“So, is now the time to put away all of my red linens?” “What if I haven’t gotten around to taking the tree down yet?” “I’m not ready to let go of my plaid though!” Sound familiar? Yep. It’s that time of the year between the holidays and spring where decorating for a gathering just gets complicated.

Fear not though, friends. I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to put everything away just yet. This winter brunch we hosted is a prime example. It features pinecone accents, bright red linens, festive silver (good for all seasons), and leftover sprigs of greenery. Okay, and the occasional crystal Christmas tree. I couldn’t bring myself to put those away yet.

So, I say enjoy it for a few more weeks – or stretch it to Valentine’s Day where red is one of the primary colors anyway!

For this January brunch, we used mostly silver serving pieces. I love, love, love the way silver pieces look against greenery and other rustic wintery accents. It lives for the winter.

I’m also going to let you guys into a little secret: all of the red linens used here are napkins. That’s right. That’s no tablerunner. It’s a makeshift one that consists of napkins turned at a quarter-turn and stacked in a row down the dining table and our sideboard.

Since I’m all about spilling the beans in this post, here’s another one: we wrapped utensils in the linens. This saves so much space and makes it much easier for your guests to “grab and go” as they’re going down the brunch buffet line.

Since it was a brunch we were hosting, we made sure to have several different beverage options. I don’t know about you, but every time I brunch, I have sparkling water, coffee, probably a mimosa, and orange juice. So, we wanted our guests to be able to pick and choose their own brunch beverages, too.

By labeling our items with place cards, we were able to make almost everything self-service. This brings me to a lesson learned. I completely took for granted the fact that nearly everyone owns or has access to (at work, the salon, etc.) a Keurig. Reality: while they might, the machines are not all the same. This seems like an obvious thing to know, but in the planning, I just neglected to factor that in.

An easy solution for next time: take five minutes to type out straightforward directions on how to use the machine (whether it’s a Keurig, pour-over situation, Nespresso, etc.) in a pretty but readable font, frame it, and set it out next to the machine. Problem solved!

Right. On to what we served. We wanted to give plenty of food options from the sweet side to the savory. Here’s our menu:

Olive-stuffed sausage balls

Coffee cake (a tradition at my family’s house on Christmas morning)

Quiche Lorraine

Quiche Florentine

Fruit platter (See? We adhered to everyone’s New Year’s resolutions…ish)

Shrimp cocktail

Healthy whole-wheat blueberry muffins

Sweet potato biscuits with ham

There you have it! An easy and fun winter brunch that uses a few accents left over from the holidays to “up” the cozy factor.