It’s nearly mid-December and time to make merry. Let’s start with a Christmas table featuring classic elements: tartan, trees, animals and elves!
Juliska’s Berry and Thread in Whitewash is my everyday white pattern in the Cape. When we bought the Cape House over a decade ago, I fondly imagined a simple, minimalistic approach to housewares involving one tableware set for all occasions. Ha! Though the collection may have expanded somewhat, Berry and Thread has remained a constant. I’ve added to it with a set of cocktail plates in North Pole, picked up during one of the Factory Outlet sales a couple of years ago.
The diminutive plates are perfect for snacks and canapes, packing a lot of visual punch on a small canvas. They feature a lively assortment of animals and elves. From reindeer…
… to penguins.
Sleigh dogs
and polar bears.
During that same sale, I added another Juliska pattern, the Stewart Tartan scalloped dinner plate, which serves as the base of the plate stack below. William’s Sonoma Aerin red scalloped edge dessert plate (long discontinued, sometimes available on eBay) is sandwiched between each dinner and cocktail plate,
With so much visual interest from the plates and colour from the tartan runner, I stuck with clear glassware, Juliska’s Graham large wine and water goblets, and also from the original selections for the Cape House.
Filling the centre of the table was the most fun. There are many trees in several varieties—glass, lighted grapevine and bottle brush, interspersed with mercury glass votive candles. I love how it looked at night, all lit up and ready to party.
This table was set back in August, just before we started packing up the house to vacate in preparation for the kitchen and laundry room renovation (more on that in a subsequent post). While we were emptying cupboards in the kitchen and moving furniture, it provided an oasis of civilized, though unseasonal, beauty. I took photos over a few days, capturing it in different lighting before disassembling it and tucking everything away.
When I went to write up the post this morning, I discovered that Juliska had discontinued the North Pole lively cocktail plates. They’ve been replaced with an adjacent but more naturalistic pattern (shown below). Replacements carry the original cocktail plates.
The new version more closely mirrors the dinner plate (currently on sale at the factory at a heavily discounted price).
Juliska seems to have stuck with the original design for the salad plates, offered in assorted sets of four or four of the “elves village” pattern (upper left in the set below). The assorted set is available at full price at Juliska.com. and the set of four of the Elves Village is steeply discounted at the factory.
Since returning to Canada at the end of October, we have been engaged in a frenzy of cleaning and purging, with a bit of redecorating thrown in for good measure. My mind was already in renovation mode from the Cape project and thus primed to cast a critical eye over our Canadian house. I realized, somewhat startled, that we had been here twenty years. The kitchen was holding up well, but the paintwork around the bottom of some of the cabinets and the baseboards could use some attention. I got a couple of quotes, and 2Gals Pro Painting did a marvellous job. We changed the paint colour in a couple of rooms and refreshed the existing colours elsewhere. I also ordered two wallpaper murals through Etsy, one to redo the main floor powder room and the other for the grandgirls’ room (they’ve outgrown Curious George, enchanting as he is). More to come on all of that. But here is a sneak peek of the Salisbury Cathedral mural I used in the powder room. It turned out really well!
Painting and wallpapering finished, the house thoroughly de-cluttered and cleaned, we have decorated for Christmas, and I am once again ready to set tables and take up blogging. Let the festivities begin!
Enjoy the weekend, dear readers.
Your table setting “Christmas in Cape cod in August” must have been strange setting it with 80 degree weather outside! However it looks so festive and beautiful. Those North Pole small plates are adorable and a good find. Glad you decided 20 years ago to go minimalist. I think not!! Happy holidays.
The minimalist phase lasted about 3 months. If that! But you know me too well!
Blogging is a weird hobby, in that I’m frequently off season in setting tables, the exception being summertime when it’s “now or never” because of the actual flowers in the garden and the weather to set up outside.
Hope all is well and you’re enjoying yourselves!
xo
HK
Dear Helen,
So beautiful and inspirational!
I love the wallpaper selected for the powder room.
Well done!!
Thanks, Deanne. I’ll do a proper post on all the updates and changes in the New Year. There are still a few odds and ends to come, such as cushions for the chairs in the kitchen and a new medicine cabinet for the powder room. Meanwhile, I’m back to setting tables and it’s a lot of fun.
Best,
Helen
Dear Helen, Here we are again at Christmas, surrounded by snowy peaks! This table is unusual for you–an almost-all-Juliska setting. The plates are adorable; sweet but not saccharine. Somehow plaid became a Christmas thing, and here you use it to incorporate the traditional red/green theme but keep it subtle The glow of candles lights my every room, too. You know that I’ve loved Salisbury since seeing it for the first time when I was 14, so to imagine it dominating a powder room is wizard. Looking forward to seeing the continued redecoration.
Hi Beatrice,
You’re right in that I rarely feature only one designer at a table, but somehow the Juliska pieces all seemed to work best together for this table. The Graham goblets are visually very appealing but they’re extremely delicate and not well-balanced, so they get less frequent actual use than other clear glassware. Until you pointed it out, I hadn’t realized that plaid has become “Christmas”, but you’re so right! Time was it was common for people to have tartan furnishings, from upholstered pieces to carpeting, and of course, kilts still predominate as school uniforms. But by and large, plaid = Christmas.
Hope all is well with you and you’re enjoying your snowy peaks. We are surrounded by fog, rain, damp and more damp. Soggy dogs and muddy paws are the daily battle. A little colder weather would not come amiss.
Best,
HK
Oh I love it! I first found Juliska in 2016 – their Winter Frolic collection was so much fun! I didn’t buy anything because I was getting married that year and was trying to be responsible, which I regret because the line was discontinued and the pieces I loved are impossible to find! I’m currently eyeing the Berry and Thread North Pole dinner plates. I was thrilled to see the outlet is still selling them for that huge discount. They are second quality though. Have you purchased second quality from Juliska? If so, what were your thoughts? Was the reduction in quality very noticeable? The description of it for ceramics concerned me when I read that they could contain mold markings… Thank you for sharing the beautiful table setting and linking to the outlet that I had no idea existed!
I have indeed purchased “second quality” from the outlet and have noticed no difference. It’s a great deal, as far as I am concerned. The Stewart Tartan and North Pole plates on this setting are all “second quality”.
So glad you enjoyed the table! Juliska’s pieces are fantastic. I love them.
Thank you so much! I will have to place an order then!