Thank you all for leaving such wonderful and positive comments on my
last post about the new shipment. Tom and I are grateful for your support and
feedback! All of the new inventory will be posted to the website
soon. I’ve been busy cataloging, pricing, and photographing each piece.

Recently, I hosted a casual luncheon at home
for Bethany Brower, Nancy Powell, and Kerry Steele – all friends and
blog authors I met last summer.

Nancy
and Bethany are a talented, creative, and dynamic design team, and they write daily
about design, art, and more on their site: Powell Brower. They are also mother and daughter.

Kerry is an amazing artist, and author of Design du Monde. Her abstracts on linen are quite lovely! Check out her new site here.

As I
do not cook much (at all :), I enlisted Tom to prepare lunch. We enjoyed his Chesapeake Bay crabcakes, tomato, mozzarella and basil salad, and simple mixed greens. Many thanks, Tom!! For dessert, I picked up a
summer fruit tart and macaroons from a local French patisserie.

 Setting the table can be so fun! In my china
closet are antique and new creamware, ironstone, and other simple
dishes.
 Above photo: French creamware pieces in an unusual pale blue color by Creil (top row). Creamware and ironstone serving pieces (second row). Dinner plates, soup bowls, dessert and salad plates, and other small dishes (bottom row).
I ended up using these vintage Swedish ironstone plates with beaded rim. They are the perfect luncheon size. (The little footed bowls are French coffee bowls from the early 1900s.)
Also in this closet are linens, trays, and vintage baskets stored in old French laundry baskets.
For a casual look, I selected French olive wood flatware, rustic washed linens, and abaca woven place mats. Both the flatware and place mats are from Crate and Barrel.
Here is the table all set up! The footed cakestands are French from the end of the 1800s. In the photos at the beginning, you’ll see a stack of three, which I assembled over a period of time. Limelight hydrangeas are from our garden.
Here are Nancy, Bethany, and Kerry in the family room. Thanks for coming over, ladies. I had a great time 🙂
And now is a good opportunity to share our new Swedish Mora clock from the end of the 1700s. Just over 100 inches, this is the tallest Mora clock I’ve come across. To read more about Mora clocks, please visit this post from last year. The antique coffee table is from Belgium, and is slightly taller than today’s coffee tables.

That’s it for this post. Hope you’ll visit my friends’ sites.
Bye for now!
Loi