COLORFUL CREATIVITY

Looking for a way to host with nontraditional holiday colors? Embrace your rebelliously creative side.

Looking to host with nontraditional holiday colors? Embrace your creative side.

Hosting is a timehonored tradition for blogger and expert entertainer Lory Parson of To Have and To Host. “It was something that was handed down from my grandmother and my mother. I guess it was in my blood,” she says. While Lory loves the generational aspect of hosting, she also wants to push the boundaries, to break, and in doing so reinvent, tradition.

And nowhere is this more apparent than with the intricate (and nontraditional) color palettes she uses when setting a table for the holidays.

STARTING WITH A VISION

The muse for this particular Thanksgiving table? “Salad plates,” Lory recounts with a laugh. She paired the salad plates, on loan from her mom, with gold-rimmed plates she received as a gift from her husband. “I really wanted to see if I could bring out those colors and … incorporate them with a couple traditional Thanksgiving colors,” she says. She chose purple and played with the hues, mixing and matching them with subtler traditional colors, such as muted gold in the table runner and a bright splash of orange in Gerbera daisies.

HOSTING THE HOLIDAYS

But the innovation doesn’t stop there. True to form, Lory steps outside the norm when setting a table for other holidays such as Christmas. “Red is maybe my least favorite color,” she says. Instead, she gravitates towards an array of neutral tones and pairs them with a single traditional color. One year, she even used mint green as the basis for her Christmas table.

At the end of the day though, Lory believes in accessibility. “I like mixing and matching. It’s my mantra,” she says. “Especially for those who don’t have an arsenal of entertaining items to pull from, you don’t have to buy something traditional. Maybe buy a mint-green plate.”

Stretching a floral centerpiece down a table doesn’t have to be an expensive investment. Purposefully place single stems and stalks in bud vases to elongate the focal point of the table and create a more dramatic and encompassing effect.

Nontraditional table settings walk the line between chaos and cohesion, striking a balance that always excites, amazes and inspires.

Pairing warm and cool colors in a variety of hues creates a color palette that’s both unique and cohesive. The cool purples in the flowers and plates play with the warm oranges and golds in the table runner and flatware.