Coastal Summer Tablescape

Hello everyone!  I hope your summer is going great!  Ours is flying by but it has been fun so far.  🙂  Today we are talking about tablescapes, which is just a fancy word for a decorated table.  I am not usually a big tablescape person but I was inspired to try my hand at it after seeing pictures of other bloggers’ beautiful tables.  It being summer, I thought this would be a perfect time to try a coastal summer tablescape!

I LOVE looking at tablescapes but I have to admit the logical side of me does not see the practicality of them (for the most part).  However the creative side of me loves them!  It would be great to have our table set up looking fantastic for a party or family holiday, but in reality we are pretty low key and so are our friends/family.  Most holidays are still spent at our parents’ houses so we have rarely even had the chance to host a holiday.  I am sure that will change in the future, hopefully not anytime soon though!

I recently made this DIY sea glass rope lantern and thought it would go perfect in the middle of a coastal tablescape.  This was the inspiration for the theme of the tablescape.  It was a really fun project and can you believe it was made from a pickle jar?!

Another great plus to this theme was that I had a ton of seashells thanks to my in-laws.  They are lucky enough to go south for the winter!  More specifically the shells came from my MIL as she would get up every morning to walk on the beach.  Hard life, huh?  😉  I have used some of them in our coastal themed bathroom but wanted to use the others for decorating with at some point too.  I am glad I finally got to use them!

There was a teeny tiny problem though.  I did not have any chargers, white plates, nice glasses or cloth napkins to use.  LOL  That wasn’t going to stop me though.  I decided that it was time to invest in some new plates and glasses anyway since our oldest son is going back to college to live in his own apartment and will be needing some dishes.  So, he gets our old hand me downs.  🙂  He was more than happy with this arrangement though since it meant he did not have to buy any.  

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I did not want to spend a lot of money for dishes and I actually found these plates and glasses at Walmart!  The stoneware plates look great and are very solid!  They do not feel like cheap plates at all yet were super reasonably priced!  They came in a set of 4 dinner plates, salad plates and 4 bowls.  Just a warning though, the plates and bowls are huge!  The salad plates are nearly as big as our dinner plates we are handing down to our son.  I could see this as a potential problem for overeating.  We will have to watch our portion sizes.  I have been just using the salad plates for dinner!  Ha!

These iced tea glasses were perfect and a steal at $5 for 4 glasses.  We are not wine drinkers so I was not wanting to buy wine glasses that we were never going to use.  I think we got some for our wedding 19 years ago that I just sold at a garage sale this spring.  I believe they were used twice!  Literally.  🙂

In keeping with the coastal theme, I decided to make some DIY rope chargers.  I am very happy with how they turned out.  With their neutral color, these chargers will be really versatile and could be used for lots of tablescapes.  I can foresee using them for fall or a rustic winter tablescape.

Next on the list were the cloth napkins.  I have some white ones but really wanted a color to match the rope lantern.  I found some fabric that matched it very well although the coloring in the pictures looks a little off.  It matches better in person but still looks pretty good in the pictures too.  

These simple DIY cloth napkins were a cinch to make and did not take very long.

Aren’t these sand dollars cute?  Luckily I had enough of roughly the same size for the six place settings.  I love how they tie into the shells in our DIY dough bowl.  Speaking of the dough bowl, this is the first time I have used it on our table and I LOVE it!! It works perfect!  So glad Mr. Wonderful made it for me!!  🙂

These candles are the best!  They are battery operated and even come with a remote!  I love the fact that we can have candles “burning” with no risk of a fire.  They are the ones that flicker too so it actually looks like a real candle.  It looks so nice in the evening with the lights off in the dining room and the candles glowing.

There are some cool shells in the dough bowl but I think this little spiral one is my favorite shell of them all!

I hope you enjoyed my attempt at an official tablescape.  🙂  I am sure I will get better at them with some more practice but thanks for coming along on the journey with me.  Do you pros out there have any tips for me?  But for now, here are some more pictures to enjoy.

Have a wonderful day!!