Let me state right off the bat that I am not really the ladies luncheon sort of person. I am not crazy about making small talk with people I don’t know well, and I have an idiosyncratic decorating style. The last one of these that I attended was years ago and I remember it as being no fun. So why was I here? A friend asked me to do a dinosaur themed table, and how could I refuse? What this meant was that we were to decorate a table in a festive manner for a Christmas luncheon and provide some sort of party favor.

This woman said it took her about 15 minutes to decorate from things that she had just laying about! (For some reason, I don’t have gold chargers and seasonal decorations to hand.) Those are little sewed pockets with candy to take home.

Here’s another person who just whipped out the seasonal decorations. It is optional, but encouraged to give everyone at the table a little present, so these people were getting a pumpkin.

This person chose to jump two holidays ahead to New Years Day, and again just happened to have gold and silver chargers to hand. But wait, what’s that in the background?

Why it’s the table for overthinkers/overachievers. Those are my personal dinosaurs. The fabric she chose had dinosaurs wearing hats and scarves and decorated with flowers. I will admit I did already have some tiny hats to hand, but for the rest I crocheted and knitted tiny hats and scarves. Under the nametag is a cinnamon dino ornament I baked and I provided a tiny dinosaur as a party favor. We baked and iced the cookies together and she made incomplete place mats from the dino fabric. The plates are paper. She forgot the Christmas tree and substituted a pineapple. The ornaments were from London.

This was massively stressful as I do not know the rules of ladies luncheons and I am disinclined to learn more about them. Instead I shall consider this as an anthropologic visit to another culture. And I shall endeavor to remember this and never ever repeat the experience.

However, I admit that the dinosaurs look splendid and they were fun to dress up. And I learned to make fancy cookies (special thanks to K for the lesson). And of course I think that our table was the finest, because the dinosaurs dressed for dinner.