This is the most fun time of year for a tablescape. Getting out the fall colors and autumn leaves brings my favorite season to life. I like setting both the pub table and the dining room table with something festive as it is a way to bring more autumn into the decor. I loved this table from 2016. It was the year I got the fall leaf salad plates and set the table with my white china and deep rust color chargers.

I used rustic wood slices in the center topped with pine cones and faux fall leaves with crackle glass votive holders. Ceramic pumpkins completed the centerpiece.

It is fun to be able to use a single arrangement all through the season, less stuff to store! One year, I began with my leaf plates on square gold dinner plates and the same rust color chargers set on the pub table. My pumpkin bowls were on the table for soup.

The table was perfect for September. My pumpkin cookie jar, some faux leaf garlands and the crackle glass autumn votive holders made the centerpiece.

In October, I changed the leaf plates for ones with a Halloween theme and added a couple of sill sitters to the centerpiece.

Then when November comes, one more change of salad plates, and the addition of turkeys to the centerpiece means Thanksgiving is coming soon.

At times, one of my fall quilts has served as the tablecloth on the larger dining table. This time I pulled the burgundy colors in the chargers and added red salad plates under the pumpkin bowls. The centerpiece is a low basket full of leaves with a ceramic pumpkin. Simple, yet brings the colors of the season into our home.

Even during 2020, I set a table for two for the fall season. We so needed to have beauty and fall color that year. The rust chargers are set on simple plaid placemats with ruffled rust color dinner plates and the leaf salad plates. The centerpiece was set to the opposite side of the table. It was a simple basket, full of leaves and a ceramic pumpkin sitting on a bed of faux leaf garland twisted into a circle.

I noticed while pulling this post together, that I often use the nutmeg color napkins with the brown beaded gold napkin rings. I have already brought those out for this year, and every year I think I’m doing something different! Ah well, but there is a great story to go with those napkin rings, and it has been a while since I told it. I frequently visit the large Goodwill store on Four Seasons Blvd in Hendersonville, and often find really good items there. In the summer of 2016, I found these napkin rings. All eight were banded together for $4. I normally like to get six of anything for the table so I have the option of using it on either the pub table or the larger dining table. But these were so inexpensive, in good shape, and close in style that I thought I could perhaps mix them for the larger table. So, I got them.

Fast forward to over a year later in late 2017, when I was again in the same Goodwill store. There on the shelf was a little baggie, with four napkin rings, two green and two brown! I swear I am not making this up!! The person that donated the others must have come across the extras ones and donated them. Of course I snapped them up. What are the odds that I would happen to wander into that store at just the right time to find the original donation and then the extra rings to finish both sets a year later?!! I still have a hard time believing it myself.

So, maybe you don’t have a cache of chargers and tablescaping stuff. Shop your home for what you do have. For this table, I used a length of brown corduroy for a tablecloth so it would set off the white background placemats and dinner plates. No chargers this time. My pumpkin bowls are set on the plates, with a few ceramic pumpkins in the centerpiece. White coffee cups and crystal glasses complete the settings.

Your everyday tableware with some fresh autumn flowers could be a lovely way to celebrate the coming of autumn. Maybe you don’t have any napkin rings. You can do a simple fold and set your flatware on top.

The dollar stores have a lot of this kind of thing right now, so cheap that they can be used for a season and then donated a few months from now if you don’t have any storage. Don’t have any fall placemats? Use a fall themed paper napkin unfolded as a placemat. Take a look around, what do you have to set a festive autumn table?