My Crabby Christmas

 I love setting a festive holiday table......it usually starts with the food.  In this case -crab....typically what I would think of for New Year's but somewhere got it in my head I wanted to have crab. I was going for something sort of earthy but bright and happy....a little bit clean and not too fussy.  I decided we'd serve ourselves most of the food  buffet style in the kitchen and then just have the crab and accoutrements on the table.

 I went out for a  walk in the filbert orchard behind my house and came home with some goodies for the nature part of the table- lichens and moss and a sweet little licorice fern (something very special about licorice fern) ...starting to look a bit like Christmas.

 But uh, oh, starting to get a little crowded on that table with all the crab paraphernalia - you know crackers and pickers, and lemons and aoili, and the crab itself and places for the shells. Plus we needed candles and  I wanted to have three little mossy vases down the table but I was definitely running out of room.

 Problem solved, I would just run red and white string up and down the table.....lots of color punch and it wouldn't take up any space. 

Keeping with the new design directive that all decorative elements must lie flat on the table, I added these  masks I was going to give away as party favors.....a little devilish for Christmas perhaps but the red seemed just right.

What can I say?  Try as I might (never), I'm not a minimalist......

And the food hasn't even made it to the table.