A New Year’s Tablescape and Memory Placemats

Even though Christmas isn’t quite here yet, I’m so excited to share with you this New Year’s Tablescape with you and an idea I’m in LOVE with: memory placemats! 

I’m joining my friend, Bre from Rooms For Rent Blog, who is hosting this blog hop where 11 of us are all sharing ideas for New Year’s tablescapes. Be sure to check them out at the bottom of this post. 

I started with a fuzzy cream-colored throw blanket on top of my usual white tablecloth. 

Instead of a traditional runner, I created a ‘runner’ from several rose gold sequin ribbons running down the table, then layered in some white felt balls, antlers, and mercury glass votives. 

New Year’s is the time of the year that sequins are my go-to, so I figured, why not on a table? For a centerpiece I just went with simple grocery store flowers: white roses and eucalyptus. 

Ok, now onto the part I’m most excited about: memory placemats! A few years ago I created a slideshow recap for each kid in our family that we played for them on New Year’s Eve. They LOVED it and we all enjoyed seeing highlights from the year and remembering everything we did that year. That was my inspiration, and as I got to creating, it just seemed to get better. 

I started by measuring the width of my largest plate, which was 11 inches and chose to create a circle placemat that was 13″ wide. I used Photoshop to create a 13″ wide circle and then started pasting the pictures I had on my phone (after I turned them black and white) in different sizes on the circle. I chose the earliest picture from 2019 at the top and moved around the circle with the most recent pic in the 11 o’clock position. 

For Nina, the growth and change was the most obvious as I moved around the placemat. 

In the middle, for Nina I put her first official picture: her ultrasound! I didn’t worry about having exactly 12 pictures (one for every hour) but tried to get pretty close to that and then filled in additional pictures where I had space, so there was no white space. 

For the older kids I put their school picture in the center and then the rest of the pics around, as I did before, with earliest in the year in the 12 o’clock position, summer adventures around the 6 and 7 o’clock position (corresponding with the months), and then the most recent in the 11 o’clock position. 

I was going to wait until New Year’s to show the kids but they spied them when they got home from school and I was still working on the tablescape. They absolutely loved them. I printed each placemat at Fedex on their heavyweight photo-quality poster paper then had them matte-laminated. You can make them bigger than I did, but I noticed my wooden round chargers are 13″ wide too, so I kept it standard size. With coupon code “CPN125” I got 25% off the print order so they came out to about $7.50 per placemat including lamination. 

To finish off the table, I brought out the champagne flutes and poured some sparkling cider. Whether you are staying home or going out I think its always fun to dress up for New Year’s Eve!

I love the look of the sequin ribbon and gold glitter ribbon in the candlelight, don’t you? 

I hope you enjoyed this tablescape and were inspired to perhaps create your own memory placemats! I will be sharing in my IG stories how to create the collage of photos on Photoshop this afternoon…. it is super easy and you don’t have to have any Photoshop skills to create it! 

Make sure to check out my friends’ posts below to gather more inspiration for your New Year’s celebration!