Dining - Many Plates, Few Ideas

My first "grown-up house" had did not have an eat-in kitchen but did have a spacious dining room attached to the kitchen. So, that room was used often. Since I was young and dumb, I bought fancy dining room furniture and filled the cabinet with fine Noritake china, never to be actually used... because that's what you did with dining rooms.

A couple of houses later, I had another eat-in kitchen and roomy dining room. By this time, I had sold the fancy dining room furniture and our kitchen table was centered in the near-empty room. The over-all effect was definitely underwhelming.

Fast forward a dozen or more years and a few more houses (I moved around a lot in my 20s), now the first home that I have actually "owned" (or will after half a lifetime of mortgage payments) has... a Dining Room... BUT also has a roomy Eat-IN kitchen with the perfect table that folds down for our family of four, or opens up to easily sit eight. So the Dining Room gets used... Not... At... All.

Ok, rewind, that's lie.

 

 

Our Dining Room is Relay for Life central, a storehouse of purple for weeks- if not months- prior to Relay. That follows weeks of being Key Club District Convention Headquarters, which this year mainly meant a mountain of rotating scrapbook supplies. It's also a great office for extended grading marathons, especially pre-craft room. I am particularly fond of this room during the holidays, from the space to sort decorations and tree adornments, to the china cabinet filled with nutcrackers, to hosting the baked goodness of the Community Cookie Exchange.

Mostly though, I do like when the Dining Room... looks like a Dining Room. I spent the afternoon clearing away the Relay debris, returning Craft Room supplies, and packing away the school project cast-aways (which are in neatly packed boxes, neatly cropped out the picture). Once upon a time, I fantasized about having a dining room table on which the settings changed monthly based on seasons or holidays. That little fantasy right there never moved out of the fleeting fantasy stage.

I saw a table set with these dishes at Pottery Barn shortly after buying the new house and fell in love with the whole setting (a typical Pottery Barn setting that is meant for artistic display and not actual dining). I saw the dishes on the clearance shelves a few months later and grabbed them and the centerpiece then did my best at other odds & ends places to finish the look (my look, not Pottery Barn's, which would have involved way more twigs and leaves and other pieces of earthy nature not belonging on a dining surface). That particular window in the picture is deep-set and houses the few nicer Longaberger baskets that I bought... when I thought buying Longabergers was something important to do.

The thing is I don't think I am so much a Colonial Blue, Birds, and Longaberger kinda gal anymore... or maybe I am somewhat, I really do like birds... and baskets... but not so much the matchy-match stuff and could completely care less about the names on the bottoms of plates, or baskets,  or anything else for that matter.

So, three years after moving into this home, I am really ready to MOVE-IN to this home. The paint throughout the house (except The Craft Room Studio) is still that contractor neutral and there is exactly one picture hung in the total 3600 square feet. There are several pictures leaning on or tucked away near where I think I might want them displayed, but I. just. can't. commit.

I have been contemplating again lately what I would like to do in the Dining Room. It is a very central and visible part of the house, fully visible from the kitchen by one set of entry doors and the living room by another set of entry doors, although both doors have lovely tinted white paneled glass doors that can be slid out of the wall recesses to close it off. Nonetheless, I cannot pick a paint color or décor scheme that would cause total disharmony with the rest of the house. For example, I have often pictured the room a deep blue... but that is completely disjointed from every other aspect of my house. An eggplant though... maybe?

 

I like this idea of using the same paint color and tone- painting a flat matte as an undercoat and swirling a design free-hand on top in gloss. I question my artistic ability in being able to "swirl a design free-hand" though and think I may have a far too critical eye to not look into the room and always see every mistake I made.

 



I am not sure I want curtains in the room. There are two large windows, but again the room is not functional often, there is very large shrubbery in front of the main window, and I could close off the sliding doors if I was worried about general privacy throughout the rest of the house. I think I overall like the exposed windows, but if I came to change my mind, I would look at Roman shades. There are a lot of DIY tutorials all over The Nets I would give a try because the windows are large and odd sized from being a restored home, and the custom blinds it would require could never be worth the expense.

The one element I know that I definitely want to add to the Dining Room is a Plate Wall. I have loved this decorating trend since I saw my first pic. (Love at first plate, I promise.) My coupled fantasy of going to yard sales and finding a large collection of cheap-cheap plates & platters throughout the day that coordinated perfectly has not come true though. I just can't see putting out good money for the sake of this display. I haven't put a lot of effort into doing it though and I have faith that I can find a way to do it on the cheaps. The top three are my favorite. I like the way that the first wraps around a corner. It is a corner in our Dining Room that I am looking to adorn in a similar fashion. The colors of the third I find attractive, but the nonadventurous decorator in me thinks about keeping them all white to maintain harmony, like the middle pic.

If I can't piece (or force) together a collection though, I have these to fall back on. As a matter of fact, I may be looking at these as the START of the project... and not the "fall back." The platter and bowls are LARGE. I would have to carefully consider how to mount them. There is actually a more perfect wall in the kitchen but the area is too high traffic for something so cumbersome. Jason brought these back from a deployment to Turkey and they are one of the most favored things I own... as they sit on top of the china cabinet collecting dust. In the box is a hanging of connected tin bowls that I imagine as an arch over a doorway.

My only hesitation for using these items, which I love and feel much more connected to than serendipitous yard sale finds, is...
What color would I paint the room???

The link-backs to borrowed pictures (plates, painting, shade) can be found on my "Decorating Ideas" Pinterest page.

The Craft Rooom Reveal... Ta-Da!

The Craft Room... Studio... Imaginarium... is not yet complete, but I hope that it never is. By definition, I hope it to be an evolving haven of creativity.
(Am I overdoing that a bit?)

Maybe so, but the room is "Open for Business" and I am overwhelmed by all the ideas I have of projects to do!

This is the view walking into the room, the crafting station.

The table was the first kitchen table that I bought over 15 years ago.

It is heavy wood and very sturdy with a huge work area.

The bookshelf belongs to my classroom and will be replaced.

Across from the crafting area is my office area for schoolwork and household matters.

The desk is repurposed from the boys' room until I find the right one. 

I like large working areas for any project- work or fun.

This is the fourth wall (obviously), which is basically 2 deep closets. The column is what my previous birdhouse sat on. I am thinking about... just maybe... about getting new birds. I'm going to wait out that decision until at least Christmas break to make sure I am in the room enough to give the birds attention and interaction. That whole column display is temporary. Maybe going to put a tall shelf there. It is a very narrow area to work with.

The various inspirational boards and quotes around the room

will also return to my classroom in the fall.

Keeping it real! This pic doesn't do justice on showing how deep these shelves (that Jason installed) are. It also makes it look far less organized than it really is. Half of each shelf houses supplies for different types of crafting: foam, dream catchers, scrapbook, jewelry, sewing, painting, cross-stitching, and holiday projects. I am just not worried about "pretty" displays when it is all hidden behind closed doors.

See... organized!

The other organization and storage area are the shelving units that I bought from Michaels.

This is so classing craft room, right? The shelves are filled with paper

for card-making and scrapbooking. The drawers are filled with stamps.

Jason didn't think I really needed that much storage space for stamps. Surprise babes!

These were the shelves I used. I put them together myself, very basic assembly.

Their list price at Michael's is $44! However, about three months they go on sale for $17.49!

A Sneak Peek

Last summer, before Justin left for college, I moved Cameron in to share his room. The house was built in 1924 although very little of the original structure remains beyond the hardwood floors and fireplace interiors. Point being made that Justin's room was probably the Master bedroom before the later remodel that added a Master bed & bath, so it is quite spacious and can easily accommodate the extra furniture. Cameron's old bedroom, however, is the smallest room upstairs and I was eying it as a Craft Room for me.

I have done a whole lot grading up there and very little crafting, but unfortunately more than either, it became the new Storage Room... a much nicer name than the appropriate moniker, "Junk Room."

Jason gave me gift cards for Michaels and Lowes for Christmas to get the room going. He even installed awesomely deep and well-crafted shelves in the two(!) closets. But life is busy, and I still didn't get around to doing anything for the room.

UNTIL NOW! I had planned to paint two walls yellow and two walls purple for the longest time. Closer to the project start date though, I was reconsidering doing each of the 4 walls a different color. I was hoping to post pictures tonight but the paint on wall is still wet. So here is the Sneak Peek!





I have a few ideas for some of the wall decor too. On the blue wall, I want to do a buttoned monogram, something like...

Except with an "S" of course, and a more eclectic collection of buttons like...

And, I would love to find a funky frame to spray paint in an odd color. I will probably treasure hunt for a couple of weeks and it that doesn't work out, do it similar to the top pic.

Then on the purple wall, which is the biggest canvas, without window or door interrupting its expansiveness, I want to display fabric on needlework hoops like...

So, I will add hoops and interesting, odd, and likable fabrics to my treasure hunt list. Maybe even some actual cross-stitchig still in the hoop?

On the green wall, to which my desk will overlook for all that work-related and bill-paying drudgery, I want mounted clipboards similar to this...

to serve as an Idea Board and to organize the flurry of ongoing projects (yes, I'm being optimistic here).

(This would be a good place to add the disclaimer that all photos were provided by Pinterest... ie, admit my perjurious internet theft.)

(And add that "Treasure Hunt" totally means "Yard Sale.")

The Grinch versus The Kranks

On Friday, I did all my Christmas shopping for the boys. Saturday morning, I wrapped their presents and packed them along with their clothes into the truck. Following breakfast with Jason, I shipped all of them- Jason, boys, and Christmas- to Ohio for the week.

One day last week, as we were driving to school in the morning, Cameron asked if Christmas was "next" Thursday. Although, at a conscious level I was aware of the looming date, it's proximity did not quite hit me until that point. I had not bought presents and the closest I had come to decorating was buying tissue boxes with snowmen on them.

At lunch, I asked Justin's basketball coach what the practice schedule was going to be like during Christmas break. I was quite surprised when he said that there would not be a practice until after Christmas. Immediately, the hamsters spinning the wheels in my head starting formulating a plan.

Jason has a month off from work during his transfer of commands. He had mentioned previously going to Ohio to visit his family and I immediately shot down the idea. The reason I gave was that we needed to focus on where we were putting our money as we prepare to buy a new house. In retrospect, a more convicting reason was that I did not consider it a break at all to be home alone once again with the boys... after having been for the 6 months he was deployed.

When the option presented itself though... that he and the boys could go to Ohio... and I could be home alone for a week... the plan looked much more attractive. And, so it came to be...

Of course, very few people saw the benefit in this plan that I did and thought that it was blasphemy bordering child neglect that I would not be with my family for Christmas. Those wise to my plans have been calling me "The Grinch" for the past week at work. There have been several comments about "Christmas with the Kranks" mentioned at the lunch table. Neither are relative though. Both those plots end with an awakening on the part of the main character(s) about the "true meaning" of Christmas... and, that's just not going to happen with me.

It's one year without waking up Christmas morning to watch the boys plow through presents wrapped under the Christmas tree. One year without a big meal that always gets cooked on the day after Christmas because we snack too much on Christmas Day to be in the mood for it.

That's it... we have no family, here... and not much else for tradition.
December 25th is nothing more than a Thursday on the calendar for me this year.

The boys will have presents to open. Jason and they will sit down to a big meal, I guess... just in Ohio, not here.

My prerogative for this week needs to be an aggressive cleaning of the house. Early step one in working towards my new house... in which I will have a very nice Christmas holiday next year.