Dining Room Tid Bits Guest Blogger Jennifer Woodward

Jennifer said – I grew up in the mid 1950’s and 1960’s. My memories center around the kitchen because we did not have a formal dining room. My mother took great pride in presenting a lovely table and teaching us table manners as well as sharing the day’s events with one another.

A “tablescape” was not a term we were familiar with, but in retrospect I think my mother knew what it was all about. The kitchen table furnishings were hand made from the beautiful embroidered table cloths that were cross stitched by my grandmothers, to place cards made by any one of my 4 siblings or myself, to learning to fold napkins in fancy folds. The centerpiece was often a bowl of fruit or cut flowers from the garden, or wild flowers presented to mom from one of us kids.

I still like to present my table centered around a theme and it is, most often, things I’ve made, sewn and even grown.

Right now my garden has presented me with beautiful giant sunflowers. They are huge, sunny yellow and gorgeous.

I decided I wanted to bring indoors the sunflower theme and I made a quilted table runner, placemats and napkins based on the Sunflower theme.

Jennifer made these darling Sunflower Napkin Rings!

Using a yellow Sculpey III Oven Bake clay, I rolled out the clay, stamped it with a sunny flower stamp and used black dye ink. I cut the shape with a biscuit cutter, created a hole for threading the jute through and then baked them in the oven for 15 minutes at 275 degrees. Voila! Instant napkin rings.

For our salad I made a salad topper of sauteed sage and cranberries, maple syrup and Sunflower seeds.

Thank you Jennifer for submitting this post and sharing your sweet memories with us and letting us take a peek into your creative world!

To see more of her Sunflowers and salad topper recipe go to her blog Thimbles, Bobbins, Paper and Ink