SPARKLE & SPIRIT
Celebrate the summer holiday season with a festive centerpiece that’s sure to become the star attraction at the family dinner table.
Pay homage to the summer holidays with a star-studded centerpiece that’s bound to become the main attraction at the family dinner table.
WWhether you’re serving a tasty dinner indoors or firing up the grill for a backyard barbecue to honor the Fourth of July, this midsummer celebration is all about showing off your patriotic spirit and creativity. If you’re looking for new ways to make your dining room a stellar standout, take away some creative tips from Amber Lyon Ferguson of the Follow the Yellow Brick Home blog. She embraces the glory of Independence Day with a beautiful “Stars and Stripes Forever” tablescape in her 1921 Kentucky home. “I absolutely love using patriotic touches around our home, inside and out, from Memorial Day through Labor Day,” she says. “It is so easy to create patriotic style inexpensively, too!”
To assemble her centerpiece, Amber chose a French farmhouse–style basket base and incorporated an antique ironstone platter with a blue design to stabilize the contents. For the main focal point, she filled a vintage ironstone pitcher with artificial greenery, patriotic-patterned daisies and mini flags to offer height to the grouping. To provide even more pop to the display, she used a pickle jar to corral paper straws, bottle rockets and mini flags and an ironstone creamer for sparkler boxes.
Below: Amber’s favorite vintage-style Uncle Sam stands tall on the right side of the table to balance the height of the ironstone pitcher. To bring different levels and visual interest to her arrangement, Amber added a moss sphere on a pedestal and a basket loaded with refreshing beverages. “In lieu of glasses at each setting, I filled my blue toile de Jouy–lined whitewashed basket with ice-cold Coca-Cola bottles,” she shares. “Strawberries are a favorite summer treat around our home (we always have fresh strawberries on the Fourth of July), so I included a pretty ceramic basket of faux strawberries on the right side of the table and left a couple in the centerpiece.”
Right: At each place setting, Amber incorporated off-white place mats featuring red, white and blue stripes topped off with burlap chargers and her antique Haviland ironstone dinner and salad plates. “The red ticking-stripe napkins are actually paper but they are really thick, and even in real life, it is hard to tell they are paper,” she says. “At two of the place settings, I used the two pretty unmarked, vintage strawberry plates that I scored at an estate sale for $1 each. I love them!” Amber didn’t have four matching blue or red transferware saucers, so she improvised and mixed vintage “Blue Onion” ironstone with her strawberry plates.
Above: A music-themed vignette atop the antique chest in the corner of the dining room continues the festive feel across the space. “Since I am a musician I am always thinking in song, so I decided to name the tablescape after the famous John Philip Sousa march that is always played on the Fourth of July, ‘Stars and Stripes Forever.’ ” Croquet balls from a 1920s set that belonged to Amber’s great-grandmother recall summertime fun in the sun.