Call me Martha!

It all started because I absolutely HATED the glass top and wrought iron kitchen dining set that I had. Actually when my daughter moved out of her apartment after she bought a house she gave me the ugly rectangular table and chairs that I didn't think were ugly at the time! (I think a comma goes somewhere in the previous sentence but I can't make up my mind where I should put it!) In return we gave her a nice oak table and hutch that we weren't using...it didn't go with the darker wood we had in our newly-built house. So for 6 years I've lived with that hideous, rectangular glass table that I had to clean all the time because of finger prints, food, dog nose smudges and other stuff. I really started to hate the table and I also took issue with the disgusting chairs...they had to go! I searched and searched and searched for a round wooden table and some nice chairs to go along with the semi-circular shape of the bay window in the eating area of my kitchen. I looked in the weekly ads, garage sales, estate sales, and I searched Craig's List several times a day for months and months and months! Finally on Saturday I found a nice table and chairs on CL listed for $350. I called and set up an appt. for my husband and me to look at the dining set which was located in Scottsdale, AZ, several miles from where I live in Chandler, AZ. I won't keep the lacy table covering, runner or place mats on the table permanently...they are on the table temporarily until I decide on a more colorful scheme for the table.

As soon as we saw the set we/I knew that we had to have it. The set was used for staging in a model home and the present owner got all the furniture from that particular model home as some sort of payment...I wasn't listening to the entire story. The present owners had all the furniture stored in their casita and were selling it room by room. They finally got around to selling the dining set and I'm so glad that they did. It was never used and it is in pristine condition. I offered the lady $300 and she accepted!

Lord, thank You for giving me the patience to wait for just the right time to buy a dining set!
That brings me to the Martha Stewart part of this blog. I couldn't figure out what to do with the set once we brought it home. I became very protective of the table and wouldn't let anyone eat on it until I covered the beautiful wood. Hence, I took out all of my table linens...place mats, napkins, tablecloths and runners. I'll keep the runners, napkins and place mats in the drawers of my hutch and side board. I separated the tablecloths by size and shape and I hung them on hangers with tags. On each tag, I wrote the shape and size of the tablecloth and hung them in a closet! I saw Martha Stewart do that once on her show and I laughed because I thought she was going a bit overboard on organizing her linens! For some reason I remembered that segment of her show and I decided that my tablecloths were a wrinkled mess from being stuffed in the bottom of my hutch. My tablecloths are still wrinkled (but hung) because I didn't iron any of them...I didn't want to completely cross over to the whole Martha Stewart image. EGAD! What has happened to me? Lord, give me strength.