Some festive tableware from Homesense

I've some more Homesense loveliness today, and I make no apology for that. Since their store opened in Greenwich earlier in the year, I'm a confirmed fan. So when they asked me to put together some of their festive tableware, well, who was I to refuse?

The thing is about tableware is that at Christmas there never seems to be enough, does there?  

With a houseful of guests arriving Christmas Eve I'm as keen as ever to avoid multiple bouts of washing up in between meals, just so there's enough plates. While plates are pretty important, so is spending time with friends and family without donning your marigolds!

And it’s usually supper that we run out of plates for - but not this year!  

For us supper - a meal we probably only ever eat at Christmas - is one of those meals that is made up of food leftover from lunch, think pigs in blankets, cold stuffing and a turkey sandwich. Or from the cheeseboard, with some salad added for balance - sometimes we even eat it too!

But it always ends with a mince pie, or maybe a first slice of Christmas cake, along with a small glass of something sweet - this year after our trip to Porto, it could be port, or maybe the Marsala that’s already open.   

And this year we’ll be using these festive plates for that. I’m hoping that they’ll have their second outing of the day, having first been used for smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels at breakfast. No washing up needed either as they’ll be in the dishwasher with everything we use at lunch. 

They’re stylish aren’t they? As usual and spoilt for choice, I opted for two designs - a snowflake patterned plate hailing from Portugal and a boldly decorated Noel plate, in a 4:2 split.  

The tray, which is just gorgeous, had a ‘Vietnam’ label on and I spent more time than was probably necessary deciding on which size. There’s three and I opted for the middle size, but would have happily taken all of them! 

the coasters were the final addition to my basket, and while they look pretty and sparkly- what I’m really looking forward to is a lack of marks on our glass table. Not that I’m planning on spilling any drinks... 

I’ve snuck the new plates into the cupboard, do you think MOH will spot them?!

What do you think? Do you have festive tableware? I’m not alone am I.,,

This is a collaborative post, but all views and opinions are my own.  

Love this #77: Baa baa tablemat

Just a quick post today as I've got some fab new tablemats that I just had to share. 

Since we got our new table (ages ago!) neither of us have been happy with using our old, more traditional mats as they just didn't seem to go.  I'd planned to make some fabric mats, which we could slip the older, less favoured mats into, and I still plan to make these, but like many things I've not got to it yet...

Browsing the Wayfair site one day I spotted these and I was smitten.  MOH is less sure, but even he admits they're an improvement on our French Bistro scene!

Aren't they fab?

Sharing our chairs

Yes, it's the post I've been meaning to share for a while. We've had our new chairs for what seems like ages now, and I think some of the gloss of having them has gone as it was quite a palaver in the end. We ordered them in January from a very big furniture shop on Tottenham Court Road and expected to wait a couple of months for them to arrive.

We'd hoped they would arrive a couple of weeks after our table at the start of March, but they didn't. They finally arrived, after much to-ing and fro-ing and chasing on my part, in the middle of April. And then one was damaged and needed to be replaced. I was beginning to think this was one of those purchases where everything goes wrong. Finally by the middle of May we had a set of chairs that we were happy with.

I'm not going to name the company - although you may have worked it out already - nor am I going to confirm or deny which it is, but I was pleased they had a robust compensation scheme and through negotiation we ended up with one chair almost free of charge.  So that's something but it's still not the service I expected. I think that's contributed to how long it's taken me to write about these.

Don't get me wrong I'm really pleased with them, but less so the pain that they came with!

So after much research we chose the Eames chairs to go with our white glass dining table, and I persuaded MOH that having more than one colour would be a good thing. Although I ummed and ahhed about the mustard chairs, which we did order. We went for two ocean (blue), two white and two mustard (yellow) and they look great. 

So let's take a look:

I'm really pleased with how the colours worked out and can't stop myself from smiling when I see the yellow, sorry mustard.  And that's meant an influx of yellowy-mustard items into the house, so it really can't be a bad thing, can it?

Now our table and chairs are more contemporary and fit well with our kitchen, we've also noticed how much lighter our dining area is.  Light reflects off the table, rather than being soaked up by the mahogany table we used to have. It looks great with some of our everlasting sweet peas in a milk bottle, and there's been plenty of these this year already. 

But the Alessi Blow Up basket also looks good - you can see just how reflective the table is in this shot. 

The only thing is our table mats don't really go now, they depict a French brasserie and while there's nothing wrong with them they were bought with our last table in mind.  So I have a plan, which I suspect you expected. I plan to make some fabric place mats, and the material I have from Prestigious Textiles matches perfectly. I used a different pattern in the Java range for the blind in our porch earlier in the year.

At the moment I'm not sure if I'll just make a couple of fabric placemats, or make something a bit more complicated where I can slip our existing placemats inside the fabric, sort of envelope. I'll let you know, but isn't the material a good match?

So there you go, finally a look at my dining room chairs. Now I've got the material out and seen how well it matches, I'm getting a bit more enthused about it all again.