Are you hosting a dinner for the holidays? Lovejoy Designs teamed up with award-winning floral design studio, Tangerine Creations. Orly Kohn and her staff put together amazing, sophisticated creations for weddings, special events and parties. I am lucky enough to be down the hall from her studio. Every day I get to walk by her door and see unique and fresh designs coming to life.

So in the spirit of the season, Lovejoy Designs and Tangerine Creations joined forces to create some centerpiece concepts for your holiday entertaining as well as some tips for how to execute a beautiful table.

When I was in design school, we had lots of clients. All of which were completely fictional… One time I designed for comedian Jerry Seinfeld, and another time was Today Show host (at the time), Katie Couric. A room needs a point of view to be designed effectively and that was the whole point of these exercises. Now I have real human clients who I work for that give me endless inspiration and points of view. However, for these holiday creations, I decided to pay homage to my former professors and design around a couple of women in the news.

Two headliners; enter Kate Middleton and Sarah Palin.

Much like the rest of the world, I am in awe of Kate Middleton. Her engagement photos done by Mario Testino are so elegant and tasteful. The first centerpiece is designed for her and William’s Christmas feast.

For an elegant place setting, keep it monochromatic. Here, our color palate was grey, white and silver. Most of us don’t have a house that is staged for the bright greens and reds you see during the holidays. Instead work with the interior you have and pull colors from it.

We used ivory colored Spray Roses and Kale.

I was searching the Martha Stewart website and came upon this really pretty napkin ring. You can use any color ribbon and it really was not hard to make! The instructions are here.

However one feels about Sarah Palin, we cannot deny that this woman is busy. With 5 kids, a new book out, a TLC show and regular appearances on news shows, she is on the go! This centerpiece is created for the person that does not have the time to spend creating a fussy table. This one screams easy by scattering carnations and Ranunculus, pods and Ilex berry around the table. We planted an amaryllis plant and yelled for Sarah’s large family to come for dinner!

We used magnolia for the place card here. Magnolia leaves have such a beautiful color to them. The underside has a light brown tone to them with a vibrant green top. We took the leaf and placed it on the salad plate with the place card resting on it.