Next Room Please

 Let's move on from the kitchen and into the dining room. There are only a few changes here but I did simplify a bit.

I love the double table runner that I am using now. My brother and sister-in-law gave me the striped one many years ago and then when I happened upon the starred one last year I realized that the combination would draw your eye from the table up to the "matching" square platter in the niche.

I still love the Styrofoam stars because I remember making them on one of our "grandkids' weekends" They were a chore but we made them as gifts for family and friends and I can still see the kids sitting around this table creating their treasures. When we did these weekends before any given holiday, I would come up with the ideas and buy the supplies and the table would get piled high with everything available to them as well as anything else from my stash or from the computer that they might want to print. I always loved their creativity and how we could all start out in the same direction and yet end up so differently. This is from a different craft but it kind of gives you an idea of our process.

I had fun making this drum and fire crackers. The fire crackers are just dowels I cut down, covered with a flag napkin, drilled holes and inserted twine "wicks". The box was a bit more challenging only because I am not the greatest at measuring-I tend to just kind of "go" and this one really needed some math to make the embellishments turn out correctly-not my forte but I think I got close. Lol

When I got to this photo, I had an "ah-ha" moment. I realized that this is the only vignette where I used a number of flags this year. In the past I have had flags stuck everywhere! I'm not sure why I didn't do the same this year but, honestly, I really like it simplified. I also didn't use all of the other small signs I would normally put here. I decided that since this is birthday #250 and we bought these commemorative plates 50 years ago to celebrate birthday # 200, I would use all six that we had somewhere in the house-and, I managed to find room for all of them. And, I must say as I am looking at these flags that they might need to be coffee stained to knock down a bit of that bright white-looks like I've found another afternoon project! Lol

I still love my vintage image wreath that I made several years ago. I think I managed to make one for almost every holiday/season after buying a few of the dummy board wreaths for Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter but not being able to find any others that I wanted.

I made the 4X4 fire crackers many years ago and they have been done by everyone by now but I still like them. This year I pretty much "cleaned off" the top of this console and they are the only decor I used.

So that is the dining room for this year. Now that I consciously realized that I don't have flags EVERYWHERE, I think I am liking it a lot more.

I have some heavy lifting to do outside so I am off to see what the temperature and humidity are feeling like. It just might be a project that I need some help with but we shall see. Happy Saturday and stay safe and stay tuned.