Rustic Casual Tablescape - Life is a Party

Rustic Casual Tablescape: brown kraft paper, white candles, herbs and antlers come together to make a beautiful rustic and casual table.

This month for the our Year of Feasting party, where we decided to entertain friends and family once a month for a year, we decided to have a casual rustic dinner party and serve a feast of ribs. It’s near the end of summer, and the corn is perfect. There’s time for at least one last bbq party, and what could be better than homemade ribs. So today I’m sharing our rustic tablescape with you.

My sweet husband took the lead on the dinner, he came up with the menu, shopped, and cooked all the food. I was working on some other projects, so I really appreciated his taking the lead on this one. I did put together a really pretty rustic tablescape. Together we came up with a pretty perfect party for this month.

Brown Paper Table Runner

I knew I wanted something quite rustic and casual to go with the great bbq menu. We also decided we should eat inside with the air condition since it’s still really hot out and we wanted our guests to feel comfortable and linger at the table. I started out with a simple brown paper runner, perfect for something messy like ribs. While I was picking up the paper at the dollar store, I picked up a few other goodies that really brought the table together and for a great price too. 😉

Rustic Table Napkins

The napkins were a real find. They were with the dish cloths and towels. They’re like a denim fabric, with a black hue to it, and edged in white. They’re sold as dish cloths, at 2 for 1.25 they were a great choice for a messy meal -and I really like the colour combo, classic black and white.

Church Candles

I also picked up these pretty church candles at the dollar store. I love their elegant height, and simple glass holders. And they’re a great price too.

Easy Centrepiece

Down the middle of the table I made a really casual and rustic flower arrangement from some clippings from my garden. I started out with some perennial sweet pea vines, then I layered in some sage and lavender. The smell was amazing. My favourite touch though was adding in the antlers. I picked these up at an antique fair this summer, and I thought they looked amazing added into the table runner.

Place Settings

The dishes, cutlery, and glasses were just basic white, gold and glass -pretty and elegant.

I actually picked up the glasses for the dinner too. My basic wine glasses were from about 16 years ago. My husband and I bought them for our first dinner party when we were just dating. They have served us well, but over the years many have broken -I think there’s six left. So, it was time to invest in a new basic set. I picked up 12, plus an extra box for breakage in the future for a total of 14. I like these basic stemless ones, since we have kids and our tables are usually a mix of kids and adults these are perfect since they can hold juice, pop, water, wine, whatever we need.

Menu Cards

My other favourite part of this little table was the menu cards.

My youngest daughter made the menus, and I added a sprig of lavender to each one. Easy and perfectly special. We just made them on the computer and printed them on our home printer.

The Food

And what a menu it was! My husband out did himself with pork ribs -which he rubbed with our own rub recipe here, and homemade bbq sauce with our recipe here. He also made flattened chicken -see our recipe here, homemade baked beans find our recipe here. We rounded it out with fresh corn on the cob, a little homemade coleslaw and fresh cornbread. It was amazing. One of our sweet guests brought dessert. And we also made a batch of peach sangria -find our recipe here, since the peaches are perfect this time of year.