A Little Peek Into My Dining Room

Our dining room is one of my favorite rooms in our house.  When we bought our house, the dining room walls were covered with hideous wallpaper.  It had big brown roses all over it and the old wainscoting on the bottom of half of the walls were painted the same ugly brown.  There was a section of wallpaper that had started to come loose, so one day I just started pulling it all down.  We scraped the ugly wallpaper off to reveal pencil markings of the year the wallpaper had been put up.  It was 1984, I believe.  I have a photograph of it somewhere.  Below that date was a second date that was sometime much earlier in the 1900s, but I don't recall the exact year.  I'm sure the original wallpaper was much prettier.  My camera is junk, so it's hard to tell that the walls are actually a pale minty green and the wainscoting is white.

I mentioned that my camera is crap, right?  It really doesn't do this Hoosier cabinet justice.  This belonged to my great grandma on my father's side.  My grandpa restored it years ago and it's absolutely my favorite piece of furniture.  I don't really have much from my father's side of the family, so this cabinet is definitely a cherished treasure.

Our house is such a mix of old and new.  Our buffet is actually just a dresser from Ikea.  I loved the color when we saw it and I think it fits really nicely in our space.  Our ever-growing toy collection has started to spill over into the dining room and the ones on our buffet are some of my favorites.

It is so hard for me to pass up vintage glasses and bar ware.  I especially have a soft spot for pieces that are pink and turquoise!

Here's Oscar showing off his cool kitchen.  Seriously, the boys love this old metal kitchen set.  It's a "Sunny Suzy Rite Hite."  Oscar spends a lot of time here making coffee and soup and doesn't seem to mind that the oven knobs have all been pulled off.

This is our other old play kitchen.  I bought this set at an estate auction a long time ago.  They're so beaten up.  I like to think that some little kids loved this set as much as the boys love theirs.

Our table and chairs are also from Ikea.  The table is really long and roomy, but a lot of my vintage tablecloths don't fit.  This one works perfectly, though!  The table and chairs we used previously came from my great grandmother's dining room and were just lovely, but they weren't really ready for the abuse my boys would have afflicted.

I think that one of the reasons I most love this room is because of the handmade touches.  My grandma made the curtains and most of the hanging shelves were made by my grandpa.