Dining In

This little arrangement of photos is something I have recently put together in our dining room. Top left is a picture of my grandmother Laura Kelly (one of the women I was named after). Diagonally from across on the bottom right is her with my mother Mary Prue. Bottom left is Mama with me. Top right is me with my daughters, and of course in the center, my babies when they turned one year old. This morning I framed a picture of my Great grandmother Laura Brightman but have not hung it yet. 4 generations of women and their daughters. The idea came to me when I was a little girl sifting through my mother's pictures. I found the two of them with their babies and imagined that one day I would frame all three of us together. I guess you could say I have had the dream of being a mother for a very long time and all it's duties and joys have definitely lived up to the dream. If I had a home with a staircase in the main entrance I would cover the walls, like they do in the movies, with old and new photographs but for now, my dining room wall is my pallete.


Also, I have started "setting the table." We do a lot of dinner hosting in our home. Not always for a large crowd. Most often it is just us and a friend or two but around the holidays especially our home is a place where everyone ends up. It seems like, in this day in age, eating around the t.v. with dinner trays is the easy and most comfortable way to dine, however, I have set a personal goal for our family to start dining at the table. Jason gave us a decorative plaque for our first home that reads "blessed is the home that shelters a friend." I like this idea because I love food and I love our friends. The dinner table should be a place where food and fellowship provide emotional and nutritional comfort and one way for me to stay motivated to do this is to keep a theme on the table. With each season I hope to have a matching floral arrangement and salt and paper shakers. I am not crazy about table cloths but eventually I will add to our place mats and napkins instead of the same ole' black place mates we have had for years. My favorite salt and peper shakers are two little silver Christmas trees I found at a flea market for $5. The two little birds you see in the picture were a gift from me to Nick last Christmas because we have a recent little obsession with birds ever since the babies were born. It seems like every time I walk into a flea market I find my way to table setting "things" but since I am not a fan of clutter I have always talk myself out of buying the ones that catch my eye. However, I do like the idea of collecting specific small inexpensive things so salt and pepper shakers may be just the items to fit that desire.

There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort. ~Jane Austen