Halloween Cats and Jack and Bertha

One of my absolute favorite Fiesta decals is the black cat on Poppy and the trio of skeletons on White. These decals are perfect with my Halloween guests Jack Straw and Bertha, they visit every Halloween and make themselves right at home!

A few years ago, Fiesta introduced a rectangular platter and this year they put the Halloween decals on it! I love the versatility of the rectangular platter - most of the time we use for serving or I put banana breads on or some other baked goodie on it. For this table we used the platters as plates. I think if you wanted to use them as plates, they would work really well and they come in many of the Fiesta colors. For every day use, we have two rectangular platters in turquoise. Fiesta is traditionally the round plates with their iconic embossed rings, the rectangle plates as well as the square plates have the rings as well. I love the variety of shapes that Fiesta comes in, it makes setting tables so much more fun!

As Kissy and I started thinking about what to set on the table and we pulled lots of stuff out before we settled on this! The plate stacks start with tin charger, I probably got them from Hobby Lobby. The dinner plates are Lilac and Chartreuse Fiesta, and the luncheon plates are a variety of Halloween decals, the skeleton trio on white, the ghosts on black and finally the black cat on poppy. For the head and foot of the table we used the rectangular platters.

The tablecloth is from Homegoods, I picked up last year. I have matching napkins somewhere, (I couldn't find them) instead we pulled out orange, orange and black and few others and decided to mix and match. I love the orange and black buffalo check because they can also be used with San Francisco Giants baseball tables! In this case, they worked really well with the table cloth We loved the orange and white patterned napkins with the table cloth as well as it has a white background. The new black wooden napkin rings with the roses from Dollar Tree and it was set. We reused the Treble Clef flatware from the previous Halloween table and then we started to think about glassware.

I have a lot of glassware, originally I was going to use some purple water glasses I have, but I only have two, next we considered green - nope. Kissy hit on the idea of the brown tortoise shell stemless wine glasses and right in front of those in the cabinet was the white frosted with gold dots and BINGO! it fit. We both loved the whimsy the dots added.

Building the centerpieces was fun, we pulled out the Bauer candlesticks right away, and I can't have a Halloween table without crows, so they carried over from the last table... but the flowers?

A few weeks ago hubby bought a skull vase and we finally found it! Kissy and I went to Trader Joe's for flowers because we didn't want to disassemble the Marigolds and Celosia. We found gorgeous burgundy mums and mini sunflower mums and the flower that made arrangement - orange, burgundy, yellow shaded calla lillies -- we arranged them in skull and added some seeded Euculyptus, it looks like he has a mohawk! A few strings of purple and orange LED lights and it was done!

I recently found a new collectible to add to my Halloween stash, Johanna Parker's Halloween designs are SO cute! Several years ago she had this adorable black cat so I've picked a couple of them to match the Fiesta plates.

So, who are Jack Straw and Bertha you might be wondering and how did they get their names? Jack and Bertha are a part of the iconic imagery in the Grateful Dead culture and both are the names of songs. As I am a deadhead, it only seemed fitting our skeletons have names that honor them.

As an addendum, we had a girls night, a couple of girl friends came over for wine and cheese and Kissy I set a heck of a charcuterie table using a lot of Fiesta and bit of Nora Fleming thrown in. The Nora Fleming Witches Hat and Pumpkin added just the right touch. With multiple colors of the Fiesta Omni trays (the wedges) and various bowls in poppy, tangerine, persimmon and paprika, it really looked nice together!

We had so much fun! Snacks, wine and laughs made for a great night!