Thanksgiving Table Setting - Changes and Variations

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Christina Haire
Christina Haire Interior Design & Antiques
http://www.christinahaire.com/  
301-986-9075

For more than 20 years, Christina Haire’s creativity and passion for design has only been matched by her singular dedication to making clients happy. A member of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), her expertise in residential and commercial design has won her a stellar reputation and an international clientele. Christina has participated in many designer showhouses, including those of the National Symphony and Washington Design Center. She won an ASID award for excellence in a single room in 2005, and her work has been featured in numerous local and national publications. Her home was also the subject of two HGTV programs on interior design.

With a design philosophy best summed up as luxurious and inviting, her work is marked by warm colors, sumptuous fabrics and classic furnishings. She deftly melds the old with the new, the good with the not-so-good, and seamlessly combines the precious antique with the equally treasured memento or flea market find. Christina makes it her mission to reflect the very best of each client by creating personal rooms that are exquisitely tasteful and elegant, yet entirely functional. An unabashed lover of chairs, Christina is quick to admit that she has never met a chair she didn’t like—which is not to say that pillows, settees, ottomans, mirrors and sconces don’t also get their due.

In addition to her famed collection of European antiques and accessories, Christina has developed a love for Asian art and artifacts. Now dividing her time between the U.S. and Singapore, she has uncommon access to an array of Southeast Asian treasures. Among her favorite finds are rare Tibetan chests, vibrant Thai silks, handmade lacquerware from Burma and Vietnam and ornate silver from Cambodia.

A native of New York, Christina is a graduate of Syracuse University in Syracuse, N.Y. She is an avid traveler, gardener, reader and community activist.

She maintains a design studio in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and Singapore.

Thanksgiving Table Setting - Changes and Variations

In this video Christina Haire, an interior designer and principal of Christina Haire Interior Design and Antiques demonstrates how to set a Thanksgiving table. This video includes an overview of the steps needed to plan the table, the necessary elements for a basic setting and demonstrates step by step how to set the table. It includes tips and techniques as well as some variations on the Thanksgiving theme to make it uniquely yours.

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Christina Haire: Hi! I am Christina Haire. Today we are setting a Thanksgiving table. Now I am going to talk about some changes and variations on the theme. You could turn this into a buffet table. When you are setting your table for a buffet, it's important to visualize how traffic will flow. You need to make it flow so that as your guests go around the table it is in logical order that they pick up their plates and their napkins and their silverware as well as their dinner on the serving pieces. You can put silverware on little baskets to make it more visually appealing and you can still have a centerpiece and your candelabra in the center of the table or you can put all of this at one end of the table with your plates and your serving pieces around it.

Again, you can use un-matching plates and silverware for a buffet, even the sets of plates don't have to match. You can have different color, different styles. This works well if you are having a large group of people and you don't have enough of any one thing.

Those are some ideas for changing the theme of the table from a sit down to a buffet. Now I have enjoyed setting this Thanksgiving table for you as well as for my own family. I hope that you have gotten some ideas and even more than that, some inspiration for your own holiday and I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving.

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