A few years ago I didn’t even know what a charcuterie board was or how to create a charcuterie board—now they are one of my favorite things! Why? Because I love meat and I love cheese and these are the foods a charcuterie board is made of!
My husband and I try to get together on a somewhat regular basis for a game night with a small group of friends. One of our favorite things we do now is to have a picnic style/charcuterie tray dinner. All of us bring different meats, cheeses, and bread or crackers as the base for our charcuterie tray as well as veggies, jams, spreads, pickles, and fruit.
Another way I have been using the charcuterie tray idea is on vacation. Lunch is so easy when all you have to do is pull out several different meats, cheeses and a cheese-cutting board! It is easy to pack and easy for everyone to access. You can then simply make yourself as many little mini sandwiches as you want! I don’t have to worry about one sandwich not being enough and then someone being hungry because we did not bring anything else.
To me the best part of a charcuterie board is the meat and cheese but you can also make a charcuterie board more healthy by going heavy on the fruit and vegetables!
My favorite ingredients for a charcuterie board are:
Base:
· Baguette
· Crackers (I like the Triscuit-like crackers—salt and pepper flavor!)
· Multi Grain Crackers
Meat:
· Turkey (I love smoked turkey breast. It is very versatile.)
· Pepperoni or hard salami
· Ham
Cheese:
· Pepper jack. (It spices things up!)
· Cheddar
· Havarti
· Goat cheese
· Brie
Veggies:
· Sugar snap peas
· Carrots
· Mini bell peppers
Fruit:
· Grapes
· Apples (These can be a little tricky since they brown quickly.)
· Berries (Raspberries, blueberries, blackberries—you can’t go wrong!)
· Baguettes, turkey, Havarti cheese, black raspberry jam
· Crackers, pepperoni, cheddar, bell pepper
· Crackers, ham, Brie cheese
· Crackers, turkey, pepper jack cheese, artichoke spread
Other Ingredient Ideas:
· Pears
· Roasted red peppers
· Sun-dried tomatoes
· Spicy mustard
· Olives
· Any flavor of jam
· Broccoli florets
What To Consider When Setting Up Your Charcuterie Tray
The great thing about charcuterie trays is they can fit your tastes no matter what! However, if you want a few guidelines to follow here they are:
· Include at least the options of your main items (bread, meat, and cheese).
· Include a variety of flavors: a sweeter option, a spicy option, and classic option.
· Don’t get too fancy with all your options, try for at least two safe choices you know people will like, then go for one more daring option.
· Add a little pizzazz to your board by having a sweet and a savory spread option available!
Favorite Tools
· A large tray to corral everything on
· Little knife spreaders
· Small bowls for dip
· A cheese slicer (The cheese slicer is what is most important to me—it is what takes all the work out of it! I take it with me because it feels easiest to me, but you can also get a handheld cheese slicer too.)
If you are looking for some ideas of how to switch things up for your Labor Day plans, I hope this will inspire you!
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Do you like to host? We love to have people over, to make food, and have people gather around our table. Life is busy and this doesn’t happen as much as we would like but we are happy when we have a houseful. Hosting can be stressful. Especially for an introvert like me. I value hospitality and I want my guests to feel comfortable in my home. I want it to be a place where they feel comfortable and not like they are imposing. Over the years I have found 7 tips for better hosting that I go to regularly for better hosting!
My mother once found a 1950s edition book on the art of hosting and entertaining by Betty Crocker. In it the author talks about how her nephew attended a college in her town, so she opened her home to him and his friends so that he would feel that he had a place to call home as his parents did not live nearby. Anytime he wanted to have friends over, she would painstakingly labor and prepare beforehand. One such night she overhears her nephew, oblivious to the amount of work going on behind the scenes, comment to one of his friends, “You guys can come over anytime—my aunt always has stuff ready at a moment’s notice!” His aunt, hearing this laughed: she didn’t have it ready at a moment’s notice! It took a bunch of work to pull it off, but her guests were blissfully unaware! This is the number one rule for hosting: your guests must never feel like an imposition. In this day and age we are much more casual and expectations are arguably lower than they were in the 1950s, but this is still the experience we want to create for our guests. We want our guests to feel welcome so they will come again!
I have collected several tips that help make hosting less stressful for me. I hope these tips help things to flow better the next time you have people over and make you more excited to open your home, and spend more time with the people you love.
1. Plan for Early
I hate rushing around at the last minute trying to tie up loose ends before my guests arrive so I always plan to have everything ready one-half hour before anyone is supposed to arrive. Sometimes people come really early; sometimes I run late, but if I plan to have everything set a half hour before people arrive then I should have extra time. lf they are arriving while I am still pouring chips and salsa into bowls, it doesn’t look like I’m late—it looks like I was just waiting for them to arrive!
2. Clear Out the Coat Closet
We have a tiny coat closet in our entry. I love the placement of it—it is right at the end of the runner by my front door, which gives people enough room to get through the door and take off their shoes, but not so far that they have to wonder where in the world to put their things. However, as I stated, it is a tiny coat closet. Especially in winter it is very difficult to squeeze in many extra coats, so we take our coats out ahead of time and put in extra hangers. This way there is plenty of room for people to hang their things. Otherwise, their coats and hats may get slung over the back of the couch or loveseat and will inevitably need to be moved later so people can sit down.
3. Does it Smell?
Our house had a funky odor when we moved in, that sticky, sweet, dusty smell that just seems to hang in some homes. We have since ripped up the old carpeting, washed and painted the walls and now the smell is gone. However, since then, I have become super conscious about how my house smells. Plus, we have pets. Every house has its own scent and that’s not a bad thing—just make sure it’s the scent you want your house to have! An hour or two before your guests are due to arrive, start an oil diffuser, or light a few candles (keep an eye on the candles!) so that your house is filled with the scent you want before your guests arrive. (You can do this even when you don’t have guests coming over.)
4. Is It Livable?
Is your house arranged to accommodate the number of people you are having over? You may need to grab an extra chair or two for the dinner table and doing so before people arrive is much easier. If seating in the living room is tight, maybe stash nearby a few pillows. Make sure your house isn’t just cute but guest friendly too!
5. Cue Your Guests
The shoe question: do we leave them on or take them off, that is the question. I personally find it rude to ask people to take off their shoes. I feel rude if I don’t take off my shoes before going into someone’s house. If I don’t take off my shoes, I feel bad if I should track in any dirt, and some people don’t want outside germs to get tracked all over the inside house, especially if they have little ones. If I take off my shoes, my feet get cold, or the hem of my pants might drag on the floor (short people problems!), and well—I hope your floor is clean because you just asked me to walk around in my socks or bare feet!
It’s impossible to cure the shoe situation, it is a rather complex one for me as you just read! One thing you can do is cue your guests on what you would have them do. If you are okay with them wearing shoes, greet them wearing shoes—not slippers! If you want them to take their shoes off, don’t wear shoes while greeting them.
Cueing your guests works in other areas too. Turn lights on where you want guests to linger. Shut doors or keep lights off in a room where you don’t want them. If you have a hallway that leads to a bathroom, turn on the hall light so it looks more inviting for them.
6. Do What You Can Ahead
If you are cooking for lots of people, prepare as much as you can so it’s all ready before your guests arrive. If people are bringing prepared dishes, set out hot plates or make space for them to set their dishes. If they are bringing chips or something that will need to be put into a bowl, have some in mind and at easy reach so you aren’t trying to climb to the top cabinet to get it while everyone is arriving.
7. Go Simple
If the thought of preparing a lot of side dishes with synchronized baking times makes you a little crazy—choose a simple dish! Just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it won’t be delicious! My fall back is soup, salad, and garlic bread. I have several different and delicious out-of-the-ordinary soup recipes. We like salad so I always have lots of different toppings on hand to make the salad a little special. It’s easy, it’s good, and I don’t stress! Plus this can feed a lot of people, if necessary!
I hope this helps to give you some ideas on how to simplify things the next time you host, and hopefully will encourage you to open your home and host more! Remember the most important thing is that you are spending time and making memories with the ones you love!
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I have previously talked about How to Create a Cohesive Color Palette for Your Home, (see that post here). Once you have your color palette, how do you actually apply it to your house? I’m so glad you asked!
First the Basics
The point of having a color palette is to give your house a cohesive feel. It should not feel like a ball and chain around your neck that you are forever stuck with and can never deviate from, but rather it is a guide to help inform your decorating decisions. You pick three to five colors—the furniture and most of the decor will be chosen from this color palette. For example, my walls are painted a warm tannish-gray color called greige and that is my main color. A lot of my furniture is gray. My accent colors are mustard yellow, faded sage green, and a deep teal tinted navy—like a pair of jeans. I also have white, black, and wood tones in my decor. I consider my main colors in my color palette to be the greige, teal/navy, sage green, and mustard yellow. The white, black, and wood tones I don’t really classify as true colors in my house because I use them as neutrals. If I was going for a super-tight color palette or a monochromatic color pallet then I would count them and limit my color palette accordingly.
Using a Cohesive Color Palette in Your Home
Now that you have an idea of what comprises a cohesive color palette, how do you make it work for you? Do you have to use the same amount of each in your room? Can you ever bring in any little bit of other colors? The short answer is yes to both, but let’s go for the long answer too!
Just because you have a color palette doesn’t mean you cannot vary how much of each color you use from room-to-room. For example, greige is my main color; blue is approximately 60% of my accent color, the green about 30%, and the yellow about 10%. However, this can vary from room to room.
We have one small living area, and then a second slightly larger living room. The second and larger room I have painted the walls sage green. Some say you should never paint walls green and I rebuke this! I love green and I use it!! Since I am using green to such a large degree in that room I have no other green accents in that room (unless you want to count plants). Instead, I lean on my blue for most of my accents and a tiny bit of the yellow—keeping both these color accents pretty light. My furniture in this room is all neutral colors. However, by adding touches of blue and yellow to this room, it keeps color bouncing around the house and feeling cohesive.
What About Introducing Other Colors to Your House?
What about adding small touches of color, outside of your color palette to your home? I say you can do it but keep a few things in mind:
(1) The more colors you add to your home the trickier it is to style it well.
(2) The more color that is not repeated throughout your house, the more disjointed your home will feel.
I do allow a few touches of oranges and purple in very small doses in my kitchen. I have a trivet made from dried botanicals that is very pretty so I display it all the time in a corner of my kitchen. I also use it all the time so it is nice to have it within an easy reach!
Can You Use Different Shade of Colors from Your Color Palette in Your Home?
By doing this, you will end up weakening the integrity of your color palette. Remember the color palette is a guide, but it is also a tool. Having this framework is what allows you to be able to move items from room-to-room interchangeably. It is also what creates flow in your house. I think it is best for the sake of cohesiveness to keep the same color flowing in all the main areas of your house. If you want to branch out into different colors, the bedrooms and bathrooms are the best places to do this.
If you are craving a color that you use nowhere else in your house, a bedroom is a great way to satisfy that craving. However, if you are using, for example, a lighter or darker shade of a color that you are already using somewhere else in your house, then a lot of your other colors will still play nicely with this color, enabling you to play musical chairs with your other decor pieces!
I hope this helps to give you more ideas for how you can use a cohesive color palette in your home to make your decorating easier and more fun. As always, if you are enjoying these posts please share them with a friend—it helps me so much! Until next time—happy decorating!
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We all reach that point when we get, well . . . bored with our homes. The major holidays that we decorate for are behind us, and our home is furnished: we have rugs, lamps, and essential things, but then our home just starts to feel static, a little dull and boring. This is when I always want some retail therapy!
A while ago I learned a kind of quirky trick that works when I’m in a shopping mood, but don’t need to go shopping because I don’t need anything. I go grocery shopping. It’s weird, I know, but I get the endomorphic boost of buying things—in this case groceries which are necessary—and since I have a low tolerance for how long I can shop this usually does the trick for a while. What does this have to do with anything? I think the same general concept can be applied when it comes to being bored with our home.
Step One: Declutter
When I start to get bored with my home something else happen simultaneously—my home gets a little messy. I’m pretty OCD so it’s not like my house ever gets terribly messy, but it will lose some of its polish. This is somewhat of the “which came first, the chicken or the egg” conundrum because I’m not entirely sure if my house gets messy because I get bored, or if I get bored then it is easy for me to let it get a little sloppy. Regardless, the same cure will work—purge!
If you are feeling bored, before you go out and purchase more things, start with decluttering your space. It does not have to be a huge overhaul but look around for any “hot spots;” places where mail and magazines are gathering, drawers that are overcrowded, and even what is going on underneath the sink! Doing a little purge will give you the same endomorphic release that shopping does and if you still do decide to go out to buy some new things, you’ll have a little more room for them!
Step Two: Shop Your Home
While you are decluttering keep your eye open for anything you may have forgotten about. Are there dishes that you love that are behind a closed cabinet door? Pull them out! Can you use them as a tray? Can you tilt a tray that you love up on its side and use it on your mantle? Is there a cup or bowl that you could stick a little succulent in and place on your coffee table books? Try looking at things with fresh eyes and see what you may be forgetting about that you already own and love.
Step Three: Play Musical Chairs
Try moving one item in each room to a different room and see what happens. So often we purchase something for a room; over time we add other elements to that room and slowly we start to not love that lamp that was in the living room as much as we first did. Meanwhile, we desperately need a lamp for the guest room! This is another area where we become blind to the options before us as we are so used to how things are that we forget we can move them.
Step Four: Rearrange Your Furniture
My mom is adamantly opposed to buying furniture for her house that will only allow one option for furniture arrangement. She wants to have options! She wants to be able to move the table, chairs and couch and swap things all around. (Her house is open concept so that does make this easier.) Moving furniture around will help to inspire you and get your creativity flowing!
Lastly: Count Your Blessings
Because of technology, we have so many opportunities to see inside other’s homes and it sparks a desire within us to want them too. Marketing messages are aimed at making us less content with what we already own. We see the influencer on Instagram and all the cute home items in Target and we start to feel like our home is sub-par. But look around! Look at what makes your home feel like you. You bought these things (hopefully) because you love them, so embrace your home and the items within it! Maybe you need to do a little shopping refresher—that’s ok! Just don’t lose your home’s soul to the latest trend if it’s not you. Make your home a reflection of you—of the things that you enjoy in life. And most importantly, don’t be afraid to live in your home!
We recently redid our floors in our home. Then I decided to paint another room. Then I decided to get serious about furnishing another room . . . which led to wanting to “tweak” (redo) the decor in my guest room/office. And then our bedroom needed some attention. Over the course of all this I realized that—alas!—I still have a lot to learn about furnishing my home! But, I also realized that I have learned a lot already about how to start decorating a room.
The first thing I learned was that I have done it all wrong.
Oh yes, I have read the books, listened to the podcasts and know all about the “right way” of tackling something of this nature but then . . . I got a little ahead of myself and ended up with four rooms 90% of the way finished and wondered what in the world was I thinking when I bought those curtains—do I even have a room they would work in???
The experts say when redoing a room or tackling a house to try to work on finishing one room first, then you know you have one room that looks the way you want it before moving on to tackling another project. If you are moving into a home that you plan on doing some major remodeling (in our home we redid the kitchen cabinets and flooring), you may have to get a little out of order before you can then start with the fun decorating—rugs, lamps, wall decor, etc. If you are needing a couch, a table, end tables, and everything in between, I would suggest you furnish the necessities first and then start with the smaller, more fun decorating pieces room by room. BUT, before you buy the first cute couch you see: stop, make a plan, and then proceed.
What if you aren’t starting from scratch?
In our bedroom, for example, I recycled the curtains from our former house. They are working. And I moved a rug from a different room into our bedroom, and while I did purchase a duvet for our bed, I’m thinking it will be moving into another bedroom which means I will have to buy a new one for our room. So, I am now at a crossroads in our bedroom decorating and there are some questions I need to ask myself:
· What do I want the feel of our bedroom to be?
· Do I love the pieces we currently have enough to decorate around them?
You may already have pieces that you can use in a room but if you aren’t loving them already, you won’t love them after you have decorated the whole room around them. You will just be out more time and money and will only have a room that you still aren’t thrilled with. Don’t fall into the trap of saying to yourself that you have already spent so much time and/or money that you might as well invest more! If you don’t like something you already own—get rid of it. Try to sell it if you can and cut your losses!
Pick an Inspiration Image
Regardless of whether you are starting from scratch or already have a few items that you know you want to use, pick a piece to draw your inspiration from. Look on Pinterest and formulate an idea of what you want your room to feel like. Then look for one piece that embodies the look you are going for and start building your room from there. This may be a large piece like a rug or it may even be as small as a pillow!
My guest room/office was a good example of this. I hadn’t loved the paint color since we painted it when we moved in, but I also didn’t hate it. In the back of my mind I was thinking that I would like to paint it and had a general idea of what color I would go for; but, I felt no pressing need to immediately act. Until I found The Rug. I was innocently scrolling around on Pinterest and up pops this gorgeous rug! I clicked and to my delight I found that it came in the size I needed and it was on sale!
When I found the rug the rest of the room came into focus and I could picture the look and feel of the room. It established my guidelines for my room.
Our bedroom is working out much the same way. As I said already, I have a rug and curtains. The curtains were inexpensive and had been purchased several years ago so if I decide that they won’t work, I am totally fine with getting new ones as they have already had a good life. I also have the rug. It is fairly new and I do like it so I am going to use it for inspiration for the rest of the room.
I am not saying that every room you do you should pick a rug to build your decor around, but pick something!
In our other guest room I have curtains. Again, they are recycled from our former home, but I love them! When we moved into this house, I didn’t have anywhere to use them and was considering making accent pillows out of them. It didn’t happen and in the meantime I painted the guest room. It needed curtains. I came across the old ones and decided to see how they would look. They are perfect!! They are my inspiration for that room and I will build the rest of my prints and colors off of them.
Side note: I do have a color palette for my home (read my post “How to Create a Cohesive Color Palette” here) so, for the most part, I try to decorate within that color palette. However in my case, my two guest rooms are considerably smaller than every other room and because we live in a rural area with no close neighbors, I don’t use curtains in the main living area of my house. This means that things like curtains and rugs in the guest rooms will only be able to be interchanged with each other. I advise sticking with one color palette for your home but you can stray when it comes to guest rooms and certain pieces (like the examples I gave above) that may not work anywhere else in your house. Therefore you don’t need to tightly coordinate them if you don’t wish too. Just remember you’ll be more limited with what you can interchangeably move about your house.
Plan It Out
In the past I have bought things willy-nilly and been less than pleased when it all came together. I have now started in my mind roughly mapping out how I want it to look. If I see an item that I am needing, like a rug for example, yet don’t have a mental picture for the room, I hold off on buying anything until I decide what I want it to look like. Your inspiration piece can be the jumping off point, like my rug was, but I still didn’t buy it until I had thought through how everything else in the room would coordinate with it.
Have fun!
Try not to let yourself get stressed out. Stress is a creativity killer! If you are feeling too stressed to make a decision, then don’t. Wait until you are feeling calmer to resume looking at pictures and furnishings. I’m willing to gamble that it won’t be long before creativity strikes!
We want our homes to be reflections of us. We want them to be cohesive. We try to follow the rules. But, the only unbreakable rule in decorating is that you do what you love! Don’t confine yourself to the “decorating rules” if it is not you. Do what you love and love what you do! Happy decorating!!
As I mentioned in my post, “How to Refresh Your Home for Spring,” I think spring and summer can be the most challenging seasons for which to decorate. Flowers are great, but when it’s March it can be difficult to feel like bringing a bunch of flowers into your house while there is still snow on the ground! This brings home the point of how important it is to have a strong base of staple decor. You may put your go-to’s away for a season or two, but you know they will be there when you need them! If you haven’t yet read my post, “Capsule Decor”, I suggest you read that post too as these two subjects go hand-in-hand!
Identify Your Style
First, you need to identify your personal decor style. What do you want your home to look and feel like? What do you already use and love using in your decor? These are the items that will be with you for the long haul. For example, I have a small dough bowl that my uncle made when he was young; it was my grandparents’ and was eventually passed down to me. I love it! Lately I have been really enjoying it on my entry table, but I could also use it on my kitchen counter or dining room table! I love this little bowl and I know I will use it regardless of what home I’m living in.
Your staple decor is not trendy. It will go where you go—in whatever home you live in! Your staple decor are the best friends out of your decor pieces—the ones that will be with you for the long haul! So you may be asking . . .
What Items Make Good Decor Staples?
Timeless Pieces
I think of staple pieces as the most timeless pieces you own. You don’t have these because they are trendy or because they are a specific style that you are trying to infuse into your home. Instead, these are pieces you love—that you will make sure if you move they will come too! It may be an antique mirror, a family heirloom, or a favorite piece of art. Regardless of what it is, it will be something you love!
Things Every Home Needs:
I want to be careful in saying what “every home needs,” because every home is different and styles differ from person-to-person, but on the whole these are the items that will help you add flair to your home. These items will help a collection of things to look styled rather than just bunched together and they may be items that you want just for practicality!
· Books: use as risers, as filler in vignettes, and on your coffee table.
· Plants: every house needs a little plant or two. Go faux if you really can’t keep plants alive.
· Trays: a good tray works magic! I’m always on the lookout for a good tray because it seems every time I turn around I’m wishing I had *just* one more.
· Candles: again, fill out vignettes, place on a book, or add a little glow to your kitchen.
· Candle sticks and pillars: these help add finishing touches to your home.
· A good piece of art or family picture: this is probably the easiest way to express your style in one fell swoop. Nothing says you like one statement piece of your choosing. While family pictures are a great way to add personality to a room, if not done well, it can feel a bit dated. If you want to go bold with a statement piece that isn’t a family picture, go for a painting, botanical prints, an old map, or a vintage poster.
· Pinecones, moss balls, or twine balls: these will help fill out a vignette or table center piece.
· A few different size cutting boards or charcuterie trays: use them behind your faucet as they are easier to wash than your backsplash. You can set your kitchen soaps on a small cutting board to make them look more like an intentional gathering. And, have a cutting board or two handy so when you get the whim to cut carrot sticks, you can act before the moment passes!
Where to Use Staple Items
Ok, you have the staple items but now what? Why do you have all these things??? You have them so you can use them of course! A tray, a few books, and a candle, picture frame, or plant make a lovely vignette for your end table. A tray can add some class to that mess of bottles on your bathroom counter. Having a variety of staple items in your home helps to give your decorating flexibility and not get stale. You can switch things up when you start to get bored, or you can keep things the same all year if you would rather not be bothered. Which leads to the next thing to consider when purchasing staple items . . .
A Few Rules for Staple Decor
Buy neutrals or only the colors that you absolutely, positively, know that you will love forever! Buying neutrals, or colors that you love and use all over your home allows you to be able to move items from room-to-room, and will still work as your style evolves. Check out my post, “How to Create a Cohesive Color Palette” here. If you are debating between a really modern, trendy piece and one that is clean-lined and classic, I would go with the classic one and save the trends for a piece you know you will tire of before too long.
Refreshing Staple Pieces
You may have pieces that you bought and loved but now the color or the finish isn’t to your taste—or perhaps you are just bored with it—don’t forget what simple things like a coat of paint, switching out hardware or knobs, or reupholstering or recovering can do!
I hope this helps you to think through your decor and overcome any decorating obstacles you may have been having. Remember, a good base is the foundation of great style. Happy decorating!
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