Try These Tricks in Your Living Room

"IMG_1016" by Shawn Cornelius is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Holiday decorating usually leads to rearranging some furniture, which doesn’t sound like a lot of fun on the surface. However, this allows you the opportunity to experiment with the layout of the room and its furniture. Or maybe you’ve been looking for an excuse to switch things around, so you should take advantage of the opportunity! Try these tips from Apartment Therapy, and who knows, you may love your new layout so much that you decide to keep the Christmas tree up year-round!  

1. If you have room, pulling your furniture away from the wall can make conversational groupings seem cozier, and the room seem a lot more spacious.

2. Try replacing your coffee table with a smaller table, big enough to hold a book and a few drinks, that can move around the room. The space freed up by the coffee table will make your living room seem a lot bigger.

3. A bookcase behind the sofa is a great way to add a little texture — and a little storage — to your living room. (Naturally, things you don't use as much go directly behind the couch.)

4. Mixing old and new pieces is a great way to add energy to any room.

5. Balance heavier pieces with lighter ones to keep a space from feeling too clunky. The lighter pieces in this room — the coffee and side tables — provide a nice counterpoint the sofa and dresser.

6. Hang a picture ledge above your sofa for a statement-y look. If you get tired of your current pieces, you can easily switch them out.

7. Color is the key to mixing a lot of things together in a harmonious way. There's a lot going on in this living room, but the preponderance of white keeps all the different elements from becoming too overwhelming.

8. Every room can benefit from a touch of gold.

9. Keeping everything low (including the art) is a great trick to make a room look bigger.

10. Paired chairs don't have to match — try mixing two pieces from a similar era with different shapes.

11. When in doubt, add a little bit of black.

10 Thanksgiving Best Practices

"Thanksgiving dinner" by japharl is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Thanksgiving is a day for food, family and fun - not stress. Whether you’re hosting Thanksgiving for the first time or the tenth time, sometimes you need a few reminders to put the day into perspective, instead of running around the kitchen frantically. Keep these pointers from Apartment Therapy in mind as  you plan your Thanksgiving dinner.

1. Modest is Perfect

Thanksgiving is the most modest of holidays (and one of the few shared by all) and doesn't want to be decorator fancy. It wants to be about gratefulness for plentiful food at harvest time and survival after a long year in the New World. With this in mind, focus on the food and keep your decor seasonal, simple and harvest based. This is not about glitter and bling, people!

2. Leaves, Branches & Berries

Every table I've ever decorated has been done with what I've found outside on the day. The raw and authentic shapes and colors in leaves, branches and berries (and flowers, sometimes, when down south) are stunning and simple reminders of this special time of year.

3. Eat Early - When The Sun's Still Up

I am a big fan of skipping lunch on Thanksgiving day and having an early supper. It shifts the momentum of the day, makes it a much more relaxed meal and allows the food to settle long before bedtime. As a rule of thumb, I recommend sitting down before sunset (4:30pm is sunset this year), so invite folks for 3pm and sit down before 4pm, and you're golden. For those that like to take a walk after the meal, start 30-60 min earlier!

4. Sit Close & Have a Long Table

For most dinner parties I worry about having too many people around a table or being too tight in my home. Not so Thanksgiving. Invite the people you love, take in strays and don't worry that everyone is sitting shoulder to shoulder. If you can get everyone at a long table and get them close to one another it will be intimate, cozy and great.

5. Move Between Courses

With a long meal like this you really have the luxury of taking your time and creating natural breaks between courses. This stimulates conversation and digestion. Start with drinks on the sofa, then sit at the table and then retire to the kitchen or living room again for or before dessert. Go for a walk before dessert even and let the kids run around. Don't rush it!

6. Passing: Many Sides, Little Dishes

Thanksgiving is a meal of side dishes and there's a huge advantage to this. If you serve family style, have people bring their favorite dishes and then get some crazy passing going around your table you will have MORE fun. The complication and multiplicity of this type of collaborative meal is what Thanksgiving is all about, and the passing of dishes engenders new levels of communication and social bonding.

7. Enjoy Dark Colors

Personally, I'm a big fan of diving into the deep colors of Autumn when decorating the table or the room and think that only Thanksgiving - of all holidays - gives full license for this. Dark colors are warm and cozy, so add to your leaves, branches and berries with dark napkins, tablecloths, flowers, candles, plates or dishes.

8. Read Something Aloud

Beyond giving a toast and because this is not a religious holiday, a birthday or an specific historical person involved, I love to center the meal around reading one thing aloud. Of course you can say grace, but reading something aloud that puts the meal in context and brings up the images associated with the real historical time in which it grew out of is a nice way of bringing everyone together. There are many poems about Thanksgiving, and if you want a really nicely written history, this one from The Writer's Almanac is one of my favorites:

"Today is Thanksgiving Day. In the fall of 1621, the Plymouth colonists had barely survived the previous winter and had lost about half their population. The Wampanoag people and their chief, Massasoit, were friendly toward the Pilgrims and helped teach them how to live on different land with new food sources. A man known as Squanto, a Patuxet living with the Wampanoag tribe, knew English because he had been a slave in England. He taught the settlers how to plant corn, beans, and squash and how to catch eel and shellfish. The Pilgrims built seven houses, a meeting place, and storehouses full of food, so they invited the Wampanoag Indians to feast with them. Harvest festivals were nothing new; both the English and the Wampanoag had similar traditions in their culture.

At the first Thanksgiving, they didn't eat mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, and they probably didn't even eat turkey. The only two foods that are actually named in the primary accounts are wild fowl and venison. The meal was mostly meat and seafood, but probably included squash, cabbage, corn, and onions, and spices like cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and pepper.

Unlike our modern Thanksgiving, this event wasn't just one day. Many of the Wampanoag had to walk two days to get to the Plymouth settlement. There were about 50 English people and 90 Wampanoag, and since there wasn't enough room in the seven houses for the guests, they went ahead and built themselves temporary shelters. In between eating, they played games and sports, danced, and sang.
Thanksgiving has been celebrated as a national holiday on different dates, but on October 3, 1863, in the wake of victory at Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln decided to issue a Thanksgiving Proclamation declaring the fourth Thursday in November national Thanksgiving Day. In 1941, Congress made it official."

9. Make Something

In keeping with the modest tone and family centered feeling of the holiday, making something for the table or the guests is a great idea. Anything is good, and you can simply carve out gourds to place votive candles in them or make place cards. Here is a list of a whole bunch of good DIY's. I also love the little one I found in the picture above: carve out some apples and serve a good strong drink or mulled cider in them!

10. Kid's Table

If you're doing Thanksgiving with kids, give them their own table. I know that I said to seat everyone together, but I think young and old alike always appreciate their own space to have the meal at their own pace. I also think that children appreciate being a little independent at Thanksgiving and helping one another instead of having their parents wait on them. A Kid's table is an opportunity to have some fun and even have your kids help you set it up. When they run off to play, you won't have to collapse your seating at the main table to get closer to one another.

Pumpkin Pie Mug Cake

Photo courtesy Faith Durand, The Kitchn

The snow is falling and it’s beginning to feel like holiday season. We still have a couple of weeks to go until Thanksgiving, but that doesn’t mean you can’t indulge a little today! One of the things we look forward to most is the home-made pumpkin pie. This is a great recipe from The Kitchn to use if either cannot wait for Thanksgiving, or to file away for the rest of winter when you need a comforting dessert!

Pumpkin Pie Mug Cake

Makes 1

1 teaspoon unsalted butter

14 grams gingersnaps (2 small cookies), crushed into 2 tablespoons of crumbs

1/3 cup pumpkin puree

1 large egg

1 tablespoon milk or cream

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

Place the butter in a microwave-safe mug that holds at least 10 ounces, and microwave on LOW until melted. Stir in the crushed gingersnaps and press the mixture firmly into the bottom of the mug.

In a separate small bowl, whisk together the pumpkin puree, egg, milk or cream, brown sugar, and pumpkin pie spice. Pour into mug with the gingersnap "crust."

Place the mug on a microwave-safe plate. Microwave on full power for 2 to 5 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center of the mug pie comes out clean. The top may look slightly damp but it will set as it cools. (Cooking time will vary greatly depending on your microwave and the width and depth of the mug. Start with 2 minutes and continue cooking in 30-second increments until it is done.)

Use a hot pad or oven mitt to carefully remove the mug from the microwave. Let it stand for a couple minutes to cool, then top, if desired, with whipped cream and crushed nuts before eating.

Recipe Notes

Doubling the recipe: You can double this recipe, but only cook one mug pie in the microwave at a time.

Surviving the Holidays on a Budget

"Wrapped Christmas Presents" by m01229 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

The holidays are a hectic time of the year for everyone, but if you are shopping on a budget, the holidays can become even more stressful. From dining out more with friends who are in town, to shopping for presents, to paying for decorations, these expenses can add up quickly. So how do you balance your regular budget with these added expenses and still manage to have a “happy holiday?” Try these tips from Apartment Therapy:

Alternative Holiday Days: Look, nothing says you have to celebrate Thanksgiving on November 27th, right? If it's ridiculously cheaper to travel right before or right after a major holiday, encourage your loved ones to shift the celebrations accordingly. And if you can make double-pay working on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's, consider it. Pie will still taste delicious on November 28th, and your friends might still be up for Hungover Brunch on January 2nd.

Be Upbeat But Firm About Your Plans: Whatever you decide to do for the holidays, whether it's traveling to see every single member of your family or working overtime or finally watching Sherlock, let everyone know with confidence. Exclamations can help, as can repetition and "we're done here" type closing statements. "We'll be staying in town this year but we can't wait to hear all about the festivities. Please send photos!" Or, "this is an exciting time of year at [Employer] so I'm unable to get away in December— have a fabulous party!"

Holiday Office Hours: Announce to friends and families something like "We'll be home on New Year's Day if anyone would like to stop by!" This makes it clear to one and all that: 1) You would love to see them and are available to do so; 2) The holiday visiting ball is firmly in their court; 3) They shouldn't expect a formal spread. If you're making muffins for breakfast or chili for dinner, maybe make a double batch, but if I took friends up on such an offer, I wouldn't really expect to be served anything. I'd probably bring homemade treats and a bottle of something, and feel incredibly grateful for their company.

Be The Spokesperson For Your Generation: This is a tricky one, but it can be done. Sometimes things are done in families because they've "always" been done that way, but the generation that put those traditions in place might have been very different than your own. If your aunts and uncles always gave gifts to all of the kids but it's not feasible for you and your peers, institute a name-drawing system, or eliminate gifts altogether and focus on games and crafts. Similar changes can be made with regards to travel, venue, level of opulence, and luxuriousness of the feast. Did your aunts always drive themselves crazy making huge meals, but you all would love Christmas Eve takeout burritos? Do it and don't look back.

Create A New, (Nearly) Free Tradition: A friend told me a sweet story about how her friend's dad didn't have a lot of money so he would take the girls on weekly winter Christmas Light Patrols. They'd drive slowly and cozily around the neighborhoods complimenting and critiquing all of the lights, for the low price of not-much-gas. Winter Walks and Holiday Hikes are free!

Be Prepared For A Guilt Trip— But Stay Strong! No matter how gracefully you handle matters, there's always going to be someone who gives you a hard time for having to work through the holidays, not being able to afford plane tickets, and/or wanting to stay home. Take it as a sign that they love you, but don't let their bad manners get you down. It's wonderful to be able to spend the holidays with loved ones, but if you can't handle it for whatever reason, that's okay, and it's nobody's business but your own.

Eat & Drink On Your Company's Dime: I know company holiday parties get a bad rap, but sometimes they're so fun! And if you like your coworkers, so much the better: you might not all figure out another time to get together and celebrate (who has the time or money?) so why not feast, dance, and drink top-shelf liquor for free? Get festive, focus on your friends, and leave when it's not fun anymore. Pro tip: some companies allow you to bring a guest, thus doubling your friend-fun potential!

If You Only Have $5 To Spend On Decor, Spend It On String Lights: Seriously, whatever else is going on in your life/budget, sparkliness will help. Plug those babies in every evening from now until whenever the sun comes back, and let them help your heart be light.

Make Do With What You Have: As the Christmas Squid taught us last year, you don't need fancy, holiday-specific accessories to have festive fun— and I hope you have lots of fun.