Our Kitchen at Christmas and Otis & Milo

In the words of Dee Hardie, my beloved Christmas Mentor, from her book Hollyhocks, Lambs, here is our kitchen dressed for Christmas. A picture of Dee's kitchen will appear at the end of the post--after pictures of our new babies, Otis and Milo!

"The main valve of Thornhill, without question, is our kitchen."

"Like the head of the River Nile, it's where life starts flowing.

At Christmas, it explodes with excitement.

When Tom cooks, it is delirious."

"It's our active verb, where I cook, concoct, create. It's center stage."

"These days…nothing, unless I really care about it

or unless it is Christmas,

sits too long in our kitchen.

Dogs have diplomatic immunity."

"

[Katie Belle, big sister now and not terribly thrilled about it!]

"The kitchen has become, for me,
the most personal room at Thornhill,
I choose to edit what it contains.
I couldn't always do this when our children were younger,
nor did I want to,
but as they have grown up, so has the kitchen."

"Later we exchanged the spotted floor for a grander covering
of Vermeerlike black-and-white twelve inch square tiles of linoleum.
It's still here and I have spent a large portion of my life
trying to keep it clean. Everything shows."

"A professional decorator might think the black-and-white blocks
are too formal for a country floor,
but what is more country than a checkerboard?"

"Country furniture, which often looks like its mother forgot to tell
it to stand up straight up straight when it was a child,
sits well, looks well on such a definite platform."

"And facing each other, on either end wall of the kitchen, 

are two bulls' heads.

Woven of raffia, we captured them, by strenuous bargaining,

from a street vendor in Seville."

"[The kitchen] is where we make decisions and raspberry jam,

where I weave baskets 

and neighbors weave country intrigue over teacups."

"It's a studio, a workshop, the core of Christmas.

It's probably my best friend if friendship depends

on being there whenever needed.

"The kitchen is where Tom and I sit before dinner to discuss our day.

And it's where we seem to make decisions."

A major decision R.H. and I made recently was to try to adopt two nine-year-old little dachshund brothers. I lost my heart to them after seeing their picture on www.petfinder.com. After losing our 15 1/2 year old dachshund Penelope on December 14, 2012, I still had a dachshund size hole in my heart. R.H. only remembered the pain, the hurt, the loneliness after she died. Then he dreamed about them. 

And he told me to find out if Otis and Milo had been adopted yet. 

They had not. Their mother is seriously ill and they made the decision to surrender them. Can you imagine how very hard it was for them to make this decision? And how hard it was for Otis and Milo to leave their home for a rescue shelter? Thank God they stipulated that these two loving brothers be adopted together. 

God bless the wonderful woman who helped us be able to adopt these two black long haired miniature dachshunds, and who does such marvelous, caring work for so many dachshunds. It is a labor of love entirely. And they are so careful. We had to fill out an application, with references, they checked with our veterinarian, and there was a home visit. Because they wanted to know two main things, whether we had a safe fenced in yard, and whether we knew, understood, and loved the breed. 

Finally, one year to the date of losing Penelope, we were able to go see these twin brothers, Otis who is 12 pounds and Milo who is tiny at 8 pounds. We fell in love with them and signed an extensive contract for the protection of these babies.  By the time we had been driven home by our son, almost 4 hours, R.H. holding Milo, Otis in my lap kissing me the whole way, they were in love with us. 

Please, if you are considering adding a dog, or cat, to your family, please check into the rescue organizations run so capably. Petfinders.com is an excellent way to start. There are so many dogs who need a good home. They need you, and maybe you need them. We did.

Otis and Milo wish you as merry a Christmas as we hope theirs will be and that your new year will be wonderful.

I want to end this post with a magazine page that I have had for 30 years, Dee Hardie's kitchen. It was on the cover of House Beautiful magazine in December of 1983. It was the beginning of my love affair with a kitchen with a black and white checkerboard floor. But it only solidified my admiration of Dee Hardie that had been going on since I discovered her columns in House and Garden in 1973.

To Dee Hardie, my Christmas Mentor, thank you for all that you have meant to me and so many others:

Tis the Season To Set the Stage!

As my Christmas Mentor, Dee Hardie, said, "I'd much rather dress the table than the turkey." And like her, "Sometimes I do it days ahead." Our main table, seen here, is in the kitchen and is difficult to set days ahead as this is where we eat, where we work on paperwork, where I stack cookbooks and plan menus. It is where, when family comes, a waffle breakfast is eaten, snacks throughout the day, and where family pitch in and help by peeling potatoes. Appetizers are put out here. Glasses of wine and the ubiquitous unclaimed bottles of water are left here. It is difficult to set the stage ahead at this kitchen table.

So today it is a pleasure to introduce it to you as one of the four Christmas tables for my day of the Tis the Season Blog Tour!

When I saw this lovely and simple 1950's pink china called Dwarf Pine by Taylor-Smith & Taylor, I knew it was meant to be mine. With Christmas eBay gift certificates last year from a son and his wife, I bought a stack of the plates.

I used vintage white cotton sheets for the tablecloth but did buy a pretty gray runner for the center. It and the dainty pine sprigs design on the china, almost Japanese in look, inspired me to have R.H. cut branches of a dwarf pine outside to use on the table. Another son rushed all over town a few days ago to find cans of artificial snow to spritz on the pine needles. I added white Christmas trees and white candles. [I know, the rule is that candles must be lit if on tables, but R.H. ruled that out as too much of a fire hazard with the pine needles so close!]

The bouillon cups are from Austria and the little glasses with white Christmas trees are from Goodwill. We found the stemware at Pier One on clearance and thought it added a modern touch to our mid-century table setting.

If you would like to see more of our kitchen dressed for Christmas, please return next week for a posting. But here is a picture of our punch bowl and glass snack plates, more mid-century pieces, standing next to our main Christmas tree that is full of vintage purple and blue balls and some modern pieces for a little sparkle, with purple and pink lights on the tree.

I think our kids probably hate this Christmas tree, but we had that traditional green tree with all the children's ornaments for decades and now it's my turn to have a grown-up tree. And it has a beautiful glow at night.

Let's move on to tables two and three. Recently I had a post titled "If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Ride" about my longing for a dining room. Where I could indeed "set the stage" early. The only way to get a dining room seemed to be to knock out the back wall in the room below and build out towards the smokehouse. Not even on R.H.'s radar screen, so determined to get a dining room out of this narrow space, I had the boys move in a wonderful old primitive green and black table from my bedroom. Now we can sit four people at it and four at the old red and white enamel table. And I have a dining room!

Table two here is a little kids' Christmas table, even though we only have one "little kid" now, granddaughter Nora. Maybe she could invite three friends!

I tied cool plastic spoons in old cloth red and white checked bows I made over 30 years ago, and tucked in sprigs of holly. The spoons would be good for a children's favorite--Mac 'n Cheese.  Colorful Christmas glasses are from Goodwill.

Old red Pyrex bowls could hold cut fruit to be picked up with little fingers.

I'd have to add a sandwich to the Mac 'n Cheese on these red-rimmed Christmas tree plates from Goodwill, called Holly & Spruce, also by Taylor-Smith & Taylor.

There are lots of interesting Christmas items on the table for the kids to look at.

Here we are at table three.

Spode's Christmas Tree has been our Christmas china for decades and here we have it set on one of the wonderful vintage Christmas tablecloths in my collection. They really made linens to last in the old days.

These bread plates called The Old Curiosity Shop have a wonderful clock on the design.

Aren't these little glasses cute? My mother gave them to me and some years I've put candy in them at each place setting.

Look who is already at the table! Zack and Defee's old bears! I hope they don't ask for them back too soon.

Now to the fourth table that is set up in our living room.

One person can sit on the sofa and another one can take the old red chair that was once in a bank.

Another person can sit in the old red Bentwood chair.

The last person at the table has to sit in the old red chair brought in from the garden! The table itself is from the garden and yes, R.H., you did have to repaint the whole table black, not just the legs that show!

Let's have the soup course in these wonderful bowls that came from Goodwill. You find the best things at Goodwill! These are by Vitromaster and the pattern is Metropolitan.

We remove the soup bowls to see what are actually luncheon plates to use for our salad. I have many sets of Copeland Spode, beginning with our wedding china called Blue Bird, but I think these are the loveliest. I bought a big stack of them for under $100 years ago on eBay and they are gold rimmed, crimson border, with a beautiful urn of flowers. They are marked Spode Copeland, Tatman, Chicago. No pattern name. If you happen to know the pattern I would so much appreciate learning what it is.

Next is our dinner plate, our Spode Christmas Tree again, but I do love changing it around this way and mixing these pieces together.

Now to show the chargers! I'm excited about these! I don't do chargers. Don't have the space for them and when I've looked for chargers, the ones I liked were expensive. But I have watched the tables of my table setting gurus, Laurie of Bargain Hunting (and chatting) with Laurie, and Pat of Back Porch Musings, and know what a difference it makes when they use them so beautifully. So when we found the Metropolitan soup bowls and bread plates at Goodwill, I held them up against the Christmas Tree china and they went together like magic. Over two years now I have bought four of the Metropolitan charger size plates. They are heavy to ship and not cheap to begin with so I have limited myself to four of these and will continue to set a grownup table for four with them. I wish that two of our engaged grandsons could eat at this table with their lovely fiancés for a romantic table for four.

Here is a closeup. I call them my Modigliani plates as the faces remind me of the artist's work.

All of these tables are set with old linen that I've had for years except for the gray runner for the kitchen table. Like my Christmas Mentor, Dee Hardie, I like old linens. Here is her dining room table with "a great-grandmother's cloth, like Mrs. Cratchit's gown in A Christmas Carol, 'twice-turned but brave with ribbons.'"

[House Beautiful, December 1983]

Dee said that her dining room table was "center stage." She said that "Christmas is the one time of year when I don't have to take down the props the very next day." We love that about Christmas, don't we? We can keep all the props up through Christmas and sometimes beyond. Dee once answered my fan letter in a sweet handwritten note. Thank you, Dee, for helping teach me how to set the stage.

I guess it's time to say goodbye for now. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to each of you. R.H. and I hope you'll visit us here again at Across the Way.

And please don't forget to visit Kathryn at The Dedicated House today as she and I finish up the Tis the Season Blog Tour. It has been so much fun joining Jemma, Chris, Poppy, Sheri, Jess, Nel, Patty, Melanie, Brenda, and Melinda in this fun tour together.

Note added at 7:20 p.m., Saturday night:

Just to let everyone know that we have been gone all day, driving to KY to adopt two precious dachshund brothers. Now they have explored everything, eaten and settled down in their nest at my feet. I will start answering comments and be making blog visits tomorrow when Otis & Milo sleep! Thank  you for the sweet comments, R.H. and I appreciate them so much!