Skulls and Cross Bones for Six!

Thank you to Susan for hosting this week's Tablescape Thursday at Between Naps on the Porch.  You can view around a hundred more tables there. Something tells me you will see quite an assortment of Halloween themes from kid friendly to adult creepy!  Don't worry, there will be other kinds of tablescapes, too.

I knew I wanted to do something for Halloween that was a little more on the "dark" side but I am not a fan of blood and gore in my Dining Room.  My cooking isn't that great to begin with, so the last thing I need is  have my decor  take away my dinner guest's appetites!  I needed a starting point and I found that at Ross (of course) with 2 sets of small dinner plates with a skull and crossbones design.  I'm always thinking ahead and trying to get double (or triple!) duty from my plates and I knew these would work for another tablescape I will be doing for Gasparilla (a Pirate Festival in Tampa). 

I wish everyone could see this table in person.  An almost all black table is tough to photograph for someone who really doesn't have a clue what she's doing.  So when you look at these photos please try to picture them better than what they are.  You can do that, right? 

I already had a black tablecloth that fits nicely with the leaf  in the table.  I have a full set of black dishes that I thought would work with the skull plates but I ran into two problems.  First, they got lost in this sea of black and they were so big they covered the skulls on the round woven place mats.  I tried several different options and found a set of 6 smaller dinner plates that I bought on clearance at Marshall's a few months ago ($2.00 a piece).  The edge of this plate sticks out just enough and they matched my black and striped napkins. 

The purple wine glasses are from Goodwill (.59 each) and the black water goblets are from Dollar Tree and Bed, Bath and Beyond.  Purple seems to have joined black and orange as the Halloween colors of choice this year.

My "new" silverware is making it's tablescape debut today.  You can read about it HERE  I think it's age and style fit right in with this table.  If you squint a little the flowers look like skulls (maybe?).

The round woven place mats are from Kohl's.  I was there again yesterday and all their Halloween items are marked down 55% or 60%  now.  The napkins are from Ross and the napkin ring is from Old Time Pottery. 

The centerpiece consists of a black faux pumpkin from Michael's.  I repainted the stem with a mixture of brown and tan craft paint and added a crow from Dollar Tree.  The glitter pumpkin is also from Michael's as is the skull under a cloche from GW.  I think the toile tray is from Ross.  The kitchen in my old house was decorated in black and cream toile so I have a collection of pieces I can use.

I wanted to add another touch of purple so I used the leaf dishes that I used last week with black and purple tea lights.  The other candles are black with silver spiders in glass candlesticks.  It's tough to find straight tapers in Florida.  All the ones they had at Marshall's were droopy so I bought these at Ross.  One still droops a bit. 

 Just for fun I draped cobwebs from the chandelier.  I don't know what these things are made of but I had to use a scissors to cut off a piece!

My favorite part of this table is the flower arrangements.  They look so much better in person!  I used black silk roses (Tuesday Morning), more black roses with skulls (Michael's), feather picks (Rustic Rose, Michael's), more picks and some leaves from plants in my yard.  I am so into feathers right now.  I want to stick them all over the house.

You could see all the plastic stems through the glass vase so I just stuck a piece of decorative computer paper I had leftover inside.  The table runner is "Creepy Cloth" from Dollar Tree.  The salt and pepper shakers are from Ross.

How about a little candlelight to set the mood?

Thank you for stopping by and viewing my not really scary, not really Gothic, definitely not gory, Halloween Dinner Tablescape.   Don't forget to scroll down and see the story of my silverware.  Please visit my sister, Elaine at Creating Wonderful Spaces.