Thinking Green

I wanted to join the fifth annual St. Patrick's Day Blog Crawl at Cuisine Kathleen this year, so I started by pulling out my vintage green glassware.  The water glasses originally belonged to my husband's grandparents, and for Christmas this year, my mother surprised me with the little "liquor cocktails" to match.  The pattern is by Anchor Hocking and is called either "Burple" or "Inspiration."  I love the deep emerald green.

For last year's St. Patrick's Day table I used the same glasses with my grandmother's wedding china, so I wanted to do something different this year.  I remembered some Williams-Sonoma salad plates with a green and gold pattern, so pulled those out.  I layered them on top of a plain white dinner plate and a larger gold ceramic plate.  I used plain white placemats and white napkins with a simple cutwork design and added our silver flatware.

For a little more green, I added a gold-trimmed green glass piece from my in-laws' collection.

For flowers, I found two small pots of yellow kalanchoes at HEB and decided they could be "pots of gold."  They were just starting to bloom in this photo.

Here's a "diner's view" across the table:

 Here's a view of the table set for four:

As the week went on, the kalanchoes opened up a bit more.

No shamrocks, leprechauns, or other traditional St. Patrick's Day elements on this table, but I hope all the green plus the pots of gold will qualify it for Kathleen's party!  Thank you for visiting my table this week!

Christmas 2010

I hope everyone is having a lovely and relaxing day-after-Christmas!  I plan to sit with my feet up all afternoon, if I can get away with it. We had a wonderful couple of days with our family.

Our daughter and her family arrived Christmas Eve morning, and our son flew in that afternoon.  My father-in-law joined us that evening for dinner.  Here are a few photos of the table I set for that meal.

I've had the plaid tablecloth for years.  I really like the emerald green glasses with it -- they first belonged to my husband's grandparents, then his parents, and now they've been passed down to us.  I believe they were originally a grocery store premium, but they have a lovely shape and wonderful color. The pattern is called both Inspiration and Burple, from what I've read about them.

I used my Christmas china, Dansk Winterfest, again for this table.  I have napkins that match the tablecloth, but they get lost in a sea of plaid, so I used some white ones tied with red and green cording. You can also see the tree-shaped placecard holders I featured in an earlier post.  My granddaughter wrote our names on the placecards when she arrived.

The centerpiece is almost the same as the one in my last tablescape, with the addition of some fresh greenery and some glittery green ornaments. 

Here's a view with the candles lit.

My adorable grandchildren posed for the obligatory Christmas pajamas photo before going to bed that night.

The men of the Dull and the Dutiful family opened matching shirts on Christmas Eve, which they wore on Christmas Day. From the left, my father-in-law, my husband, our son, and our son-in-law.

The grandchildren also dressed festively for Christmas Day.

My wonderful daughter gave me some gorgeous placemats and napkin rings for Christmas, so I quickly incorporated them into our table for Christmas dinner..

The centerpiece was simple -- just evergreens with white mums and green hypericum berries in a glass and silver bowl.

The new placemats are sparkly silver with ruffly edges, and the clear acrylic napkin holders have a small opening to hold flowers or other small items. I used more of the white mums and greenery for this table, and I'm looking forward to using these special holders on many tables in 2011!

Here's a look at the placesetting, with my wedding china, silver, and crystal. 

Here's another look at the table.

And here is my family, all waiting for pie after the meal!  We were blessed to have four generations around our table this year.  Clockwise from left are my father-in-law, our daughter, our grandson, our son-in-law, my husband, our granddaughter, and our soon-to-be-married son.  The wedding is now just a few days away!

Thank you for visiting! I hope you'll leave me a comment before you go!

Simple and Sunny

My inspiration for this late September table came from some napkins I picked up on sale at Williams-Sonoma several months ago.  I have always loved sunflowers (don't most people?!), and I've looked forward to setting a table featuring sunflowers.  Our HEB grocery store obligingly advertised sunflowers as their weekly special, so I began to shop the house for the rest of the things needed to set a simple table.

I started with some striped placemats from Crate and Barrel that repeat visitors have seen before, then added some dark yellow plates from Pier 1. 

I included the green glasses my father-in-law gave us earlier this year when he moved into a retirement apartment.  I used this tablescape (with a few more placesettings) when hosting our daughter's family and my father-in-law, and he told us that the glasses originally belonged to my mother-in-law's parents.  Her father managed a grocery store in Mississippi, and the glasses were some sort of premium back in the 1940s.  I was interested to learn that the glasses were older than I'd thought, and it was fun to see my grandchildren drink from glasses their great-great grandparents had owned!  The pattern is Inspiration, by Anchor Hocking, and is also called Burple -- but Inspiration sounds much nicer!

The silverplate is also from my in-laws' collection, purchased to augment their silver when hosting large dinner parties.  I was able to identify the pattern on Replacements.com as Wm. A. Rogers' Park Lane, but it's apparently also known as Chatelaine or Dowry.    Any ideas why it would have three different names?

Here's the whole table, with the stars of the show -- the sunflowers!  They can be tricky to arrange, so I used florists' tape to bind the stems together so they'd behave in the vase.  You might also notice that I've turned two placemats into a runner across the center of the table, to add a little interest.

Here's one more look at these wonderful flowers.  I'm writing this post almost a week after taking the photos, and the sunflowers still look great in my dining room.

Thank you for stopping by!  I hope you will leave a comment before you leave to visit all the wonderful tablescapes at Susan's Between Naps on the Porch!