His Castle -- The Dining Room

They say a man's home is his castle.  I say that the "castle" belongs to the Lord, and our true home is in heaven.  But for our time on earth, this house is Fernando's castle from the Lord.  And I am its queen.  :)

The care of our castle involves lots of daily, repetitive actions, as well as those once-in-a-while deep-cleaning projects, which is the subject of today's post.

Our dining room is not an oft-visited room.  Our family eats dinner there, so the table is usually cleaned off on a daily basis.  But as days go by, it seems that this or that gets placed here or there, and sometimes the "here" or "there" ends up being the dining room.

So on a day last week when I was feeling overwhelmed, I decided to clean.  (I always clean when I'm overwhelmed.)  Truth is, my goal was to clean the entire first floor!  I keep a generally tidy home, so a few hours should be good to take care of the clutter and general mess (a.k.a. life) that occurs in our home's main living areas.  Little did I know...

For the dining room--a generally tidy room to begin with--I figured I would tackle things item by item.  Find a misplaced item, put it away in its home, find next item, etc.  The china cabinet is organized, but stuff is peeking out from the top!

And there were a few things lying around on the floor; they had probably been placed on the table during the day, then swished off into a pile when one of the guys set the table for dinner.  (It's nice when the watermark on my photo hides the clutter!!) *grin*

Time to get to work.  That box smack-dab in the middle of the top of the china cabinet contains some ceramic pieces I painted (and had fired) with my mom when I was a girl.  I like two of the pieces--ears of corn and a "bunch" of onions (is three a bunch?).  A search ensued for a hammer and nails, and a pencil to mark the nail spot on the wall.  Oh, yeah, and a tape measure because of course the items hung must be equidistant from the wall edges.  I hung these two ceramic pieces over the doorway between the dining room and kitchen, on the kitchen side.  They're perfect, because my kitchen is yellow and my dining room is green!

A close-up of a memento of my girlhood ceramic adventure.

Then, since I was in hanging mode, having all the needed items at hand, I hung two picture frames (actually, looking at the photo of the ceramic pieces, I think I started with the picture frames--oops!).  This involved removing the stands on the backs of the frames.  I have absolutely no counter space, shelf space, or table to place photographs on, and those little stand things just get in the way when the frames are hung.  I framed the two photos I took, one of a monarch butterfly, and the other of a red admiral butterfly, and hung them above my sewing machine, which serves as a decorative table in my dining room until I figure out how to use it.  I ended up hanging them a little too low for my liking, but I'll keep my eye out for some more garage-sale frames and add upwards to the arrangement.

Finally, I hung three trivets I had purchased a number of years ago (that phrase appears a lot in these "Tackle It" posts!) in the dining room opening into the foyer area.

I cleaned every other item off the top of the china cabinet, then tackled the stuff piled on the floor.  A game bought at a garage sale found its home in our hall closet, and a cookbook went to its home in my pantry closet.  Fernando's Bible found a home in the china cabinet "dry sink," since he does Bible study at dinnertime with us.  All other clutter was cleared out and put away in its home (yes, the garbage can is a home sometimes!).

The photo above appears very blue, due to the weird lighting from the foyer and window, plus the fact that the front door, the curtains, and the tablecloth are all blue.  Sorry about that!

But you can see that it is cleaned up and ready for dinner!  And not only dinner, but dinner with company! In a praise-the-Lord moment, I must tell you that my son Danny striped the walls!  He helped me paint the entire room with a flat green paint (its official name was topiary tint), then he helped me measure and tape stripes off with painters tape.  I then left him alone with a can of topiary tint in glossy finish.  He did a fantastic job!

Now when I'm working in the kitchen, I peek into the dining room and smile.

Back to life,
Christine

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captured by Christine Anne