Tag Archives: Provincial Home Living

Creating The Perfect Christmas Tablescape

Here at Aspley Homemaker City, we are well and truly in the Christmas spirit! Our beautiful retailers have their amazing new Christmas décor on display and the carols and festive tunes are right around the corner. We love the festive season as it incorporates all the things we love most; spending time with loved ones, eating delicious food and decorating our homes in a beautifully themed way. One of the many aspects we love about decorating our home for Christmas is styling our dining table for the big day. There are a few key elements that go into creating the perfect Christmas tablescape and today we are sharing all of our secrets with you. We hope this leaves you inspired, joyful and ready to host Christmas day this year for all your loved ones!

Pick Your Theme

The best place to start when thinking about designing your tablescape for Christmas is to narrow down a theme. There are so many different themes you can choose for Christmas decorating and some of our favourites include traditional, bright and colourful, native and natural or glamorous and metallic. Our beautiful retailers have some amazing pieces that will work perfectly with your chosen theme. Provincial Home Living have some beautiful, themed ranges including their navy, gold and silver collection that would be perfect for a glamourous and metallic theme. Or why not go bold and try their mixture of pink, orange and green for a fun and bright take on Christmas decorating! If you can’t go past a traditional look, then a colour palette of green, red, and gold is always a crowd favourite. Your theme should be intertwined within every aspect of the tablescape decorating from the linen tablecloths and napkins to the name tags, flowers, and dinnerware. If you are struggling to pinpoint an exact style you love, we recommend jumping online to Pinterest to curate your theme and find an abundance of inspiration.

The Essentials

To create the perfect Christmas tablescape you need to ensure that all the essential items are catered for. This includes dinner plates, side plates, dessert bowls, cutlery, water glasses and wine glasses. Other important aspects that we believe are non-negotiables are beautiful linen napkins, placemats, name tags and bonbons. When setting your table for Christmas lunch, start by laying your placemats, followed by your dinner plate in the centre, with the side plate and dessert bowl on top. Continue by placing the fork to the left of the plate, the knife to the right and the spoon to the right of the knife. Traditionally, a water glass is placed at 1pm on the top right, followed by the wine glasses to the right again. If you follow these simple steps, you will have the perfect tablescape layout and your guests are sure to be impressed by your thoughtfulness! You can pick up some gorgeous dinnerware, glassware and serving ware from a variety of our retailers such as Freedom, Provincial Home Living and Pillow Talk.

Decorate

Remember that when decorating your table for Christmas lunch it is always important to leave space for the food if you are following a grazing style. We love leaving space down the centre of the table where family can pick and choose their sides or dessert and help themselves with some gorgeous serving ware. To elevate your table and take it to the next level in style, we recommend adding a few key pieces to finish off the design. When selecting placemats and napkins, opt for a fun print in a beautiful linen fabric to tie in with your theme as mentioned above. We love adding candlesticks and a number of small vases with foliage or blooms to create a styled look without blocking the view of your guests. To finish off the tablescape we suggest adding some fun name tags or a Christmas bauble to the centre of each place setting. If you are after some beautiful tablescape inspiration, we recommend heading into Provincial Home Living where you will find some gorgeous displays and product you can pick up for your big day!

If you would like some help with curating the perfect Christmas tablescape, then click here to book in for your complimentary styling session with our Resident Stylist. We look forward to seeing you soon here at Aspley Homemaker City where we can help you find inspiration and shop for all your decorating needs this Christmas.

Bring Life Into Your Home – Decorating With Faux Plants And Flowers

Plants are a huge trend in interiors right now and have been growing in popularity over the past few years. As you scroll through Instagram or Pinterest you are flooded with images of beautiful interiors with gorgeous, vibrant plants and vases overflowing with foliage. Although we all love the look, some of us aren’t blessed with a green thumb or have pets or children that make owning indoor plants rather challenging. We are here today to show you how you can achieve the same beautiful, styled look through the use of faux plants and flowers. Faux plants and flowers have come a very long way since the powdery, plastic versions of the ’80s and ’90s. A number of our retailers here at Aspley Homemaker City offer an amazing array of faux items that are such good quality, you’ll fool even the keenest of eyes! Read on for our top tips and where to purchase our favourite faux plants and flowers.

Decorating With Faux Plants

Plants are a key aspect when designing any room, be it the living room, bedroom, dining room or kitchen. Plants not only add a beautiful pop of colour and vibrancy to a space, but they allow for a calming atmosphere by creating the illusion of being surrounded by nature. We believe you can achieve a very similar look by using faux plants that you can with real plants through a few simple tips. The key to choosing the perfect faux plant is to see it in person and feel the texture of the leaves, the colour consistency and how the plant falls. The plant should have a natural-looking texture, no shiny plastic and the leaves should fall nicely and appear light in weight. We also recommend investing a little bit more into your faux plants as the price point usually reflects the quality with these items.

Now that you have chosen the perfect faux plant it is time to add them to areas of your home that will make a statement and create a beautiful decorative accent. We love adding large floor plants such as a fiddle leaf fig or a bird of paradise to the corners of the living room, dining room or bedroom. Adding trailing plants to floating shelves or open shelving units can create a beautifully styled look. To give a natural effect, we recommend placing your plants in filtered light, near a window to give the illusion of a real plant. Make sure you wipe your plant/s leaves down every few weeks to avoid any dust collection as a dusty faux plant will give away the secret in no time!

Decorating With Faux Flowers And Foliage

Faux flowers, dried flowers and foliage are a huge trend in interior decorating at the moment. They are the perfect alternative to real flowers as they not only last longer but work out to be a more affordable option in the long run as well. Faux flowers and foliage are great if you are selling a home or staging a home as you don’t have to worry about changing the water in the vase or the flowers looking limp as time goes on. When choosing your faux flowers, stems or foliage make sure to touch and feel the product to ensure it has a natural look and avoid any pieces that look too perfect or plastic.

There are a number of places in the home that a beautiful vase of faux flowers looks amazing, but today we are sharing with you our absolute must-haves. We love the look of a large vase in the centre of the dining table with long stems to create a beautiful wow factor and centrepiece in the space. You can also add a vase of dried or faux flowers to your coffee table or bedside table for a styled look. To create a beautiful vignette on your kitchen bench we recommend grabbing a tray or chopping board and placing a beautiful bunch of faux flowers in a vase paired with a bowl of fruit and a beautiful smelling candle.

Where To Find Them

Here at Aspley Homemaker City, we have several retailers that offer an amazing range of faux plants, flowers, stems and foliage. Head into Freedom to check out their huge range of indoor plants that look so real, we’ll swear you’ll want to water them! We also love Pillow Talk’s trailing vine plants to add to open shelving or their beautiful faux flower stems in a variety of heights and varieties. Provincial Home Living have a gorgeous range of long stems that look amazing paired with a large vase for a statement centrepiece on your dining room table. Why not try adding a fresh, floral scent to your home to finish off the look? You can pick up some beautiful scents from The Sheridan Outlet or Provincial Home Living today!