A Red and Blue Christmas Table and A Christmas Dinner Menu

Happy Holidays! I can’t believe that Christmas is already here. I thought I’d just quickly share our Christmas Dinner Menu & Red and Blue Christmas Table plans. It’s a little traditional, a little coastal, a little Scandinavian-inspired… you get the idea… as usual… just making throwing-in-everything-I’m-drawn-to and creating my made-up style 😉

I also had big plans to share our Christmas living room but didn’t get around to that either. I’m hoping to share our cozy January living room after the New Year. In the meantime, here is our minimalist mantle. Let’s just pretend that the stocking hanger tree isn’t chipped. There are always a few Christmas casualties with little hands and curious minds (which is why the stockings will not be hung until Christmas Eve).

But back to the dining room, similar to our Modern Traditional Kitchen (you can check it out here) and our Minimalist Mantle, I kept our dining table simple this year as well. (For a more traditional Christmas table, check out this post from last year.) Our Red and Blue Christmas Table was inspired by some recently-purchased ornaments as well as napkins from last year as a jumping off point. Next, I began layering. First was the table cloth (since we’ve already been pretending in this post… just make believe that the table cloth is ironed… or is ever going to be ironed… or that I remember where our iron is…), followed by our navy window pane runner. Then I just added in some height with the berry tree and topiaries, followed by some wooden beads. And that was it for the center of the table.

For the place settings, I started with the silver chargers and then some red plates. The aforementioned napkin as well as my grandmother’s goblets and silver were added and that was that. 

The final touch was round Scandinavian ornaments. On Christmas Eve, I will move them to serve as place settings and little gifts for each of my parents. Ornaments are such a nice to way to incorporate a personal touch or a hint for the gifts to come after dinner. 

Which leads me to our Christmas Dinner menu:

Appetizer: I’m going to let you in on a little secret…. Maybe it’s actually not a secret at all and I’m just late to the game (sort of like I’m late to the Scandinavian trend… I just really like to wait until trend trains are on their way out of the stations to jump on board ;)). Anyway, Trader Joe’s Unexpected White Cheddar Cheese is soooo good! It crumbles and tastes like it is from a speciality cheese shop. We will be having that, some crackers, sliced cucumber with sea salt, and red grapes for the appetizer. And maybe some almonds. But that’s it. No need to spoil our appetites too early!

Dinner: For dinner, I’ll be making Barefoot Contessa’s ham. You can find the recipe here. We’ve had this before and it’s delicious. Citrus always makes things seem lighter and less straight-up meat-and-potatoes to me. Speaking of potatoes, my kids will not eat potatoes (well, except for french fries…of course). Instead of potatoes, I plan to serve corn casserole since they do seem to like corn. We will also have green beans with butter and sea salt (yep- we loooooveee salt) and a green salad. 

Dessert: If you were to offer those sitting around our table tomorrow a decadent three layer chocolate cake or a huge bowl of buttered (and heavily salted) popcorn after dinner, 3 of us would choose the cake and the other 3 would choose the popcorn. Someone has even had to have been told to take some bites of dessert because it is the polite thing to do. All this to say that while dessert is a must, it is also something we don’t always spend a lot of time on. As such, we will likely have some cookies, store-bought peppermint ice cream, and almond banket per our daughter’s request. Oh, and coffee. Always coffee. (The almond banket recipe is from a cookbook published in 1976 in Holland, Michigan, which makes it extra special! Also, the book would go perfectly with the Red and Blue theme.)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Source List (this list contains affiliate links, meaning that if you click and purchase, I may receive some compensation. Thank you!)

Ski Lift Art Print

Taper Holder- The Counting House

Stocking Holders (similar)

Tablecloth

Runner

Red  Dinner Plates

Napkins 

Silver Chargers

Dutch Cookbook