Country Barnyard Breakfast Table Decoration Tips

Give your breakfast table a barnyard look with stencilled animals on napkins and tablecloths. Make farm buildings from cardboard to decorate your serving dishes. Sculpt barnyard creatures from clay or paint heavy white crockery with animals and cheerful barnyard sayings. Does this Spark an idea?

Farm Buildings

Make a barn-shaped basket for toast, muffins or rolls. Use a rectangular basket with a handle. Cut out cardboard walls to fit around the basket and glue them together. Cut doors in one side. Add a roof by folding a long piece of cardboard in the middle to form an upside-down V and gluing it to the top of the walls. Paint the barn red, the roof gray or black, and add white windows and white X shapes on the doors.

Make smaller sheds and a chicken coop in the same manner and place them over the sugar bowl, butter dish and jam server. Add stickers or paint on small details to identify the buildings.

Napkins and Tablecloth

Make or buy a barn-red tablecloth and napkins. Stencil whimsical barnyard animals onto one folded side of each napkin and the center of the tablecloth. Add a different animal to each corner of the tablecloth. Stencil or paint rectangular "troughs" on the tablecloth where you will have place settings. Add a short saying such as "Feeding Time" in the center of each trough.

Stencil chickens, roosters, cows and pigs onto a white cloth and napkins. At each place setting, stencil chicken tracks or hoof prints leading to chickens, cows or pigs. Beside each animal, stencil the name of a breakfast item, such as "Freshly Laid Eggs" or "Farm-Raised Bacon." Use animal-shaped salt-and-pepper shakers, sugar bowl and creamer.

Dishes

Paint a Lazy Susan white, then add red checks. Buy or make red-checked napkins and a tablecloth. Make barnyard animal figures from sculpting clay. Using the point of a toothpick, carve a greeting on the front of some of the figures such as "Good Morning" or "Breakfast's Served." Print the names of breakfast items on other figures, such as "French Toast" and "Scrambled Eggs." Paint the figures and bake them according to the manufacturer's directions. Place one figure at each place setting and one beside each breakfast item. Stencil animals onto heavy, old-fashioned crockery using glass paint. Stencil greetings onto the breakfast plates and cups, and breakfast item names onto serving dishes. Bake the dishes according to the paint manufacturer's directions to set the paint.