When it is your turn to organize a Girl's Night Out for your family and you decide to host it on your porch.  When you find that...

...you don't have a table big enough.

...you don't have enough dishes to serve dinner to everyone.

...there are not many flowers blooming in your garden at the time.

...and you want to keep within the budget.

...what do you do?

I hesitate to share this with you, especially since grand and glorious tablescapes abound within blogland, but I decided to anyway.  Last evening they were here.  My mother, sisters and sister-in-laws, my daughter, and their daughters.  A few were unable to attend, but the ones that could, came.

Thanks to Walmart for the white paperplates, white and green paper napkins, plastic cups, and the faux real looking flowers that Better Homes and Gardens now has at Walmart.  I am certainly not promoting Walmart, but they did make my job feasible.

I took the flowers and made a simple, very simple bouquet using floral foam.  Don't you think the flowers look real?   I used a few extra flowers to tie around the napkins with thin green and pink polka dot ribbon.

 

I laid one green napkin on the white tablecover to add more color to the white tablecloth and white paper plates.  To extend my table, I added another old table.  Even though they weren't the same height, it worked.

My Mother's contribution was fresh tomatoes from the farm up the road.  They were a hit and disappeared quickly.  Ripe, red tomatoes add a special touch to every dinner.

How does one do seating arrangements, especially when one would love to sit beside everyone of the invited guests.  I numbered each plastic cup with numbers 1 - 12.  After all the guests arrived and the dinner was ready to be served, each guest chose a number from a glass bowl of numbers.  The number chosen told them where they would sit at the table.  It was a fun way to arrange seating, with the older and younger women mixed in with each other.  As always, there was never a break in the conversations.  Along with the tomatoes from the farm, the strawberries from the farm were included.  The dessert was the one I shared recently on a post, with angel food cake and strawberries.

We talked and laughed together until darkness sat in.  Treasured memories of a warm "almost" Summer evening on the porch.

My fun, simple, way of hosting a dinner for some very special people in my life.

Thanks to my sister and neice for most of these pictures.