Service for Two!

  The cleaning and decorating of the Little Bayou House was in full swing once again.  Each room received a good dusting, sweeping and mopping before the actual decorating was attempted.  I managed to do the entire house....except the kitchen and that is cleaned just not Christmasy, yet.  Tomorrow will see me up bright and early to complete that. Every room in the house will look like a Christmas Wonderland and I can sit back and relax.  Oh, and make gifts, wrap those gifts and bake billions of cookies and other goodies.  FUN TIMES!

  While giving the small hutch a holiday makeover, I used one of my favorite sets of dishes as a starting point.  This is a set that only includes place settings for two.  Yep, two.  I suppose this will have to be more for "show" than actual use in my house.  The set (of course) has a story as does most everything in the Little Bayou House.  Mark's grandmother gave me the set one year long ago.  She told me that after Hurricane Camille (1969), she was given the dishes. It seems that a restaurant donated dishes to help those in need.  Being the sweet lady she was, she insisted that she only needed service for two.  The others could be given to someone else.  She used the dishes for years and years and then passed them on to me.  I was honored even though they are probably not something most folks would like. The dishes are heavy and durable like most cafeware. Mom would have called them "Country Clunky"!  (This was her term for the heavy crockery pieces that she had.)   Every Christmas, I put the dishes on display simply because of the colors.  The creamy background and red transferware pattern give a nice homey feel to the place.  A few sprigs of greenery and a couple of porcelain Santas make the hutch quite festive.  Tomorrow will see me out cutting some fresh pine!

  Transferware was a method that was developed back in the mid-eighteenth century to replace the tedious art of hand-painting dishes. The hand-painting process was time consuming, difficult and expensive whereas transferware process could throw out printed dishes in a fraction of the time and for a lot less.  This made dinnerware and decorative pieces affordable to most folks.  It does not bother me in the least that the pieces I have are not highly expensive.  To me, the dishes are priceless!