Nancy's Notes Living~ Dining Room

Well, it's 1:21 am.  I tossed and turned enough! I was horribly uncomfortable, legs out of the covers, legs under the covers, one leg under, one leg out, one pillow, two pillows and then it happened. That little blinking light from the TV Cable box was annoying me to no end. So, a pillow was gently propped up to stop that flickering that was keeping me awake. Ahem...then the telephone light was blinking with messages that I don't check, all telemarketers and so another pillow over that light. By this time I'm checking my Iphone. Do you do that in the middle of the night? Why do I check the news, and FB and my blog and the weather? By this time I decided to count sheep, I started back at one, one to many times!! Okay, I gently roll out of bed, not to wake Mr. Notes and think to myself, a nice warm bath might do the trick. Then I had a better idea, work on a blog post! 

A Dark Thirty Post.... 

Thank goodness I took the photographs yesterday! Of course I'm a history buff, started googling too! I have some interesting history to share too. 

So welcome to my 2nd Issue of 

Martha Stewart Living 

Nancy's Notes Living 

Dining Room Issue~

Last week Music Room Issue- Click here for Music Room Post~

Looking in from the Foyer. 

 This chandelier will go with us if we ever move, A new purchase soon after we moved in.
Of course, it'll be an heirloom!

 This arrangement was my mother's.
Was on her Dining Room Table for quite some time.
 I saw that the arrangement was ready to be stored or pitched or given away.
Oh my, I instantly wanted it!
It's Vintage and it was my mother's!
It needs a little more work,
I love it! 

 The sun was shining bright yesterday morning, truly beautiful sight!
What a glorious day after the huge hail storm night before last.

I love this silver tray.
I bought this at a fabulous Pre-View Party  the night before a huge 3 day garage sale!
I ran for it!
I keep in on the dining room table even when not in use, it's too large to store.
I like it here, What do you think?

China Cabinet 

 This mirror is one of my favorite pieces ever! We bought this large mirror for our foyer for our home in Austin, I was determined it would fit in our new home. 

 This photograph is looking in from our kitchen.

I usually have candles or some sort of decor on the table around the centerpiece, decided the other day, I like it this way!
Simple. 

I felt like a real photographer, was kneeling and then on one knee and had the camera at an angle!
It's easy to become obsessed!!! I know you know.

I'll be joining these great events~

Wow Us Wednesday~

Share Your Style

Grace At Home

Have a Happy Week! 

Okay, here's the treat...read at your leisure! 

Short History of the Dining Room By CHRISTINE BAUMGARTHUBER

As more people found a place at the table, the concern became that of finding a place for the table

For the first time in my adult life, I have a something approaching a dining room. Accustomed to eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner on a breakfast bar, coffee table, or some other makeshift means of support, I find myself strangely delighted by the idea of sitting down each evening at a table that seats four in a space reserved only for eating. For one, meal time is easier. (There’s no better way to test your coordination and patience than carving a turkey that’s perched atop a folding table.) I’d say having a dining room makes me a fully fledged grown-up, were it not for the fact that I still rent. Precarity is Neverland.

Yet even in centuries past dining rooms were something of a novelty. Only the wealthy had them. The bulk of humanity, meanwhile, spent most of history wriggling, with varying success, toward the same distinction.

The Greeks were among the first to recognize that eating in secluded comfort reinforced status and class cohesion. Elite men of the most powerful poleis gathered on fragrant evenings in rooms especially designed for feasting. These rooms accommodated no more than eleven couches of stone or wood, each of which in turn accommodated no more than two men. Youths sat on the ground. Young and old alike quaffed diluted wine and munched honey cakes and chestnuts — all fuel for ribald and learned discussions of matters philosophical and romantic.

Ancient Romans similarly took their meals in a special room called a triclinium, whose couches had evolved to accommodate women as well as men. Whim and the season determined their location. In the stifling Mediterranean summers they were chosen for their ability to catch breezes; in winter, to block drafts. Some of them might offer a view of the sea; others, vast plains. The Romans sometimes even set up their dining rooms outdoors in order to enjoy al fresco their swallow’s tongues and other delicacies. The most luxurious dining spaces bred ease and amazement in equal measure.Triclinia in Pompeii featured fountains from which water splashed and streamed from each table. Guests of one Loreius Tiburtinus plucked tidbits from large basins in rooms bearing brightly painted images of mythological figures.

Such vivid appointments obscured a dark reality. A well-to-do Roman household could include as many as 400 slaves, who did everything from choosing menus to arranging and presenting parting gifts to guests. In all activities grace was the watchword. The slightest faux pas invited brutal punishment.If, writes historian Roy Strong, “game was underdone or the fish poorly seasoned the cook (who actually ranked fairly high in the slave hierarchy) would be stripped and beaten.” Strong relates an instance during a dinner given by a friend of the Emperor Augustus. A cupbearer broke a crystal goblet. For this offense he had his hands cut off and hung from his neck. He was then forced to parade among the diners, and thereafter thrown alive in a fish pond as food for lampreys.

A bit kinder than their Roman forebears, medieval men and women presided over meals altogether less violent. Yet what they gained in civility they lost in comfort. Even the most powerful lords, though they might surround themselves with lush tapestries and lovingly crafted pastries packed with everything from magpies to midgets, ate in drafty, smoke-filled halls. “Magnificence there was, with some rude attempt at taste,” notes Sir Walter Scott of this era: “but of comfort there was little, and, being unknown, it was unmissed.”

Comfort grew with increased trade, and with it changed notions of home and hearth. Parlors, “dining chambers,” and other spaces amenable to dining began appearing in architecture plans. Each nation seemed to have its own idea as to what constituted a proper dining room. The great Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti wrote that it “should be entered off the bosom of the house,” advising further that, “[a]s use demands, there should be [a dining room] for summer, one for winter, and one for middling seasons.” Some two centuries later Englishman William Sanderson would recommend that a “Dyning-Roome” be hung with pictures of kings and queens.

For all the talk of appointments fit for royalty, perfection of the dining room came only with the rise of a middle class. Between 1350 and 1560 people began to eat and live better, thanks in part to greater availability of meat and dairy products in the wake of the Black Death, and to the development of a market economy. Where meat and milk abounded labor was scarce. Pay went up as a result. In some parts of England, for example, laborers saw their wages grow four or fivefold in just a few years. The workers of Cuxham Manor in Oxfordshire went from earning two shillings a week in 1347 to more than 10 shillings a week three years later.

With higher wages came increased consumption of goods, among them furniture and cooking utensils. In time there developed a culture peculiar to the newly affluent. One of this culture’s hallmarks, the dining room offered a place where family members could discretely enjoy each others’ company. As such, it reflected what Italian theorist Mario Praz callsStimmung, a German word that denotes the sense of intimacy and personal character evoked by a room’s arrangement and decor.

Victorians would take Stimmung to an often unbelievably cluttered extreme. They spent lavishly on their dining rooms, outfitting them with upholstered chairs, mahogany sideboards, pewter jugs, bone china, linen napkins and tablecloths, and silver cutlery. They read architectural guides and kitchen utensil catalogs as thick as phonebooks. Mealtime for them was an event, and they staged the satisfaction of their appetites in surroundings as comfortable as they could afford. Why they did so is the subject of the second part of this history.

(funny how the photograph above is crooked!)

History of The Dining Room