Joyful Abundance

 It is so nice to plan an evening with friends, sharing the bounties of our lives. This is a repost of a lovely evening from 2012. Such fun to prepare to hostess a visit and good food.

My kitchen is offering the baked garlic chicken breasts.  The aroma is taking over the neighborhood, because windows are wide open.  Air outside is sun sweetened, but a brisk wind is cool against my neck as I sit here typing by one window.

Others will bring salad, rice, vegie and desert.

I've already set the table...which is situated in the middle of the living room now.  I pull it out when more folks need to sit around it.  We may be a bit cozy eating.  Need to watch out for elbows!

What is wonderous to me is that most everything in the picture is either a gift or I made it.  The table and chairs were given to me by a generous friend when I first moved to NC.  The table itself has a new set of place mats and napkins which were a birthday gift from my youngest son and his girlfriend.  The pottery of course was all made by yours truly.

The silverware was wedding presents from back when I was first married...in the dark ages of the 60s.  I'm glad I use it daily now, but I still don't polish it.  There are two serving spoons that belonged to my father's father's mother, who died when he was 2 or 3.**  Bette Rogers at least had monogrammed silver.  Mine isn't.  I think I prefer just letting it belong to whoever uses mine.  I enjoy the feel of sterling in my hand and mouth.  (Much like the sensuous feelings from smooth pottery).

I did purchase the bookcase, used, from a friend who was lightening up his furnishings so he could hike a trail for about a month or so.  He got sick after a short while and returned home, but hasn't ever asked back for his bookcases.  The pottery is really happy on them (the other one is out in the studio.)

I was thinking as I set the table, that everyone who gave us this silverware is no longer alive now.  So we have lots of ghosts who are going to be in my mind and maybe even present for the dinner.

I do know I'm having a  good time tonight!  Wish you could be here too!

Update for 2023:

Most of the chairs were sold when I moved in 2015 to this apartment. And most of those plates are gone too...wonder if I sold them or gave them away. Ah the awful memory of a potter. I wish I had had my friends in a photo for remembering who they were...as well as the food itself. 

** It was his father who died early, his mother lived on for a long time, even to having photos with her frist grandchild in 1906 or so.

Sharing with Thankful Thursday.

Today's quote:

On my darkest days, gratitude is my light.

ALEX ELLE