Can you believe that it’s just over a week until Christmas? Where on earth has December gone already? I’m not really ready for Christmas and still have a few last minute presents to buy and cards to hand out. But when it comes to the big day at least I don’t really have to worry about hosting the Christmas meal as we’ll be staying with my parents over the festive period. I see myself as quite lucky in the fact that I have managed to avoid ever playing host over Christmas and I’m hoping that I can avoid it for many years to come. All that pre-celebration preparation and cooking must be so stressful, even if it is just for the family.On the other hand, there is something so lovely about getting the table ready for that special meal. It’s the one time of year where you make that special effort to ensure that everything looks ready for a celebration. The best china comes out and the rarely used table linen is freshly ironed ready to bedeck the table. Candles and a bit of festive foliage decorate the centre of the table and the posh glasses are ready to be filled with bubbly so that the family can toast to happiness and good health. But as neither Ruth nor myself will be responsible for decorating the Christmas table this year, we thought it would be fun to do a little pre-Christmas dining styling project of our own. We’d both previously fallen for the indigo dining range by Sainsbury’s when I wrote about it back in August and we thought it would be so much fun if we were able to do our own Christmas preparations without all the stress and hassle of actually having to feed our families. So we contacted Sainsbury’s to ask if they would be interested in helping us with our project and thankfully they agreed to send us the indigo dining range so we could style up our own Christmas tablescape.
We knew that we loved the range just from seeing the images but when the box of bits arrived we were really excited to see it all first hand. And I have to be honest but we were actually quite surprised to see such great quality pieces coming from Sainsbury’s, I mean it is just a supermarket after all. You don’t really expect to find such ‘designy’ pieces down the local superstore but Sainsbury’s really has outdone itself with this range. Not only is it perfect for the current indigo trend but it is also ridiculously affordable. Anybody could get this sophisticated look without breaking the bank. And the fact that it’s indigo means that whilst it can be dressed up to feel really Christmassy, you can use it all year round no problem.
For our shoot we used the Cobalt Blue Rim Dinner set, accompanied by a selection of Indigo tea plates and nibble bowls. I really love the mismatched feel of these little plates and bowls and because the patterns are all different, they look really fantastic when stacked up. The blue cotton table cloth and napkins add some real class and you can be sure that any food you’re serving looks its best as there is a lovely round serving platter and a large serving bowl along with a really nice jug which would be ideal for serving lashings of gravy.
There are also plenty of items that you can use to create that cosy festive atmosphere, from the copper effect candle holders, the ombre glass hurricane, and the ombre glass votive to the selection of blue glass bottles. And again after Christmas these can be used in any room in the house as decoration to add a bit of class and sophistication. Then in order to pull the look together there is a really nice selection of Christmas decorations that you can use to decorate your tree or simply to adorn the table.
If you feel like upping your Christmas tablescape game this year, the indigo collection is available at larger Sainsbury’s stores. We’d love to hear about your plans for creating a stylish dining experience this Christmas so do drop a comment below to let us know.
Photography and Styling by Ruth Adams
*A special thanks to Sainsbury’s for providing the indigo dining range so we could use in it our styled shoot*