Diving into the Dining Room

Journey to Homemaker

Boy, I could swear I blogged yesterday. Guess not! Well, I was pretty busy! I really hated the way the dining room (really a dining area) was looking, full of junk it had accumulated. So I dragged everything into the living room. I just bought a table to use temporarily til I can find a cheap dining room table. It's one of those heavy duty long plastic tables with the folding metal legs. This particular table also folds in half and has a carrying handle. But it's narrower than I want, and not heavy enough...the kids have pushing matches with the table! So I plan to return it. But since it folds in half, it was easy to get out of the room, which was nice.

I swept the floor, dry-swiffered it, wet-swiffered it, and mopped it twice. Looks pretty good, the best it's looked since we moved here. I vacuumed out the chairs with the booster chairs on them, and put them back. (I was glad to find those heavier wooden chairs, because my son had tipped over in the folding chair with the booster on it, and bit his tongue BAD.) Then I moved one of the free dressers I got into the dining room. It's chipped and really old, but it will do for now. There's another set of two low dressers I plan to repaint and move in there, but I haven't picked them up yet. So for now this old tall white one will hold my table linens and some of the baby's pajamas, for quick changes.

On that dresser I put a Battenburg lace runner, a picture of my baby, and a bud vase with a few carnations in it. Just adding those touches distracts from the ugliness of the dresser.

Fresh flowers make an amazing difference in the house! My husband recently brought home a bouquet of wildflowers, which I've decided I like much better than roses. I love roses that smell nice, but most store roses don't anymore, and don't last long at all. The wildflower bunches always last a long time, and then you can get rid of the flowers that are wilted and still have a few good looking ones. Alstromeria (sp?) are so pretty, and last a long time. We can get those flowers for about $5 a bunch. I've decided that as long as we're not broke, I'm going to buy a bunch every two weeks, and have one vase on the table, and take a few buds and put them in bud vases around the house.

On the dining room table I put a red jaquard tablecloth and a round, white linen doily (it MUST be linen, I just couldn't get it pressed well) with crocheted lace trim, and a glass vase of flowers on top. Looks pretty good for a plastic table with mismatched chairs!

My husband really liked what I had done. Unfortunatley, I was up so late, I ended up with a big mess to put away, from all the junk I'd left in the living room! :-( But the living room is almost picked up, and after that I plan to start on the kitchen. The counters are a mess, and there's unpacked boxes of kitchen junk stuffed in a bunch of cabinets...and some unused cabinets! Time to tackle that. The dining room isn't perfect still--didn't dust the trim or the ceiling fan, etc. But with the kitchen and other rooms so messy, they take priority over deep cleaning.

It makes me feel better getting stuff accomplished, and I'm so happy to sit and stare at my clean dining room! :-D