Cake Design News: Thanksgiving Table: Michele Varian

http://assets4.designsponge.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/MicheleVarian_entiretable_DS.jpg

To celebrate Thanksgiving this year, we've invited some of our favorite artists, designers, shop owners and tastemakers to create Thanksgiving table settings with their favorite objects and styles. Last week, we featured tables styled by Matt Armendariz, Spartan, Sweet & Saucy, Jayson Home and Alder & Co. We're kicking off this week's Thanksgiving tables with a fabulously dark setting styled by shop owner and designer Michele Varian. — Max

For those of you familiar with my store, you know my sense of style is like the Bloomsbury Group (artists and intellectuals in England during the early 20th century) got some rock n' roll edginess combined with some humor. Because of a little storm called Sandy, my husband and I have been feeling thankful every day. We spent a week without power and heat and pretty much no contact with the rest of the world (most of our downtown neighbors had fled to the comforts of uptown), and it took a day or so before there was even battery-operated radio reception. We had to do without all of the electric gadgets most of us have become pretty much addicted to. After a few days, we had pretty much recalibrated, and felt as though we were living about a century earlier, during the Industrial Age.

My idea of the perfect Thanksgiving this year is an intimate dinner surrounded by things that are dear to me. Brad and I spent a lot of time during the storm reading by candlelight (which did drive home the fact that I may be ready for reading glasses after using a magnifier) and playing the ukulele, cards and board games.