Grownup Display

When Hubby and I got engaged in 2001, my future mother-in-law insisted that we register for fancy china. "You'll want to have it for when you host Christmas!" she said. That seemed so far down the road, and I would have put off registering for that sort of thing, being fairly un-fancy by nature. But she insisted that Hubby's relatives wanted to give us nice dishes, so we finally settled on a pretty white and light green Wedgwood set. I still remember the excitement of checking our wedding registry, seeing what had been purchased, and then waiting for the boxes to arrive in the mail. We got so much mail back then! I don't think we've ever received so many packages since. We were well on our way to having fancy dishware for life.

There was just one flaw in the plan.  When we got married, I was just starting my first job, Hubby was still a student, and we lived in a tiny apartment. We had barely any counter space, only a handful of cabinets, and no room for anything. There was barely space for our regular plates, never mind fancy china. So we took a couple of place settings to use on our anniversary, and the rest of the gifts stayed boxed up in my in-laws storage room, waiting for us to have enough room for them. Since that first apartment, we've lived in 3 other apartments, but none of them had the room for our fancy dishware. So my in-laws have been storing our wonderful gifts for 10 years!

This house finally has a dining room, and space for our fancy dishes. But there was still a problem...over the years, we had never acquired any dining room furniture! Luckily, my in-laws decided they wanted to get us a dining room set as a housewarming present. It took several outings before we finally settled on a set, but it was finally delivered last week. My father-in-law delivered all of our wedding boxes several months ago, and they have been sitting in our garage since then. So it felt great to finally open up all the boxes and display all of the china that family and friends so lovingly gave us 10 years ago! It was also a fun trip down memory lane, as I found many handwritten cards tucked in with the gifts. It feels great to finally have all our things in our home! And I'm sure my in-laws are happy to have their storage space back. I really like how the room is coming together! My mother-in-law was right, now I am grateful to have all these lovely pieces.

Looking at the finished product, I remarked to Hubby, "Now that we have a china cabinet, I really feel like we are grownups!" And he agreed.

Not sure why the three kids didn't get the same point across!