Fall Tablescape

This fall tablescape was a pleasure to create because of two things:

the use of a new color

and

a Birthday Club celebration for some dear friends, which was held at my house.

I wanted to use purple, and I wanted to

fill the table-

I used everything I could find.

I LOVE doing that.

More is more.

It may seem like too much, but that is the way I like it.

I used my Royal Stafford bird dishes and my Nyssa garage sale soup tureens.

Even though they are not my favorite (as my grandson says), I am so glad I kept my 12

mercurochrome colored goblets.

I have 12- and for several years I have tried to sell them at a local antique mall.

They just wouldn’t leave (sell), because alone they are pretty startling, but mixed in with everything on the table, they become wonderful.

I love THAT too.

My Reed and Barton Francis 1st still makes my heart flutter – and it  has since I chose it many, many years ago.

I only had one place setting for years.

I didn’t tend to it, I didn’t make it a priority, and rightly so I guess.

And then one day I woke up, years had gone by, and I thought,

‘I better get this show on the road.’

And so I turned to Ebay.

I am just so grateful today-

which is not to say that perfection lives in my house,

because it does not.

But the irregular does-

*my purple tablecloth from DD’s Discount- which is a retail phenomenon in and of itself.

That is where things from Ross are sent out to pasture.

Can you imagine?

*my ceramic pumpkins from Walgreen’s- I love multi-tasking shopping, don’t you?

You can even buy Blue Bell there.

*my copper colored, mercury glass candlesticks (from a garage sale), that I found stuck and forgotten in a cabinet in the little house

*my goblets that wouldn’t leave

and

a simple life today.

***

I am linking to these wonderful parties.

I Didn’t Know I Was Collecting It Until I Found It

 And no…I am not collecting this- although I wish I were.

This photo of Villeroy and Boch’s Acapulco, which many of you have seen before, is just my post prop.

Yet having said THAT, I am so easily influenced, so sensitive to things that call to me, that just seeing this photo reminds me of that wanting.

In addition, I was at the Guild Shop in Houston today, where I first saw an entire set of these dishes, and of course they weren’t there today.

Someone else must be using them while playing Sinatra records and preparing fondue. In my first fantasy image I also had on evening pajamas with a Nehru collar.

While standing in the dish room of the Guild Shop, I spotted an entire set of Lipper Blue Danube , which I also collect, because the mother of my best friend from college collected it, and I thought it was beautiful, and then my oldest daughter selected it as one of her patterns for her wedding registry (which may have been because of some slightly coercive pressure on the part of the mother of the bride -me), and now my youngest daughter also collects it , but I didn’t buy it today even though there were

58 pieces!

So my mode of operation for starting a collection has usually been because I have spotted something that caused that same reaction.

Yet having said that, I have NEVER started a collection by buying something at an antique store.

There just isn’t enough fun in that for me.

It needs to be a ‘found object’, maybe at a garage sale, or on the side of the road, or in a dusty box at the flea market, or because it is 25 cents, and of course because it called to me.

My Collections Over Time

Milk Glass

Franciscan Platinum Renaissance china

Franciscan Grey Renaissance china (with a gold rim

Franciscan Hacienda

King’s Crown Goblets

Punch Bowls

Silverplate

Hammered Aluminum

Red 6 sided goblets

Singapore Bird China

Waterford Waffle Cut Glass (not that Waterford)

Tiffin Madeira goblets in yellow

Blue Danube China

I also have several sets of pottery from Mexico, Spode Blue Italian, and Woodland Spode.

Although I no longer add to these collections (I have my share), I have used every single piece of all of these collections multiple times with great joy and pleasure.

What do you collect?

 

Saturday Morning Estate Sale