The Dining Library of Congress

One of my friends has a bookcase in her dining room. When she moved into the townhouse with her husband and two children, she had nowhere else to put it. It was stuffed full of books in no particular order; all jumbled together were nonfiction, fiction, magazines and miscellaneous items that were stuck on the shelves for want of a better home. It bothered her because the bookcase had a dark cherry finish while the dining table and chairs were a two-tone, country style dining set in white and light wood colors. The mismatched vibe she got whenever she sat at the table made her feel uncomfortable.

The casual dining table was actually a hand-me-down from her in-laws, and even though she ultimately wanted a dining room taken from the pages of Better Homes and Gardens, she was reluctant to replace the table until her children were old enough to do crafty things in their own rooms. In truth, she was quite proud of the historical record her dining tabletop documented, as her son and daughter grew past the finger painting, eating glue and dried-in-the-hair paper mache glob stages. But then something happened that changed the fate of her mismatched dining room forever.

Her mother was moving 400 miles away and wanted to know if she would like the formal dining room table that she had grown up with. Because her dining room was narrow and somewhat awkwardly shaped, she went to her mother’s place to measure the table and found that yes, it would indeed fit in their house.

Once the dining table and matching chairs had been arranged in their new home, my friend was very pleased with the result. It had a rich cherry finish that softly glowed in the light filtering through the window. The upholstered side dining chairs were covered in a neutral fabric that was relatively new, since her mother had had them redone recently. But there was still the matter of the pesky bookcase to deal with. It inspired her to wander into each room to search for a new place to put it. No such luck.

Resigned to having to live with the large bookcase in her (almost perfect) dining room, one day, after searching through cupboards and other stuff for a particular recipe in preparation for a special celebration with friends, she had a brilliant idea. Both made of darker woods, it occurred to her that the bookcase really complemented the dining table. Instead of fighting a losing battle, why not make it a focal point? She removed everything from the bookshelves and replaced them with her cookbooks – every single one she owned. The top two shelves of the center section were reserved for her collection of novelty milk jugs and creamers. Turning a liability into an asset, she had created a handy reference library that would save her a lot of time and frustration.

101 Ways for a Family to Have Fun

The Christmas I was thirteen and my sister seven and a half, our family received 101 games from Santa. Long before RTA (ready-to-assemble) furniture became popular, the games board, resembling a large octagonal tabletop, had four accompanying legs that, once attached to its underside, magically converted it into a games table. It came with game pieces for 101 different table games, and it seemed like it was just the ticket for elevating family night to a whole new level.

The first time we pulled up our dining chairs up to the game table, it was more like a comedy of errors than a fun family get-together. In no time at all, the tabletop was covered beneath a mound of game pieces pulled from out of the box all at once in an attempt to find the instruction booklet. Once the instructions were located, it was then a simple matter of choosing one of 101 games that everyone would enjoy participating in. By the time we had finally agreed upon a game listed in the booklet that none of us had heard of before, I was longing for a comfortably familiar game of Monopoly.

The next time we gathered around the games table to play, we picked one randomly by flipping open the booklet and having my sister point (with her eyes closed) to one on the page. It was fun and a little raucous; I don’t remember now the name of the game, but it involved throwing large plastic red, black, blue and white rings onto wood pegs. After a few months worth of family nights, we had tried about 40 of the 101 possible games. But no matter which ones we chose, one thing became acutely clear to me; I wasn’t particularly good at any of them. My sister, on the other hand won regularly.

After repeated trouncing by my sister, family 101 games nights didn’t seem as much fun. To survive family game night, I developed a game plan of my own. I would sidle my dining chair up to the table and play a few games before taking a break, supposedly for a glass of water, but when I returned, it was only to watch the action from behind my father’s shoulder. But my mother was too smart; when she caught on to what I was up to, I was “invited” to pick a new game from the many to choose from.

The goal was to play all of the 101 games and then keep playing our favorites. Even though we never made if through the entire list, (and in spite of not winning as often as I liked), the games table did give family fun night a whole new outlook, leaving my sister and I with some fond memories after all these years. Still, it’s probably not too late for a rematch.

Secret in the Garden

But she was inside the wonderful garden, and she could come through the door under the ivy any time, and she felt as if she had found a world all her own.

from The Secret Garden
by Frances Hodgson Burnett

It’s spring…well almost, and even though it doesn’t feel like it at the moment, it’s time to think about planting gardens or, in my case, prepping the planter boxes on my balcony and browsing online at Greenhouse Select for handy stuff that will help plants grow.

I never know what children’s titles I have on hand in my own personal library because I’m constantly giving them away to nieces, nephews and the children of friends for birthdays as they grow into the books on my shelves. I have given away five copies of Tuck Everlasting, three of Playing Beattie Bow, three of King of the Wind and seven of Charlotte’s Web. But my favorite children’s novel of all time has to be The Secret Garden and I’ve given so many copies of it away, I have lost count. Preparing to write about greenhouses and tying it somehow to this wonderful book, I checked my bookshelves first, to save myself a trip to the library or bookstore. So imagine my surprise when I found I actually still owned my own copy of this much-loved novel.

I planned to just flip through the book for some ideas. But the beautiful words drew me into the seamlessly unfolding story of an orphaned girl journeying from her parents’ home in India to her uncle’s house on the Yorkshire moors. It is a typical coming of age novel with a bit of a twist and since Mary, the main character in the story, learns how to garden, some self-empowerment thrown in for good measure. Add a mysterious, walled garden that is locked and no one has entered for ten years, and you’ve got yourself one timeless tale that sets the imagination on fire.

Upon reading it for the first time all those years ago, that is exactly what this children’s novel did for me – it set my imagination on fire. It didn’t matter that our city backyard in no way compared to the acreage attached to an English country mansion, but that wasn’t a problem for me. My father had turned the abandoned garage on our property into a gardening shed and there was a corner of it that was “walled” in by the trees and shrubs growing in that part of the yard. When first I was called and then searched for, my mother or father would discover that I had virtually vanished. I hadn’t really; I had simply stumbled upon a secret world of my own and found it amusing to stay hidden while they looked for me.

I “borrowed” seeds I found in the shed and planted them in my secret little bit of earth. Unlike Mary, however, in her walled-in garden, nothing grew in the plant bed I had stealthily attempted to create in my hide-away. Of course, now I know the reason that nothing grew was probably due to the fact that the area was too shaded or the seeds that I had stolen were simply old. The story might have turned out differently if I had the Solexx Lit'l Propagator Twin Walled Greenhouse to putter around in.

If you’re looking for a parent/child activity that both you and your daughter or son can enjoy together, consider creating your own “secret” garden. Perhaps it’s not just flowers your child will plant.

Dining Chairs are Handy for Short People

I’m short and I never feel shorter than when I am in my kitchen preparing a meal or putting away dishes. Especially when I’m cooking for company because I need pots and other items I don’t use regularly, I seem to be constantly reaching for things that are out of reach. I do own a step stool, but it’s conveniently tucked away in the walk-in hall closet. My favorite weapon of choice in the Battle of the Less Tall is the dining chair that is closest to the kitchen.

The chair is a wood ladder back with an upholstered seat in some mystery fabric I’d be hard pressed to identify. The dining chair, along with its two other companions, was a hand-me-down from my grandmother. While they are serviceable (and have given me my money’s worth), they don’t match my dining table and I am working on replacing them. In the meantime, however, they, well at least the one closest to the kitchen, is a practical stand-in for the step stool I’m too busy to fetch.

Not just relegated for use in the kitchen, I also utilize the side dining chair to get into my silverware chest, which sits on top of my china cabinet in the dining room. I keep searching for a more convenient place to put it, but there doesn’t seem to be any other spot for it. To access the cutlery I use when I’m expecting guests, I need my trusty dining chair.

My kitchen cabinets don’t go all the way up to the ceiling; while providing a handy storage space for my cookbooks and other sundries, it does need to be cleaned from time to time. The step stool is too short. Even when standing on it, I still am unable to comfortably sit on the counter in order to stand up on it to wipe down the top of the cabinets. My multipurpose brown dining chair is a must-have accomplice in my cleaning adventure.

I’m sure I’m not the only short person on the planet that hijacks a dining chair as a stand-in for a step stool. But if you are looking for new dining chairs to be used in the more conventional manner, you’ll find a wide selection to choose from at More Dining Chairs.

A Blank Page, Writers and Writing Desks

In the old days, rewriting a freelance article or short story meant scribbles in the margin, dele marks and circled portions of sentences with arrows directing them to their new home in another place on the page. If I had to leave the manuscript in mid-edit, it sometimes became a puzzle as to what I meant by my notes and where I wanted things to go. But now, I use a computer for writing and I have to admit that I like the fact that a word processing program allows me to split sentences in two and shift them around. And paragraphs, too: with a click of the mouse, I can rearrange the order. But whenever I browse Writing Desk Select, I become nostalgic for the old days, when a fresh blank piece of paper was a written invitation to grab a pen.

The great American writer, Ernest Hemingway, used a Royal typewriter, perched on some kind of flat surface. A Google image search reveals several pictures of Hemingway, at various times in his life, sitting in front of a writing desk that resembles a table that might be found in a kitchen more than any kind of desk, computer, writing or otherwise.

When he lived in Key West, Florida, he wrote in the carriage house, which became his writing studio. It is said that it is here Ernest Hemingway wrote some of his best stories and novels, including A Farewell to Arms and The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. Unlike his house in Cuba, the one at 907 Whitehead St., Key West doesn’t contain any of the author’s original furnishings. But one thing is clear from the pictures taken of Hemingway while writing, he seemed to prefer a writing desk that allowed him the choice to sit at the typewriter or work on a manuscript longhand.

His desk in the study of Finca Vigia, which means Lookout Farm, Hemingway's house near Havana, Cuba has a glass top and is deliciously roomy. In one of the pictures I discovered on the internet, he is pictured sitting at the desk, holding one of his many cats, looking down at a page in the typewriter, while the entire desktop is covered with papers, books and rolled newspapers. I am envious; this is what a writer’s desk should be and look like, organized chaos with cat included. Just looking at this picture of Hemingway seated here, I’m convinced it was no fluke that this is where he wrote The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bells Toll. The desk inspired him!

What’s in a Name: Is it called a Buffet or Sideboard or Both?

Buffets and sideboards make serving meals and entertaining seemingly effortless and more enjoyable. If you’ve arrived at More Dining Tables determined to purchase one for your dining room, you may be a little confused. Which is which or are they the same thing? Because they basically serve the same purpose, today, many furniture retailers use the terms interchangeably. But sideboards and buffets do have their own separate stories to tell.

Emerging in the form we know them today, sideboards first appeared in the eighteenth century, and were used in a dining room or a hall for holding food and wine before it was to be served. They really gained popularity all over Europe in the nineteenth century as more and more households became prosperous enough to have a room in their homes dedicated specifically to formal dining. They were invariably made of mahogany and were often richly detailed with expensive veneers and costly overlays. Sideboards produced in the European colonies of North America became simpler in appearance and were made of woods indigenous to the region, like oak, pine and walnut.

Typically, a sideboard resembles a table, stands roughly waist high and has a center drawer especially designed for either linens or silverware and an open or enclosed storage area Today, sideboards are available in numerous styles and designs, but essentially are still used for serving food, displaying collectibles and storing meal-related items like serving platters, placemats and cutlery. In today’s busy home, a sideboard, like the contemporary Hillsdale Bayberry Glenmary Cherry Sideboard, can conveniently store everything in one place needed to set a table, saving time while increasing the functionality of your dining room.

From the French, “buffet” refers to a small sideboard for storing dishes. They can be traced back to the Middle Ages, where they bore more of a resemblance to modern sideboards. Originally, a buffet was a stack of shelves, the number of which being an indication of the owner’s wealth and status in the community. Over the centuries, they evolved into elaborately detailed pieces of furniture. In the sixteenth century, it emerged as a serving or side table, often with two or three tiers. In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the buffet became more elaborate, characterized by tiered shelves above a serving counter and cupboards with doors below the serving area.

Contemporary buffets come in a variety of styles and configurations, but generally have a serving counter with a row of drawers, with two doors on either side and a storage area in the middle. Like the Home Styles Furniture Three-Drawer Large Buffet, a buffet can also include utility drawers, wine storage and a display shelf. Buffets can also feature stemware racks or a hutch with shelves, dividers and plate grooves.

Due to their versatility and adaptability, buffets and sideboards remain a popular way to make dining and entertaining stylish and enjoyable. They essentially serve the same purpose; that of storing meal-related items such as china, utensils and table linens. And just to confuse the issue a little more, when shopping for one online at More Dining Tables, keep in mind that both sideboards and buffets are also known as servers.

How to Choose the Bathroom Vanity that’s Right for You

Updating your bathroom can be as simple as replacing your current sink with a new bathroom vanity. But once you’ve decided to redecorate, what’s next? How do you decide which one to purchase? While browsing online at More Vanities, here are some things to consider that might help you choose the ideal bathroom vanity for your home.

Since they are available in a wide variety of styles, when selecting a bathroom vanity, this is the first thing to decide. Because the vanity is typically the focal point of the bathroom, the style you select will add ambience to the bathroom’s décor. Traditional style is recognizable by its intricate decorative detail and antiqued hardware. Contemporary bathroom vanities are characterized by simple lines, shapes and forms.

In some ways, the material selected can also determine the style. Like the DreamLine Glass Bathroom Vanity, modern and contemporary vanities are made of glass or a combination of glass and brushed or polished metal. Many types of wood vanities, such as the Cole & Co Charlotte Sink Bathroom Vanity are distinctly traditional.

There are several different types of vanities, from pedestal to double basin. Another thing to consider when shopping online for a bathroom vanity is the features you would like it to have. A pedestal sink, for example, typically does not include any storage options, whereas a standard vanity combines a sink with a cabinet that may include drawers, enclosed shelving or open shelves. A single basin vanity maybe what you currently have, but if you have the room, you might want to upgrade to a double sink bathroom vanity.

Establish who will be using the vanity on a regular basis; this will be a determining factor in what kind of sink and counter you select. You may gravitate toward the vanity with a marble sink, but if you have children, a porcelain one might be more practical for the whole family. The same applies to vanity countertops. Granite countertops are beautiful to look at, but if used in a family setting, they can be high maintenance.

A vanity, especially one with a number of storage options, can increase the functionality of the most used room in your home. Whatever type of bathroom vanity you select, it should be practical, durable and resistant to water, moisture and humidity.

Dining with Hillsdale

With spring on the way, many manufacturers introduce new product lines at this time of year. Hillsdale is no exception. Their winter product lineup includes six exciting new dining sets that offer a little something for everyone. At Hillsdale Furniture Source, you will find a dining furniture that will breathe fresh life into your kitchen or dining room.

The Casa Blanca collection combines classic farmhouse profiles with transitional design elements for a truly warm and inviting appearance. It features a traditional ladder back chair and an oval table. The collection also includes a sideboard. The beautiful two-tone cherry/black finish gives these pieces a modern look and feel.

The Hermosa Heights collection by Hillsdale is definitely contemporary in style. The counter height gathering table is undeniably a space-saving work of art. Its design incorporates some innovative features such as display shelving, special compartments for wine bottles and an oak finish tabletop with a built-in lazy susan. Displaying an elegant transitional look, the Patterson collection also offers a counter height dining furniture with an adaptable style that fits a range of décors.

Transitional in style, Verona dining sets are available with a number of different seating options that allows you to choose the look that best expresses your personal taste. Parsons chairs with a square table? Slat chairs and a bench with a rectangle table? You decide.

If you’re looking for something that mixes it up a little, consider either the Hillsdale Monaco Dining Set or the Pacifico Dining Set. By pairing different materials together, such as wood, leather and marble in the case of the Monaco series, both collections are visually stunning in their own unique ways.

You will find plenty of reasons, not just for the kitchen or dining room, to give all the rooms of your home a fresh look for spring with innovative designs from Hillsdale Furniture.