I recently hosted a fall dinner party for 8. One of my favorite things about entertaining is the setting. I love dishes, centerpieces and seasonal décor. I love entertaining, but I do get a bit stressy about things, so I don’t do it as often as I’d like.

Here’s how I set the table for my fall dinner:

I used a drop cloth from Home Depot as a tablecloth. I folded it in half and spread it on the table- the rougher canvas texture was perfect for the atmosphere I was going for. I used the lighter off-white one, but there is a darker one that would make a nice statement, too. Really, either one would be perfect at a Thanksgiving dinner. I have a longer table, and I hate buying expensive tablecloths, because inevitably they get stained.

I made wooden placemats from a $12 sheet of plywood. I had the man at HD make the cuts for me, sanded the edges with an orbital sander, and stained them with a mahogany stain. After they were stained, I stamped a letter A in the lower right corner and used a spray sealer on them. These really added to the atmosphere I wanted. Maybe because I waited to the last minute to do them and the aroma of the wood was still pretty strong. I had him cut them in 18” squares, but with hindsight, I would have preferred 12×18”. The ones I used on the ends of the table were perfect. I used a combination of marigold and teal napkins because I was trying to avoid the orange-y pumpkin feeling.

Place cards were simple kraft paper (from my scrapbooking supplies) handwritten with a spring of rosemary stapled to the top. I used a tall skinny print when I wrote them, which could be easily replicated with this font, this font, or this font. On each plate, the place card was on the napkin. I was trying to make sure that I split up the husbands and wives around the table, and I placed my most vivacious guests toward the middle, which helps with the energy level of the party.

I bought 2 bunches of roses (24 in each) from Costco and one bunch of greenery. I didn’t use much of the greenery in the roses, but the rest of it ended up in the powder room in a vase. I had two cubicle gold glass vases in my closet, so I criss-crossed scotch tape across the tops and cut my roses really short. The tape helped hold everything up. I hate tall arrangements when you’re trying to talk at dinner, so these were perfect. They were full, and the colors were fall without being typical mums or sunflowers.

If you’d like to have a fall-themed dinner party, but you don’t really want pumpkins and gourds to be your centerpiece, this is a great way to go.