This is a beautiful table. These are my colors, but it isn’t mine. (Where do you find a pumkin like that? Ha!)
On mine there’ll be some mix and match dishes because we’ll have a bigger crowd (16 and maybe more?). And while fresh, sauteed green beans are much better for you, one of my girls will fix that once-a-year-cooked-and-soup-saturated-into-oblivion Green Bean Casserole with the crunchy french-fried onions on top. It’s just a part of the day.
There’ll be cranberry juice and Sprite spritzers, pretty and festive. All of the usual food suspects will be here. We’ll hang our “thankful leaves” on our little centerpiece “grateful tree.” Even with both leaves in the table (making it 9 feet long), we’ll add on and cover a card table and pull out all the folding chairs we can find for extra seating. Sometimes I think about getting some fabric chair covers to pull it all together, but then realize – the beauty of my table won’t have come from Pottery Barn or Williams and Sonoma.
The radiant beauty of our convivial table this Thursday will be the faces seated around it: my kids and grandbabies, good friends, a niece and a nephew (one from South Dakota and one from Montana – on loan to me from their parents). The beauty will be the abundance of the food (we are so blessed) prepared with love. It will be the laughter and understanding between strong-willed and passionate people, choosing to honor those all around them. And for for Dave and Tara and Hunter who are travelling in the Pacific Northwest this week and next – absent from us physically, they are deeply planted in our hearts and will be missed.
The house will host some awkward transition decoratively speaking with gourds and pumkins adorning various surfaces while the big tree is in mid-decor and Christmas boxes will be marching in throughout the day. I’m always so excited to see what I got last year on clearance after the holidays.
Today I read David’s words of awe when the LORD established an everlasting covenant with him and his house:
“Who am I, O LORD God, And what is my house that You have brought me this far?” 1 Chronicles 17.16 NKJV
And I concur and wonder the same, with great thanks…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Give thanks. Because God is good and establishing my household at a table of mercy, a table of grace.
I have to say that while fresh sauteed green beans might be heart healthier, Green Bean Casseerole is good for the SOUL.
Many blessings to you and yours today, on Thursday, and always. You ARE blessed. And you BLESS many.
And while Green Bean Casseerole is good for the SOUL, Green Bean Casserole is even better…
Spell check, spell check, spell check. :)