Designer

…………………As in most homes this is a room that didn’t get a lot of use…..It was a “special occasion ” room. When we would host Holiday dinners we’d make a big deal with the table settings, china, glass wear, silverware and decorations…..otherwise the dining room is the passageway into the family room or rear entrance to the living room. None the less we wanted it to look good…..It is sparsely furnished with an English dining table, and 10 Palomino color leather chairs. Against one wall there is an oval pedestal table I call “The PORT table”, because that’s where I keep my Port. There are some interesting objects on the table like the s oval silver biscuit container, and the silver toast holder shaped like a clam shell. The pineapple jam jar from Buccellati with the silver top, silver egg cups and silver and ivory knife holders are all conversation worthy… One of my personal favorite pieces is the CIANTI bottle. In stead of straw wrapping the bottle and a straw cord wrapping around the throat of the bottle, as the original bottles have….it’s all made of silver to look exactly like the straw would have. In the old days when they opened a bottle they used to wrap a piece of news paper around the top. This bottle has a cork, but hiding the cork is a piece of silver wrapping it to look like newspaper. It even had writing inscribed in it! My friend Giovanna, who lives in Florence Italy had one, and I loved it. She said I can get one for you, and so she did. I have never seen anything like it in this country even in stores like Tiffany, Cartier or Buccellati that carry wonderful and unusual  silver objects from Italy….It’s just a pain  to keep shiny!……Against another wall is a Chinese cabinet. It has incredible brass work. The front section opens down to create a shelf. I’ve turned it into a bar. That’s it for furniture in this room. I always wanted to get more like a long English serving buffet table, but Jac liked it spare……”Happy wife…happy life”…….There are seven painting in this room, but that’s another collage. There used to be a beautiful rug under the dining table, but the fur babies thought it was a pee pad!!! No matter what we did they would still use the rug….so the rug went bye bye…..Thank you Annie, Lily and Samantha!!

…………………The dining room table has a large oval silver tray in the center….two candelabra, two silver biscuit jars at each end and two large silver leaf dishes from Buccellati. When the decorations are put away I have a very old Chinese Rose Medallion large bowl on the tray filled with faux lemons.

……………………..There is very little in the house I don’t decorate! I love to decorate the the Dining Room chandelier. It came with the house, and it’s quite elaborate….At a certain time of year, at a certain time of day….the sun rays stream through the room at just the right angle hitting the prisms which in turn create little rainbows all over the room!!!…It’s magical….For that reason alone I never changed the chandelier, but you have to be lucky enough to see it at the right time ……..Some people decorate their chandeliers with bows or greens, but I like my chandelier hung with lots of GLASS ICICLES………It’s very DOCTOR ZHIVAGO!

………………………Some people collect Santas, and Nutcrackers, but we collected SNOWMEN! We have always displayed them in the kitchen on glass window shelves…..Where ever we went we would always find a snowman 0r snowwoman, and add it to our collection. What you see in the pictures is  just some of our little family of snow people. I usually keep them on display until there is absolutely no chance of a snow fall!

……….The photos, left to right, show the raw braided Stollen after its’ final rise and ready for the oven…..You can tell the size of it from the cookie sheet in sits upon…….The middle photo is the Stollen right out of the oven given a generous wash of melted butter……The photo at the right is about 15 to 20 mins later, after the bread has cooled. It is then sprinkled with powder sugar…………or as Jac used to say…..”SNOW ON THE MOUNTAIN”…….I had a generous piece for breakfast and it was wonderful……I didn’t over do it because a little voice was in my ear telling me to “TAKE YOUR SELF IN HAND!”….I  could have easily been naughty…but I was good……….Merry Christmas everyone.