Veranda | Beth Webb
Designer Beth Webb's 5 Tips for Getting Your Bar Cart Holiday-Ready
Designer, author, and tastemaker Beth Webb believes hosting in your home is the greatest gift you can give of yourself, and she is eagerly awaiting the day when her house can be filled with the voices of her four children in the kitchen, the pitter-patter of grandchildren’s feet, and the sounds of loved ones clinking cocktail glasses. This year, it will be just her and her husband at their Brays Island, South Carolina, home, where they’ve traveled back and forth from their Atlanta residence to find refuge in the area’s natural beauty—and have a new venue in which to cook dinner and pour a drink.
“Not one single solitary thing has been normal for us this year,” Webb says. “We have been hunkered down since March, and it’s been a really weird time for everyone, but especially so for those who love to entertain. I miss it more than anything. Normally the house would be full with my children and four grandchildren, and there would be oyster roasts, quail hunts, and our 20-foot tree. That would have been our normal.”
But Webb has been busy in the kitchen—and at her bar cart—whipping up hundreds of meals and libations at home, preparing every dish and beverage since mid-March. She has found solace in the simple-yet-elegant recipes of her well-loved collection of Ina Garten cookbooks and is enjoying the pivot of turning to the recipes of her family to make the season feel special.
“We’ve been looking at the traditions in our family and how we can make an out-of-the-ordinary Christmas feel extraordinary,” Webb says. “We started with thinking about the food, as always, and then decided we needed to decorate a bit differently. We figured we would be spending most of our time in the study by the fireplace, and we made it very intimate. We’re all looking for new venues for dining, and I bought four of the Montecito trays from Arteriors earlier this year, which did double-duty outside by the fireplace and now will be perfect for eating our meals in the study.”
