Show Us Your Life -- Dining Rooms

I'm linking up again with Kelly. Welcome to our dining room. I think this might be one of my favourite rooms in this house. (For those of you who don't know we are renting our current house for a year and you can check out our living room and kitchen and master bedroom by clicking on the links.) I spend a lot of time in our dining room because it is a bit of a multi-purpose room in this house. And it is the only place we have a table and chairs to eat at.

This is the view from the living room. The streamers aren't normally there but it was Rachel's first birthday on Sunday and we haven't taken them down yet. I hung the lanterns on the chandelier because I saw that someone had hung them from their ceiling fan on the living room SUYL. I hate our dining room light fixture and thought the lanterns might detract from it. I like them so it worked for me :)

The table and chairs we have are so special to me. First of all they are what my family used when I lived at home. My dad bought the chairs from a teacher's college which was closing in about 1970. He got them for $2 each and none of them match, except in style. Secondly, my great-grandparents on my mom's side ordered the table from Berlin, Ontario in 1908 when they moved from Kansas to Saskatchewan. So it is a very old table. And for those of you who don't know, Berlin changed its name to Kitchener during World War I and that is where we are living now. So the table has come full circle. It only took 104 years! I love the detailing on the table edges.

When you enter the dining room from the living room and look to your right you see this shelf. It has the kids' toys and books on it. The top shelf is my husband's domain. It has his important papers and a basket for him to store the stuff he carries everyday. It is kind of a mess but I figure it's his space and he can do what he wants with it. This is also what this corner looks like most of the time -- strewn with toys.

The next corner of the dining room has this corner shelf. My parents bought it for me when I moved into my first apartment and it was very useful and tastefully decorated. I really don't know what to do with it. Right now it is holding random knickknacks, the candles we received from church when we dedicated our kids, my Bibles, the kids' baby books and placemats (which Rachel pulls off the shelf and scatters EVERYWHERE). If you have any suggestions as to what I could do to make this shelf more interesting (and the bottom shelves need to be kid-friendly) I would love some suggestions. The middle shelves are too low to put a bouquet of flowers on and if you put them on the top shelf they are too high up and you can't really see them. And it doesn't get good light for plants.

I'm now skipping to the opposite corner (I'm saving the best for last!). This is where we store Rachel's highchair when not in use and we have our hanging file folders. We don't have great office space and these folders, while ugly, are soooo useful. Eventually we want to hang Dave's PhD degree in the space above Rachel's highchair. He just needs to defend his thesis (July 20!!!) and officially graduate (sometime this Fall???). You can see our living room on the left of this picture and the entry to the kitchen on the right.

The last corner of our dining room is the most exciting space in the house for me -- MY VERY OWN DESK!!! Can you sense my excitement?!?! In our last house I just had the kitchen table and the plastic organizer you see beside my desk for an office. I was constantly moving my computer around and having to work around it. I had nowhere to store things and it was very frustrating. This lovely desk came from IKEA via my grandma who had it in her assisted living apartment. When she died in December I inherited it. My grandma was 104 years old when she died and hand wrote cards and letters. I love picturing her sitting here and keeping up with her correspondence.

The back of the desk is metallic so I have various things up there and on top I have flowers and our phone and answering machine. I also have a framed picture of some flowers which a friend took. The plastic organizer is usually kind of a catch-all which I don't like but right now it's still holding cards from Rachel's birthday. I also need some ideas on how to display cards because we don't have a good way to do that right now. Beside my desk is our calendar (which I make every November on Picasa) and my whiteboard. I love love love my little office space :) Even when it looks like this...

Sam loves to watch DVDs on my computer here (we don't have a TV so this is his only option) and Rachel likes to play with the recycling when she's not making a mess with her toys. Hey, it keeps her entertained and allows me to
get dishes donewrite blog posts!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed the tour.