I’ve created a Chanukah table that will make your guest feel festive as soon as they arrive. Here are my top ten tips for creating your perfect Chanukah table:
1. Go for gold: I chose a gold theme to bring the warmth, glow and hope that this festival represents to me. This extended to vases and tea light holders.
2. Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel: I scatter mini wooden dreidels over the table and at each table setting . They look great and are ready to play with.
3. Give thanks: a lovely touch is to provide a gold note pad and pencil at each place setting as a little present for your guests to remind them to take note of all the little miracles in our lives that we sometimes overlook.
4. Makeshift menorah: line up wine decanters down the centre of the table to form a chanukiah. Tip: If you need to secure the candle use silver foil.
5) Gelty pleasures: make home-made Chanukah gelt by pouring a thin layer of melted white chocolate into a mini cupcake tin tray to make the coins. Once they have set, spray them with gold edible spray.
6) Doughnut delight: adults and children will love a doughnut bar on the table. Provide a mountain of plain, mini doughnuts and loads of colourful dips and sprinkles so your guests can have fun with their favourite toppings.
7) DIY décor: different oil containers make fabulous decorations: There are so many beautiful bottles and cans in delis and supermarkets that will look great on your table.
8) Light relief: gold tea lights to help create the ambience and keep the gold theme going.
9) Boxed in: little gold treasure boxes make a lovely table decoration or gift to each guest, and can be filled with gold confetti and a few dreidels and a chocolate coin or two.
10)Delicious details: To continue the theme I made sure everything on the table fitted in. I used gold-coloured cutlery; glassware or china with gold hints on them — again, many supermarkets sell these; gold or silver table mats; and wrote on brown paper gift tags with silver or gold pen for name places.
Find more tips from Dani Tucker at www.thesocialkitchen.org