A PASTA INSPIRED TABLESCAPE

When you do your tablescapes, do you plan the dishes to go with your meal? Do you plan your menu based on your tablescape? Do care if your meal even goes with your tablescape? Or, do you not even really use your tablescape for a meal?



Most of the time I don't care if the meal goes with the theme of the tablescape. But, sometimes I do.

In fact, sometimes the meal dictates the theme of my tablescape. Like it did tonight.


I was at Rogers Gardens and found my way into their gourmet food section. I saw this colorful striped bow tie pasta and couldn't pass it up. I thought it was so pretty and couldn't wait to try it out.

So, I knew what we were having for dinner. It was now time to start pulling things together for the tablescape.

I had to use some of the pasta on my table. After all, it was the inspiration for what I was going to use.

I got these salad plates awhile ago at TJ Maxx. Look at the stripes on them. They are the same colors as the pasta! How could I not use these?



I love the many colors on these salad plates. There are greens, golds, blues, rusts and even some red.

The picture in the center of the salad plates are a vineyard. When I think of vineyards I think of rolling hills.

So I used golden dinner plates with an edge that reminds me of rollings hills.

The tablecloth was a plain dark rust and I pulled in more golds with the candles.

Each salad plate has a different scene of a vineyard. These plates could be used in several different tablescapes and I already had one planned out that is nothing like the one I did today.

However, I am going to have my sister and brother in law over later this summer and plan to eat outside with that tablescape. So, I had to come up with something different tonight.

I also used glasses I got at Macy's. They are big water goblets with a rim that is hand painted with a rust color band around the top.

The glasses matched the tablecloth perfectly.

I had found these napkins at Ross a few months back. They were in the clearance section. I had no idea what I would use them for but didn't they come in handy for today's tablescape.

They have the same colors and the stripes that the plates and pasta have.

The napkin rings are made of wood and I found them at Bed Bath and Beyond. I got them for last Thanksgiving. But I thought the natural look to them were great with the outdoor vineyard look.

I love the flatware. I found this set at TJ Maxx around Christmas time. I've seen several other flatware sets that sort of look like these. I would love to get them in different colors. I think they are so pretty.

Bad thing about these though is they say you have to hand wash them and they shouldn't go in the dishwasher. Oh jeez, I'm so lazy!

We started dinner with a colorful salad that look great on the plates. Mixed baby greens, fresh spinach, apples, walnuts, dried cranberries in a red wine (vineyard) dressing.

The pasta lost some of it's color as it cooked but still looked pretty good. Those the bows seemed to fall apart and they looked more like ribbons.

The pasta was colored with vegetable dye but had only the flavor of the plain pasta.

I put an Artichoke, lemon pesto sauce on it. Boy was this good!

I should have put a little bit of fresh basil on here, at least for the picture but I was to hungry so I just sprinkled a little bit of fresh cheese on there and dug in.

No dessert tonight!

I'm joining in the fun over at Tablescape Thursday at Naps on the Porch. If you have not yet pop in over there, please do so. There are a ton of beautiful tablescapes over there.