DIY: Christmas Gathering

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Christmas Gathering

Christmas is such a magical time of year ~ we love how it brings friends and families together, gives us all a moment to stop and appreciate one another and gather for deep belly laughs over a shared meal.

We love setting the scene and creating magical atmospheres for people to celebrate life, so wanted to share some inspiration for you to weave a little extra sparkle into your holidays.

How to create your gathering: 

Set your space
 Clear the area around your table so it’s free from clutter and everyone can just be focused on each other and the moment. If you have a rug that fits under your dining table it may be nice to lay it down as it creates an dining area seperate to the rest of your house.

Place plates, bowls and large decorations
Place your dinner plates and serving bowls and plates on the table so you can work the foliage around them. We also had some lanterns and candlesticks that we arranged down the middle of the table to bring in some gold elements.

Create a foliage runner
We made a runner down the middle of our table by layering foliage and a few flowers. We started at the ends of the table draping the greenery and worked our way into the middle, simply working around the serving plates and lanterns we had already placed. The foliage will want to run a little wild and we love how this adds to the feeling of the table setting – we left some sprigs poking out in all directions and added in some feature flowers to add pops of colour.

Set the table
Set each place setting with glass wear, cutlery, and a napkin. We loved pairing earthy ceramic plates and raw linen napkins with the finer elements of gold cutlery, crystal cut glass wear and Moroccan lanterns. Use some left over foliage from your runner (or sprigs of rosemary would look beautiful too!) to put a trimming on each plate. You could also place a card, gift, place setting or cracker.

Candles
Place white pillar candles on the table, scattering them throughout the runner and serving plates. Hold off lighting these until just before your guests arrive or are sitting down for dinner. Candles always create the most beautiful ambience – if you have little ones around, or don’t want to light candles on the table you could replace these with battery powered fairy lights and simply weave these throughout the foliage.

Decorate around your table
Consider the space around your table and see if there are any other surfaces that could be included in your styling. We set up our Christmas tree in the corner near our dining table and  hung some bunches of flowers on a plain white wall behind the table. To add an extra wow factor we suspended a dried out branch above the table and wrapped fairy lights around it – this and the candles gave us enough light for dinner whilst setting a beautiful celebratory mood.

xx

Created by Spell 
Styling Lisa Danielle & Lucy Ewing
Muse Elise Cook
Wine Down the Rabbit Hole Wines
Ceramics & napkins Kinfolk & Co
Table, chairs, glass wear hired from The Wedding Shed
Flowers from Flowers at the Farm


Keep Scrolling for our Holiday cocktail recipes…

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Our Christmas Cocktails

Rosé Spritzer
90ml Rosé (we used Down the Rabbit Hole Rose)
2 strawberries
1 slice of lemon
15ml sugar syrup
30ml soda
Strawberry & mint sprigs, to garnish

Ice cubes

Method:
Muddle strawberries & lemon in the glass
Add a few cubes of ice
Pour over rose & syrup
Top with soda
Garnish with strawberry & a sprig of fresh mint
Grapefruit & Elderflower Martini
60ml Gin
45ml freshly squeezed grapefruit juice
45ml freshly squeezed orange juice
20ml Elderflower cordial
Sprig of rosemary & roasted lemon slice, to garnish
Dash of soda

Shaken with ice

Method
Shake gin, grapefruit juice, orange, juice, elderflower

cordial and ice in a cocktail shaker.
Pour into glass and top with a dash of soda.
Garnish with roasted lemon and a sprig of fresh rosemary.Note: For the lemon garnish we simply roasted the lemon slices
in the oven until they were browning around around the edges.

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