve the local farming community and their building is available for groups to use and rent. It was perfect for our large gathering of 60+ friends and family who wanted to share their good wishes with Ryan and Katie.
To add extra sweetness to the occasion the date for the shower was set for Valentine’s day. Our color scheme featured pinks and blues with a splash of Valentine’s. Katie’s sister, Lauren, sewed light blue base cloths to peek through our beautiful, vintage laced overlays. Bouquets of roses, baby’s breath, and tulips added a fresh spring look in our vintage milk glass vases. Final decor touches included vintage frames, postcards, votives, glass candle holders, and – yum – Hershey’s kisses.
The tables were set with mixed and matched vintage china teacups with a tea napkin tucked underneath, and our lovely vintage patterns of silver-plated flatware. Vintage blue, clear, and pink goblets added the colorful sparkle. Since the delectable treats were served as a buffet, our vintage luncheon plates were beautifully stacked and ready for guests.
As a “Thank You” to her guests, Katie baked sweet favors and shared their personal meaning with us. Last Valentine’s Day on the way to a game, Ryan presented her with a box of chocolates. Now, this was no ordinary box; it contained dark chocolate turtles! As Katie shared in her story, she had mentioned how much she loved dark chocolate and Ryan remembered this. But, the other part of Ryan’s choice is they were in the shape of Katie’s beloved animal, a turtle. So, as you might guess, Katie loved his sweet gesture! This is one of their favorite memories together, and now it is also one of ours!
“Best shower EVER!! Everything was elegant and so beautiful! Shelly did a great job picking out the right china and glasses for the shower; all of the colors worked perfectly together. The Valentine’s Day theme came across well in a subtle way while still feeling like a bridal shower. I loved everything about it! Shelly even remembered a few of the pretty vintage post cards that I like and she included them in the centerpieces as well! It was a perfect bridal shower and I feel so blessed to have such wonderful friends and family that each worked so hard to help bring it all together. I had a great time celebrating with and seeing so many of my friends and family! After seeing how beautiful everything was at my shower, I’m even more excited to see the final outcome of the centerpieces at our wedding reception. I know Shelly will make it just as lovely! Can’t wait for our Big Day!” – Katie
My pleasure, Katie, and thank you! I join Katie in thanking all who put together this joyous occasion – bridesmaids, Heather, Katie, Sarah, Brittany, Krystle, and Megan – sisters, Lauren and Andrea – mother, Joy – and family friend, Cynthia. More photos will be forthcoming from photographer and friend, Jenny Swanson, and we’ll be sure to share!
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It’s been a fun weekend for Southern Vintage Table! We helped with Sarah’s Valentine’s dinner and Katie’s bridal shower – two sweet occasions filled with joy and love. After packing, delivering, setting up, cleaning up, repacking, unloading, unpacking, cleaning, and putting away, there was little time left for our weekly blog but here are a few photos from these two lovely affairs. More details and photos coming soon!
Many thanks to Katie’s friends and family for helping set up, clean up, and pack! And, I am so grateful for the creative talents of my friends, Jami and Priscilla, for arranging centerpieces, matching teacups, and making it such a fun evening getting Sarah’s dinner party ready for her guests!
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It’s been very busy at Southern Vintage Table this week. This month we are helping with four events! And, what’s wonderful is these are very different kinds of affairs. We have a bridal shower for Katie, Sarah’s Valentine’s dinner party, a photo shoot with Tre Bella, and the Rolesville Chamber‘s annual awards banquet. We are packed and ready for the first three and getting things together for the fourth. Look for these to be featured in the coming weeks!
One of the table decor items we are featuring for the bridal shower and dinner party is a collection of small vintage frames. For the last couple of months, I’ve been picking these up at various thrift stores and my vision was a montage of frames on the table filled with lovely things like post cards, intricate lace or doilies, and pretty flower backgrounds. I love how these look and can’t wait to see them on the tables!
These frames are in our Tabletop Decor Collection and can coordinate with any event. I’m working on our soon-to-be-revealed Vintage Centerpiece Package and our frames certainly will be included as one of many different options to help create interesting and pretty tables for your guests!
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I had a nice surprise this week! Amy of Knots’N’ Such Event Planning presented me with this gorgeous, fragrant arrangement in one of our vintage aluminum mugs used at a photo shoot last month at The Royal Banquet and Conference Center in Raleigh. Of course, I absolutely love the combination of flowers, colors, and greenery. As I was admiring the beautiful flowers, it came to me. This bouquet will be my inspiration for this week’s blog! I’ve been wanting to showcase more of our vintage vase ideas and these would be perfect! So after I enjoyed this arrangement for a day, I began experimenting.
First, I tried a deep purple vintage vase shared with me by a dear friend. The shape of the vase is a classic and Amy’s arrangement looks oh-so beautiful! I had to enjoy this for several hours before taking it apart to test out a few more looks.
For the next look I wanted see how the lovely flowers would look in an assortment of milk glass and vintage white egg cups. I think you’ll agree these petite arrangements are sweet against the white glass!
The trailing plant gave me one more idea I wanted to try. Using a tall candle holder with a tea light glass insert, I created this look. It needs more of the trailing plant cascading around to hide the green floral foam but it is stunning, don’t you think?
Thank you, Amy of Knots’N’ Such Event Planning, for the flower bouquet and for providing the inspiration for this week’s blog. We have more vases pinned on our Pinterest board and be sure to check out our vintage decor on our newly revamped website!
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Whoop whoop!! Our new website is up and running! My wonderful, fantastic reviewers (Trudy, Carrie, Priscilla, Jami, Mary and Pat) and I love the color scheme and the slide shows featuring our beautiful, vintage inventory. I am so excited our site pages and blog posts all are here at the same place! I can even check my site stats here and now everyone can pin photos directly from the site. Yippee!
Email subscribers, here’s something really important to note – this will be my final post at my wordpress.com blog. I will be posting from this new website but it is super easy to re-subscribe at the top right of this page. New subscribers are welcomed!! When you subscribe, you’ll be notified via email that a new post is up, which is every Sunday. (Also note, this post and all the other posts are published on both blogs but I will be taking down the old one soon.)
I’d love, love, love (and be most appreciative!) if you’d also follow us on Southern Vintage Table’s Facebook page. I tried adding a Facebook Like Widget but I couldn’t find a position on the page that looked right. That’s one thing I need to figure out. I post on Facebook once or twice a week, mostly about new vintage finds or treasures, which I think you’ll love to see!
For those who are interested, I am using GoDaddy’s feature, Managed WordPress, which means I went from WordPress.com to WordPress.org because it’s now a self-hosted site. With this change, I now have more control over the themes and can add widgets to add all kinds of features – like the slide shows on each page featuring our inventory, a footer with contact information and a email subscription field only on the blog page. There is still much to learn! I also dropped my Dreamweaver subscription and, with the Managed WordPress on GoDaddy, I have reduced my hosting fee. GoDaddy provided a temporary url to use while building the site, took down the old site when I was ready to launch, and migrated all the pages over to the same domain name. All in all, this is a terrific update for Southern Vintage Table!
Take a look and tell me what you think! I’d love to hear your comments, ideas and suggestions.
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A new year is the perfect time to set a few goals and we have three major ones on our list at Southern Vintage Table. Here they are!
We have collected all kinds of cool, wonderful vintage doo-dads and small linens – tins, vases, books, postcards, coasters, votives, doilies, hats, gloves, small purses, small stands, candle holders, small frames – to use as table decor. Our next step is to put together a “per table” package so clients can customize their own vintage look for their guest and serving tables. If I haven’t checked this off my list and you would like to know more, please let me know! I’ll get right on it!
This one may be the most fun goal of the three but figuring out which ones to tackle first will take some time. For instance, I found two 3-paneled dividers but both of them need a little work – one needs embellishing and the other needs to be repaired. We also have a few wooden items that would look so much better with a distressed look and a couple of trumpets just waiting to be upscaled into something unique. Just waiting for some cosmic inspiration…
H-u-u-ge job, I know, but it’s time for a fresh look and we now have lots of terrific photos from this past year to showcase. I will be moving my business site to Wordpress but I have a lot to learn about how to do it.
Okay, my goals are out there which means I better start checking them off. In the meantime, sending you wishes for a wonderful, happy and prosperous new year from
Southern Vintage Table!
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