I had a great Thanksgiving this year as I not only got to see my whole family, but they also threw me and my hubby a baby shower! More on the shower tomorrow, but first - a brief Thanksgiving recap cause I think all you lovers of things non-traditional might enjoy it. My husband rocked out a non-traditional Thanksgiving feast. As he has for the past several years, he and his brother and father went hunting and came back with goose and duck. He made an amazing goose and duck ramen as our Thanksgiving meal and it was so delicious. I decided to embrace the non-traditional aspects with the decor and do something more modern and minimalistic to match the seemingly simple ramen dish.

As always, I like to go into the detail on decor to show everyone that even party and event planners can be simple and make things easy on themselves! I used a white tablecloth I already had, and reused some black and white striped runners my mother made for our wedding! I decided to drape them in a somewhat non-traditional manner and instead of doing a runner lengthwise down the table, we did them across. I grabbed some cheap chopsticks and spoons, as well as some simple black fabric napkins from World Market. I then used some leftover tags I had from a previous wedding to do simple place cards that we tied to the napkin with string I had around the house. We knew we wanted to serve sparkling wine with the ramen, so to match our new (and cheap - Crate and Barrel Outlet what what) champagne glasses I picked up some mercury glass votives and a silver tray at Michael's to add a touch of shine and some simple centerpieces.

I was really happy with the result. I like keeping centerpieces minimal so that people can focus on the food and the people across from them. And it was fun to veer away from the traditional Thanksgiving decor of pumpkins and gourds and orange and earthy stuff and do something a bit more modern.

And for those who are really put off by non-traditional stuff, fear not - we had pie.