Here is my annual piece of advice for summer enjoyers and those who aspire to join their ranks: Buy yourself a cute vintage tablecloth.
Nothing levels up your hostess game so fast. It transforms “having some friends over for rosé and Doritos during a heat wave” into “summer entertaining.” Suddenly the most rickety dining room table is a shabby chic temple to conviviality; you can turn a sun-bleached plastic table on a splintery deck into something that would appear in a glossy magazine spread about some celebrity’s summer home on Cape Cod. Freshly laundered they all give the impression of having been dried on a clothesline in the purest, best-smelling sunshine on earth. Even if you are plowing through a box of stale Entenmann’s donuts you will feel like you’re sitting in the background of Bake Off.
Doesn’t have to be anything expensive or fancy—you’re not looking to spend more than $40, which isn’t cheap, but you get a lot of luxury bang for your buck. (Sure, you could ball out—I’m very tempted by this design of roses on a picket fence and this beautiful orange blossom design is truly envy-inducing—but you don’t have to, which is my point.)
Perhaps you have an instinctive skepticism of purchasing old linens, but we’re not talking sheets, here, and because you aren’t going to break the bank buying this thing, you won’t be afraid of throwing it into the hot water wash. You’re going to splatter it with your own mustard and salsa and mixers stains, anyway. And if you truly are repulsed by the very notion, fine! Get yourself a new one, instead! The patterns just aren’t as cute, in my opinion.