A Thanksgiving table inspiration with pears and fall leaves

Decorating with pears as placecards!

With Thanksgiving only a week away, I wanted to share some ideas and pictures from an Autumn party we did November 2013!

This is a simple table involving your lovely dishware, pears and glass hurricanes filled with water and floating leaves!

Instead of namecards, we tied a tag with each person's name onto the stem of a pear! You could do this with any stemmed fruit, really. 

We sat the pears, along with a couple leaves on dessert plates which were placed on larger, neutral-toned lunch plates. You can use whatever colours, shapes and sizes you want! We used glass plates; I know paper would look nice as well. 

For the candle display down the center of the table, we used a variety of sizes of clear glass hurricanes. 

You will need to collect beautiful fall leaves. We used mostly pear leaves since they are smaller and more sturdy. 

We  covered the bottom of each glass hurricane with clear craft glue. 

We then secured the leaves, stem-down, into the glue.

Make sure the glue is dry, then fill the glass containers with room-temperature water and add floating tealights.

As the hours progressed, the glue unstuck from the bottom of the containers, letting the leaves float to the middle of the container!This gave the look of leaves floating in ice water, which was very charming. I love how accidents often turn out beautifully. Whether the glue stays stuck to the bottom or not for you, this will be impressive.

hurricanes with leaves, water and floating candles

How to rim a glass with sugar: 

1. Pour the sugar you want to use on a saucer or plate. Use plenty to make sure the rim gets covered, and make sure the circle of powder is bigger in diameter than the rim of your glass.
2. Moisten the rim with a wedge of lemon, lime or orange. Or dip in a dish of sweetened (syrup) water. Rub along the glass slowly to make an even line. If using the syrup water, just dip carefully. 
3. Turn the glass upside down and dip it in sugar
4. Depending on how much sugar you want on the rim, you can try twisting the glass in the sugar for more, or just simply dipping for less sugar. Twisting it is sometimes tricky to keep a straight rim. 

Ingredients

You can rim glasses with anything powdered. The possibilities are pretty much endless. 

• Rimming options: 
• Cocoa. Perfect for chocolate martinis.
• Cinnamon rim. Mix 1 part white sugar with one part cinnamon for a Autumn flavour
• Crushed candy or cookies. Basically, anything you can powder can be used as a rim.
• Crushed graham crackers. Works on pretty much any drink that’s good with a sugar rim.
• Ginger. Mix equal parts sugar and powdered ginger.
• Powdered drink mixes. Not every powdered drink mix is the right texture for sticking to the glass, but you can usually work around that by moistening the glass differently – for example, simple syrup may work better on really fine powders than citrus. A powdered mint hot chocolate mix makes a Chocolate Mint rimmer.. Kool-Aid mixes can be great for fruity drinks.

Don't forget to get out and enjoy the Autumn splendor!

(or the snow, depending on which state you reside in!)