Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Set A Table For Conversation

Use the fruit of the season for your centerpiece.


Sitting around the dinner table sometimes seems to invite conversation. You can do much to encourage this by setting the table in a way that conversation is further encouraged. Use any of the steps --- either by themselves or as a whole --- to promote talk around the table. Whether it be for an informal family dinner or for the most formal of dinner parties, the experience will be enhanced as will the memories if you've taken the time to set a table that starts people talking.


Instructions


1. Set the tone for the party by choosing the right decorative accessories. Use nice dishes and table settings. You'll add other items to this mix as well, but always start with the right materials; everything else will be complemented by them.


2. Create a centerpiece, but try to avoid the traditional flowers-only centerpiece. Instead choose something will encourage people to talk. For example, arrange a bunch of apples, pears or mini-pumpkins on a fancy plate. Write questions on fancy note cards, attach them to a toothpick and stick them into the fruits. During dinner, ask guests to pull out the cards and answer the question found on the card.


3. Make name cards, but with a twist. Ask guests to send childhood photos of themselves ahead of time. Create little photo cards you'll put on each plate. Before dinner gets started, guests can mill around the table trying to guess who belongs to which photo. Once dinner begins, guests will sit at the place marked with their photos.








4. Ask guests to email you a music file or two of their favorite songs in the days before the party and compile them together on a CD or MP3 player that you'll only play during dinner. Guests can talk about who selected what song and why. You can also make copies of to give away as party favors that you'll lay near each place setting.








5. Invite conversation and avoid lulls by a creative use of seating arrangements. Sit each guest next to someone she knows and someone you think she'd enjoy meeting.


6. Remember that lighting places an important role in conversation. Instead of burning harsh overhead lights, turn down the dimmer switches and light candles; people tend to relax in soft light, which encourages conversation. Not only can you make candles part of your centerpiece, but also you can put together candle arrangements to sit on the coffee and end tables, the pass through space between the kitchen and the dining room and even in the bathroom. Unite the decorative theme with common colors and decorative elements like flowers.

Tags: around table, table that, your centerpiece