Show Us Where You Live ~ Dining Room

Welcome to our dining room, pull up a chair and stay a while! I'm joining Kelly's "Show Us Where You Live" tour again this week. The dining room is the first room you see when you enter our house. We love this room and I've enjoyed decorating it little by little over the past couple of years - we've made a lot of changes from the very plain room it started out as.

The first and best improvement was the diamond wall. My dearest friend, Carianne was the mastermind behind this idea. It involved a lot of measuring, grid drawing and careful painting, but I couldn't be more pleased with the result. It was a lot of work, but we had fun doing it and it turned out awesome. Thanks again, Carianne! We get so many compliments on it - some have even asked if it is wall paper. It definitely is an attention getter when you walk in the door.

The china cabinet in the corner was my Grandmother's and I'm so pleased to have it. My grandparents collected bells and they would keep some of them in here. I remember growing up and wanting to have it in my home someday and now I do. I don't have any china in it, but several crystal pieces, special glasses, a cake plate, candle sticks and a punch bowl just to name a few items. Also on the bottom shelf is something very special - my Grammy and Flash's silverware set. Grammy also wrote me a note when she gave it to me and I keep it in there to read when I open it. On the top shelf, I have a tea cup from both my grandmother's and Grammy's china sets - what treasures!

I did want to point out the picture on top of the china cabinet in the black frame - this is something I just did about 2-3 weeks ago. I subscribe to "Southern Living" magazine (a wonderful magazine to celebrate life in the South) and they recently had an article with pictures about the "25 Secrets to Being Southern" and there were several pages filled with short paragraphs and photos detailing things from "making the perfect pie crust" to "pickled okra"... "writing a thank you note" to "bring back old-fashioned story-telling" and many others. The final one (#25) was "Count Your Blessings". I loved what the article said about this and even more I loved the black and white picture. It was classic and reminded me of a simpler time, of family, of being together around the dinner table - it seems like such a lost art. What happened to "saying grace" and sitting down to eat as a family at the dining table? I know it's because of this insanely busy and fast paced world we live in, but I don't like it. Okay, off my soap box, but I loved the picture so much, I wanted to display it in our dining room. I cut out the pages very carefully with an Exacto knife. I pieced them back together with a good ol' Elmer's glue stick and put the magazine pages in a frame that I had bought from Target. It's not an easel back frame, so I have it sitting on an easel.

The buffet table, vinyl wall quote and mirror are the newest editions. That wall was an empty space a few months ago. I wanted more storage for kitchen/dining/serving items and so we wanted to add a buffet table. There are a few things in it, but I need to go through some cabinets in the kitchen and move some items into the buffet table. We also wanted a place to serve food or snacks when we have family or friends over - which isn't too often, but we'll be ready for visitors!

It's just John and I (and cute Calvin) in our home, but we have a table and chairs to seat eight people. It may be overkill for everyday life, but I guess the "old fashioned girl" in me wanted a dining room to be ready for guests at any time. We've had family, friends and a church group over so it's worked out well to have this space. In this room there have been meals and desserts eaten, bills paid, scrapbooks worked on and looked through, Thanksgiving dinner served, weekly marriage devotional time with John and I, board games played, Halloween candy passed out from, newspapers read, crossword puzzles worked on, coffee sipped and lots of visiting and laughing.

Lots of memories made in this room and as the quote on the wall says "The fondest memories are made when gathered around the table"...

Thanks for stopping by ~ Happy Weekend!
Until we meet again...
Riley