In The Beginning

Over the years there have been many television commercials and magazine ads depicting children with their faces smashed up against the window of a toy store, candy store or department store Christmas window. The eyes of the children glowed, their gazes mesmerized by the scene before them. Those images describe the first time I really noticed my grandmother's china cabinet.

It wasn't just the china cabinet itself. While beautiful (and currently in my sister's possession) it was what the cabinet held. There were stacks of china plates, bowls, tea cups and serving pieces. Sparkling, etched glass stemware was placed throughout. There were other objects as well, ones that little hands shouldn't touch. But it was the china and stemware that fascinated me the most. Those items had been used by my grandmother, a minister's wife, when she would entertain the women of the congregation in her home. That was years before I was even born. After my grandfather retired from the ministry, the china and crystal lived in the china cabinet until I inherited it.

Not that I ever ate off those plates or drank from the stemware growing up. Since there were eleven grandchildren we ate off paper plates and drank from Dixie cups with our initial etched in the waxed bottom of the cup. The memories that those paper plates and Dixie cups evoke will be forever precious to me - as is the first time I realized a table setting could be something more.

My imagination and, therefore, my table settings have evolved over the years. Some simple and some more elaborate. I consider them a gift for the occasion. I have branched out to showers, brunches, wedding receptions and rehearsal dinners for friends and family. Creating a visual accompaniment to an event or special occasion is something I love to do. And life is too short to not do and share something you love.