Skip to main content
Kate Greenstreet has been entering the Oregon State Fair’s table-setting competition since 2008. She doesn’t enter every year, but she loves coming up with on-theme decor, choosing dishes from her family’s collection and spacing the cutlery just so. Table setting is one of the “creative living” attractions at the fair, along with arts such as quilting, cake decorating and photography. The fair is on now through Monday, Sept. 7 at the Oregon State Fairgrounds in Salem.
This year, Greenstreet, a 35-year-old Portlander, entered a table scape in the “America 250” category. Her first idea was to incorporate her old American Girl dolls, but she couldn’t find them. Then, she started researching the Great American State Fair that was held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. over the Fourth of July in honor of the country’s 250th birthday and knew she had her theme.
“There’s a lot to work with,” she says. “It just all came together.”
Greenstreet constructed a gold Washington Monument and then layered a chartreuse table runner on top of a blue one, to symbolize the algae blooming in the Reflecting Pool. She made two place cards: one for President Donald Trump and the other for his trusted political aide Natalie Harp. She used family heirloom plates featuring George Washington, and a Diet Coke to drink. The rest of the menu? A Big Mac made with imported beef and a Taylor Farms Salad “with the chance of cyclospora.”
The judges were not amused.
Greenstreet will not receive her final scorecard until she picks up her decorations at the end of the fair, but the feedback she’s gotten already was so negative she initially thought she had been disqualified.
“While this table was set nicely and attractively, the Oregon State Fair has certain guidelines for the America 250 division,” the judges wrote. “According to the Decorated Tables and Tabletop Trees Exhibitors Handbook of 2026, ‘entries must…be non-political and free of trademarked or commercial imagery.’ Because of those two items, significant deductions were made to this entry. We appreciate exercising our first amendment freedom of speech while following the Oregon State Fair criteria.”
Greenstreet is taking it in stride.
“I’m not upset at anyone,” she says. “I think it’s kind of funny.”
The winner of the America 250 table setting, posted Aug. 29, was “a red and blue setting for a patriotic dinner party,” followed by a runner-up who presented a tablescape “celebrating America the Beautiful and Happy Semiquincentennial.”
Greenstreet plans to continue entering the tablescape competition in the future with her mother, Carolyn Smith-Schiewe. The highest they’ve ever placed is third, with a midcentury-modern themed “atomic diner,” though Smith-Schiewe got an honorable mention last year for her Sen. Jeff Merkley–themed tablescape in the Oregon category.
Greenstreet is still struggling to understand how the fair expected entries in the America 250 category to not be political. (The Oregon State Fair did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)
“I see why it was political, but I am curious what was the line too far,” Greenstreet says. “When you say ‘no politics’ in a competition with a theme that is inherently political, it’s weird.”
