Let's Take A Look

Now that we know the table, let's start laying some things down on it and see what we get. For starters, I love these round open and airy feeling mats, so I am going to use them. As you can see from the picture, they are pretty dark against this fruitwood tabletop so I will have to be sure to put some color in there for contrast. That is what I like to do, but if you are not a "high contrast person", you can go with a more sedate plan! This is a really small table that we are working with so we are fairly limited in the size of mat that we can actually use. I am thinking that this table had leaves that would expand the size, but they were long gone before I acquired it. So this will be a cozy dinner for four and we will leave the big parties for the big tables!
So we are set to start selecting some actual dinnerware to build our stage - let's go have some fun!!

First Things First

This table is a special favorite of mine. I loved it the minute I saw it in an antiques store about 7 years ago, at least. I was, at the time, looking for a table to place in the "family" room so that I could sit and work on papers and also serve dinner while we watched some captivating television. Of course, it didn't work, but the table stayed anyway. Then I had the brilliant idea to truck it down to the store on Magazine Street in New Orleans. It resided there for the duration and at least once a month someone would try to buy it. But, oh no!! That is MY table! And then the ravages of the hurricane got us. Lucky for me the people who broke into the store did overlook my treasure when they ransacked and hauled out what they could. And now this old friend is here with me at the store on Government Street in Baton Rouge. I still love it, and I am still thinking of any way that I can make it work at home. The table in my dining room is so much larger (hmm - I think we have actually had 20 people seated around it at one time and yes, they were really good friends or at least family members!) that I know this little gem can never replace it.

Laying It Down

Now the fun part--putting it all together!! It always seems as if setting the scene is half the fun of the party - that's the time you turn on the music and just let the ideas fly by. Some can create the perfect table in their heads and then just lay it down. I, on the other hand, have to move stuff around and walk around the table a few hundred times just to see "how it looks". Don't know which way is best, but this is by far a lot more fun.

First lets just clear off the old stuff on that table and take a good look at it before we start in building our stage for the great dinner production. I think I'll start on the fruitwood table and see how that one shapes up. Please excuse the background "noise" in all these pictures as the tables are all sitting here with me in the store and it is fairly hard to imagine them in an appropriate room setting. But we will try our best! and I am thinking right here that the best way to handle this is to just take each table as a separate entry and see how that works --- so here goes!