Ladies Luncheon in Pinks and Robin's Egg Blue

For the past 5 and a half months I've been inspired and awed by the beautiful tablescapes in so many of your blogs.  When  "The Tablescaper" posted a few weeks ago and asked 'Where Do You Keep It All', it got me thinking that I need to put out a little effort, like so many of you do each and every week, and try to design a tablescape with dishes and colors from my rather small (but always growing) collection.

After perusing my two shelves and one cupboard full of dishes and glassware, and being inspired by the pinks and blues of spring, I decided to see if I could put a tablescape together using pink and blue (mostly pinks)without it looking like a baby shower. Forgive my photos please, they are not the best - still need to learn about using a digital camera indoors.

This room is the main room of the original stone farmhouse; the windows are deepset and spaced  far apart - therefore the light during the day is rather dim.  To help things out, I placed two small lamps in the middle of my tablescape - it was the only way that I was able to get enough light for the photos.  In real life this would probably not have worked - on second thought maybe I should have designed this for outdoors but it was just so darned muggy this weekend that I opted to stay in the air conditioning. 

The large robin's egg or Tiffany blue stoneware dishes are scalloped around the edges, I think the scallops are an interesting look around the edge of the dish.  These dishes were on the clearance shelf at TJMaxx.

The small white Italian dishes are edged in a very light blue vine, with strawberry leaves and plump red strawberries painted along the sides.   These would make a lovely dessert or salad plate. I picked them up in the Burlington, Vermont Williams Sonoma store for half price several years ago. 

The pretty pink glasses are antique depression glass - I was thinking they'd make a perfect presentation for a crabmeat cocktail with a delicious cocktail sauce dolloped on top.  An antiques dealer in Long Valley sold me a set of 8 glasses for a song during an antique show.

I love the way the light prisms through the glass. 

All of the cut flowers on the table (except for the petunias which need to be planted in a large clay pot) are from our gardens on Frog Hollow Farm.  I salvaged the last of our peonies along with many different pink geraniums.  I love geranium flowers and often use them in my summer bouquets and arrangements.

Two different napkins were used on this tablescape, a light blue damask napkin and a white Irish linen napkin, a birthday gift many years ago from SVV, a fellow foodie and good friend.  The napkin rings are really candle decorations with berries, white slik roses and silk greens.  They wrapped easily around the napkins and added depth and color to the table. 

Here's a somewhat fuzzy photo of the table, can you see what's missing?  (Yikes!)

The silver belonged to my Mom - she had several beautiful sets of silver and many, many mix and match pieces.  I seem to have the mixed set, which I love the most.

I've been wanting to show off these pretty little pieces found in a few antique stores and flea markets over the last few months.  This little candy dish is a Hammersley piece.  The sweet little pitcher with the pink roses isn't labled but it's the perfect size for holding flowers on the table.  The little pink dish below is a marketing piece from the grand opening of the Ivor Furniture Company.  On the bottom of the plate is written (in gold):

 Welcome to our grand opening

Ivor Furniture Company

Phone 249-1

Everything for Your Home

I was buying everything in pink and didn't even know why!!

The glassware is a mix of new and old.  The larger pressed glass dishes are goblets from Williams Sonoma.  They are decorated with knobby grapes and leaves and feel very solid when picked up.  The glasses with the rose-colored edge were picked up in one of those really big antique malls in Pennsylvania over Memorial Day.  They aren't very old but are a nice size for water, wine or whatever. 

For a smile I needed to take a photo of this table with the pink fish dish.  Our very good friend LMP gave this dish to FHFB one year for his birthday.  We all laughed when he opened the box, it's actually a great serving piece and I always remember LMP's face when FHFB opened the gift and held up the dish - he didn't know what to say but in his funny and gracious way he just loved it!  So LMP, we still have the pink fish dish and have made it immortal in my blog!

Thank you all for stopping by!  Check out the other tablescapes at Tablescape Thursday!