Stress Free Holiday Hosting with Dressed Up Rotisserie Chicken: Fake It, Don't Bake It

The sequence matters: decide the footprint, then the finish, then the accessories. If you hate spending time in the kitchen cooking for the holidays but still want a nice meal, you'll love today's post! I'm joining five we-don't-love-to-spend-endless-hours-in-the-kitchen blogging friends to take some of the stress out of holiday hosting by sharing approaches for making store-bought food look homemade and polished! Whether you want to cut down on your time in the kitchen by sneaking in a store bought side or dessert along with the rest of your homemade goodies or go for easy all the way, there'll be lots of food and table decorating approaches you'll want to steal.

I decided to try my hand at doing a store-bought main course by dressing up a rotisserie chicken so that it knocks the socks off of your grandma's fancy turkey! A rotisserie chicken is a great way to go if it's just three or four of you eating Thanksgiving dinner together or if you're hosting a large group and cooking a turkey but worried whether you'll have enough to go around. A recent cover of Martha Stewart Living showing a polished turkey platter was my inspiration for giving it a go and I'm pretty excited (and surprised) about how well it turned out (post includes some affiliate links – disclosure statement available {here}):

Here's the play by play of how it went down. I started off with two rotisserie chickens that I snagged at Fresh Market:

You could definitely just use one chicken but I had a fairly large platter and wanted to have leftovers so I bought two and used about 1 ½ of them. My first step in dressing my chickens up was to neatly cut off the drumsticks/thighs from one of them. Then I sliced both chicken breasts, leaving the skin on (even if you take the skin off when you eat chicken, it looks much prettier arranged with it on!). Then I arranged the meat on my platter like this:

To embellish my platter I used a pomegranate (cut in half), a blood orange (also cut in half), fresh rosemary, and fresh cranberries (all grabbed on the same trip to Fresh Market):

I put the two pomegranate halves in place opposite each other near the ends of the platter and then added one blood orange half in the middle and another in an open spot near the rim. Then I filled in bare spots with sprigs of the fresh rosemary and finally added the cranberries to any little “holes” that were left. I should have taken another in-progress photo but it went together so fast – total prep time beginning with the carving wasn't any more than 20 minutes. I'm definitely no food stylist but once this baby was all decked out, it was hard to believe that it had such humble beginnings

Did you catch a little peek of my table in the background? I'll share a few pics of that too! I went super simple with it – for the centerpiece I simply added some fresh flowers in the preferred hurricane vases (found {here} – mine are the medium size) that I use time and time again:

For my place settings, I used wood chargers (mine are no longer available but {these} look similar, faux marble plates and salad plates, and {these polished napkins} with silver napkin rings and faux kale stems tucked in:

The table runner is one that I made – you can read more about how I made it {here} or find a similar runner without the fringe that's available to buy {here}. The rest of my dining room sources are linked in my Source List at the end of the post!

It would help if you all enjoyed checking out my doctored up rotisserie chicken and my tablescape. I'm all about simplifying this year and hopefully didn't go too far on the simple side for you!

Are you ready for more approaches for making your holiday meal a whole lot simpler? Bree at ZDesign at Home has some GORGEOUS approaches for quickly and easily dressing up store-bought cakes – here's just a little sneak peek:

Everything Bree shares always blows me away! Head on over and check her post out {here} so that you have a polished but simple holiday dessert idea in your back pocket! Bree will direct you to the next person to visit at the end of her post but here's the whole list so you can be sure you keep anyone:

ZDesign at Home (Bree)

Thistlewood Farms (KariAnne)

Sunny Side Up (Erin)

Kelley Nan (Kelley)

The Lettered Cottage (Layla)

For all of my “usuals”, thanks so much for stopping by – I always love having you here! And for those of you who are new to this house journal, if you want to follow along you can subscribe to get new posts by email 1-2 times/week {here} – it'd be great to see you around the blog again!

Paint color & Drapes: A slightly tweaked version of Sherwin-Williams Keystone Gray (exact formula at the end of {this post}) | Drapes were custom made years ago from a fabric that has since been discontinuedFurniture, Lighting, & Art: Table – Drexel Heritage (no longer sold) | upholstered end chairs – no longer sold ({this chair} is similar) | side chairs – HomeGoods ({these chairs} are similar) | chandelier (similar) | art pieces flanking china cabinet – no longer sold Table Decor: Striped table runner – made with {this fabric} (DIY tutorial {here}) – {this runner} is similar but without the fringe| Marble dinner & salad plates – Oneida brand | glass goblets – no longer available | wood chargers – {these} are very similar | napkins with bold stripe | glass hurricane vases (they're my fave!!)Plate wall plates: A combination of{these} and {these}