Now What Can I do with This?

Believe it or not, this pile of stuff is the beginning of my next tablescape.  I should have time to post about it later this weekend. 

I hope you will check back to see if I can do anything with it--you have to admit it's an electic bunch of stuff!

I am Liking This!

If you follow my other two blogs, you know that quilting is one of my serious hobbies.
After work today, I started to make a placemat for the Mikasa leopard dishes.

I still need to add some batting and quilt it, but I think this mat is going to be purrrfect for these big
cat-print dishes!

I will do and post a full table after I finish making 4 of these placemats. In the meantime, I am still working on the hot pink/leopard table. I have not really done any "work" on it, but I have given it a thought or two. :)

Mikasa Leopard Dishes Tablescape

I love these chic animal print dishes. This is the first set of square dinner plates I have owned. I like how the soup bowl is round, but the dinner and salad plate are square.

I angled the salad plate to give each setting more interest.

 I tried some brown-handled flatware, but in the end, I decided that my gold flatware worked best with these dishes.

I had fun making my own wine label.

I just printed it on an Avery label and stuck in over the original label of this white wine... just a little touch that makes your dinner party more special.  Notice that tree on the right side of the artwork?

That tree inspired my centerpiece. I was having some difficulty coming up with a centerpiece to go with these dishes.   I wanted to use only items I already had. While  looking out the kitchen window I noticed the Sedum Autumn Joy and thought, why not give it a try.Do you see the resemblance of the tree and this dead sedum Autumn Joy that I picked from my garden?  I added some dead silver artemesia to give it a bit of spark.  Seriously, this is a bunch of dead flowers that overwintered in my garden-- I would normally toss these on the compost heap!  It's amazing what can be done with just a bit of  thinking outside the box!

What a stroke of luck--I had glasses that seem to be made for these leopard dishes!

Just look at the perfect color of that martini glass stem!

I added the small gold liqueur glass because it matched the gold-beaded place mat and the flatware.

I also made a menu - it's amazing how easy all of this is with computers!

Did you notice that I added jewelry to the lotus candle holder next to the menu?  Jewelry is not just for the body. I use it all the time on my tables.  I used one of my favorite necklaces on the wine bottle. Did you catch that? Look at the wine bottle. I wear that necklace all the time!

Just for kicks, here is a sepia-toned picture of my table. 

This table was so much fun! I am planning to do another table with these same dishes.

I am thinking leopard and hot pink! I think these Mikasa leopard dishes are going to be very versatile. I may even do a third table and mix them with my zebra dishes.

I received these dishes from  Lifetime Brands, Inc.  a nationally branded kitchenware, tabletop and home décor resource.  They asked me to set a table and do a candid post about their dinnerware.  I have done exactly that and I hope you enjoyed seeing these unique dishes.

I have linked to Marty's Tablescape Tuesday at a Stroll Thru Life. Check out all the inspirational posts over there.

Mikasa Leopard Dishes

Last week I was contacted by someone who had seen my zebra table and asked if I would like to do a tablescape with these Mikasa Leopard dishes.

Are you kidding?

I immediately emailed them back and said, YES, I would love to attempt a tablescape with these gorgeous dishes!

The company said they would be sending the dishes out immediately. I half expected it to be a scam.

But lo and behold in less than a week these dishes arrived. I was thrilled. They are a good quality stoneware from Mikasa.  At the moment I have no idea how I will set the table, but  I will post later in the week with the tablescape I come up with. So please stop by later this week to see what I do with these dishes. 

Black & Red Polka Dot Tablescape

Here is another table that combines my two hobbies of quilting and table setting.  I made six of these quilt blocks called Dresden Plate -- so fitting for what I am using them for!

They are often made in pastels and usually sewn into a quilt like the one on the left (picture came from this site on quilt history).




The ones I made are far from pastel and I decided to use mine for place mat/chargers to start a table in red and black. Here are my black and red polka dot Dresden Plates at the beginning of this tablescape:

When I am finished you will only see the tips of these chargers.

Here is the table as I am setting it. I like the look with just the salad plates, but I need to cover them because I am serving soup, so I need soup bowls. Once the soup is finished, I am happy to know that everyone will see this before the salad is brought to the table.

Here is the completed table with the soup bowls.

I am not really sure where the soup spoons go, so I just put them where I thought they should go since they will be the first utensil used.  I really don't even care where they should go. This is not exactly dining at the White House, so who cares about proper etiquette--no need to get stressed over something like that.

Here is a side view of the place setting:

 and a close up of one of the silver balls.

If you look very closely at the silver coffee pot, you will see a reflection of me taking the picture!

And that's all. I am not into taking 15 or 16 pictures of  my tables.  I think once you see the whole table, you've really seen all you care to see. 

Happy tablescaping!

Valentine's Dessert

It's too early to do a Valentine's Day table, but I found the perfect dessert for people who don't bake and want something easy, yet impressive for V Day.  I thought I would share just in case any of my readers want to use this idea.

This picture is thanks to Woman's Day magazine.

Is this impressive looking or what?

You can go there by clicking here to get the full recipe.

Books on the Art of Entertaining

I have a pretty big collection of cooking/entertaining books.  About 15 years ago I attended an estate auction of a deceased 90+-yr old woman and I bought a few boxes of her cookbooks.  She was in a book club (many of the books were labeled "book club edition").

Many appeared to have never been opened, like this one from 1960 titled, The Art of Serving Food Attractively.   There are none of the beautiful color pictures that we are used to today in this 51-year old book.  In fact there were only a few black/white drawings, like this one showing how to make bologna and cheese sandwiches look good--what fun!


This book was published in 1992, but is still in black/white.

It has a suggestion for a  reunion patchwork cake:

I work with people who plan parties, but I have never had a reunion serve a cake like this!

This book published in 1983 is one of my favorites:

It has a buffet that I have been wanting to do for years--but never have. It's now on my bucket list--seriously, before I die, I want to do this sandwich  buffet table for Halloween:

Have you ever seen a cuter way to serve a sandwich buffet than this?   It looks very easy to me.

One of my more current entertaining books is this one from Christopher Lowell--you can tell it's fairly current because he uses the word "tablescapes":

He has wonderful color pics and sets the type of tables we are all setting today.  Look, he even used zebra fabric on this one!

What about you--do you have any favorite entertaining books?