If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Ride

Or to paraphrase the old proverb, if wishes were dining rooms, I would like this one, please.

[source: wildflowerlinens.com]

It may not be as grand as those wished for by Beverley Nichols in Merry Hall.....

"Visions of candlelit parties

[source: stonegable.blogspot.com]

bare shoulders reflected in gesso mirrors

[source: Vogue January 1933]


Sheraton sideboards,

[source: williamreubnks.com]


Tio Pepe in Georgian decanters,

[source: coritani.com]


spinach souffles,

[stevepaleo.blogspot.com here]

Nectarines from the walled garden,

[beyondthewildgarden.wordpress.com here]


Chateau Yquem with walnuts."

Yes, Mr. Nichols, a dining room would be loverly. With a table that could be set ahead without rush. Where guests could enter at night after candles were lit, like walking onto a stage set. They would be surrounded by beautiful ornaments or paintings to talk about if conversation lagged. But, of course, it would not. The ambience would be such that conversation would sparkle. The meal would be savored, no dirty pots and pans stacked in the sink in plain view. Naturally, the table setting would be blog-worthy. How could it help but be?

I yearn for a separate dining room. Here is what I call our "small dining room," as though there were a large dining room somewhere, through a door I have yet to open.

It is at one end of a long narrow room that originally was the back porch of this old farmhouse. Here is the opposite end of it, which for 14 years contained my kitchen in a closet-sized space. My stove stood where the red door is now. It opens to the laundry room we added when we added the new kitchen. The stacked picnic baskets serve an important purpose. They hold all my cloth napkins. And if you zoom in on the ceiling here you can see the unusual pattern of half-moon trowel work that was done back when the porch was made into a kitchen and the original kitchen became a bedroom. The original owners' grandsons stopped by not long after we moved in and told us that was done in the late 1930s, when they were about ten years old. While visiting their grandmother, they slept in a room built on top of the root cellar.

The small dining room is where our grandsons' table was when they were young, and where their girlfriends were seated with them eventually. Now no one wants to sit in the children's dining room, now that they are grown up, except for little Nora, so it is merely a cozy space without much function. At one end is the old wood ice box that R.H. spent hours restoring decades ago. It holds lightbulbs mainly, and cereal boxes.

There is a narrow table holding family photographs, and over it hangs an original charcoal drawing of an old local railroad depot, Amqui Station, drawn back in the 1970s by local artist Burnard Wiley. It was my Christmas gift to R.H. one year. Afraid the depot would be demolished, Johnny Cash bought the building and moved it ten minutes away to The House of Cash. After Cash's death it was again moved and is now The Amqui Station and Visitors Center, dedicated to railroading. The Amqui Music & Arts Festival will be there on September 28, 2013.

On the opposite wall are old built-in cupboards that give me extra dish storage. The feed sack curtains hide Christmas decorations for the rear of the house. 

The first cupboard holds dishes in bright colors and punch cups hanging from hooks.

The third cupboard holds mostly odds and ends of china.

But it is the middle cupboard that is my "happy" cupboard. It contains Christmas dishes, and I open it up all year round for a little Christmas cheer.

See the old red and white enamel dinette table that the previous owners left in the smokehouse when we bought this place.....

It could serve as extra dining space for a few people but no one wants to be separated from the others eating at the big kitchen table. Behind this old table, the windows look out to the smokehouse. Why have we never shown the smokehouse interior to you? Because it is not a space you would want to pin on Pinterest.

With a ton of work it would make a beautiful garden shed, but it is also home to our big Brown Eyes. He has a big doghouse inside to sleep in when it's cold in the winter and a cool cement floor for when it's hot outside. The generator is inside here as are bins of birdseed, tools, and the empty milk jugs filled with water that R.H. thinks we'll need if there's ever a water shortage. Here is the back of the smokehouse.

And the side that faces the "small dining room."

Now, this is the point of this whole long post on dining rooms. Wouldn't it make perfect sense to knock out the wall in the "small dining room" for a long table and chairs, windows all along the side, with a garden door stepping out to a tiny enclosed terrace between the new dining room and the smokehouse? With a slanted roofline for a cozy feel? A shelf under the windows for serving dishes? Makes perfect sense to me.

Mind you, we will not be doing this. R.H. and our sons could do the work. It would just be a matter of pulling them off other jobs, jobs that actually pay instead of costing. See what I mean?

Ah, but I can dream, and in my mind I have furnished it, set the table, lit the candles, and carried in the food. I need only to call my guests. It could possibly look like this. Yes, this would about do it, I think.

"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."

Tell me, fellow beggars, what is your horse, if you had a wish?