 | | Nancy Lindemeyer was a groundbreaking editor for over twenty years with home magazines Better Homes & Gardens and Victoria. Today she is a consultant for leading home products companies, and is gifted with unique insight into the home-related aspirations of women of all ages. |
With summer's breezes, we seem to have a new energy for dining and entertaining in a casual and fun way. Here are some fresh ideas to bring the outdoors in with fresh fruits, flowers, plants and more.
 | | Jacobean Flip-Top Table |
SMALL TABLES are perfect for impromptu meals and snacks. "Dining in" moves to unexpected places about the house: sun room, porch, even patio.
Move our Jacobean Flip-Top Table to a romantic spot where you can savor the pace of an intimate lunch, or catch the evening breeze with a quiet dinner for two. The table opens to 36 inches, so there's ample room with its leaves raised to create a special mood. Here are several ways to create that table-for-two ambience:
- A small vase with sprigs of wildflowers or herbs, and maybe just one prize rose from the garden.
- For a continental touch, choose checked napkins (many now don't need ironing - look for those!) Put a shell or small washed beach stone on top - perhaps even a small cut of French baguette.
- Instead of candlelight, try a little hurricane-type oil lamp for a softer glow.
- Iced tea in tall glasses with sprigs of mint are decoration themselves.
- As for location, your table and chairs move in a minute...place them where there's afternoon shade and a pleasing view, or where you can star-gaze at night.
Click here for more accent tables, game tables, and bar tables.
 | | French Retreat |
Follow the invitation of FRENCH RETREAT when it's a cook's night off. Order a delicious pizza, but eat in the dining room instead of the kitchen for a more festive time.
- For the center of the round French country table, create a marvelous salad with ample greens of all varieties, red and yellow peppers, plum tomatoes quartered, and beautiful red onions. In a wooden bowl, it's all the decoration you'll need.
- Surround with smaller bowls with extra fixings for the pizza, like a variety of olives and sliced Italian meats and cheeses.
- On several trays, provide an assortment of dressing ingredients so everyone can choose their own oil and vinegar combinations - it's how they do it in Italy.
- For dessert, what more do you need than a basket piled high with fresh fruits? Keep it waiting on one of the top metal shelves of the buffet - you won't have to run to the kitchen even for a second.
- The ladder-back chairs are a good spot to tie on your extra-big napkins.
 | | Summerglen |
A summer Sunday dinner finds the family and out-of-town guests gathered in our friendly and refreshing SUMMERGLEN dining room collection. Here is a collection that breathes fresh air and sunshine with its hand painted touches and latticework. There's room for everyone around the round farmhouse-style table with its two optional 20-inch leaves installed.
- For a first course, consider a chilled soup in clear bowls or even a wide-mouthed water tumbler. Using as much clear glass as possible keeps a summer table cool and inviting.
- Very inexpensive clear glass plates can create your own garden display. On the bottom plate, arrange a leaf, a pressed flower, or whatever you choose, then simply top with another clear plate. Simple as that!
- The display plate idea adapts to small plates, under a fruit cup, or on a grander scale, using inexpensive platters. Clear bowls that fit into each other can display the leaves of berries for the berry bowl.
- On the big hutch, store some of your favorite cookbooks. When your guests are looking around for something to do, your culinary library will intrigue them.
- If you're generous, make up recipe cards to the dishes you've served for them to take home, or instructions on how to make their own fresh flower displays.
- For a centerpiece that looks wonderful when the table isn't set, fill a clear vase with a collection of small shells or white stones and work your flowers in around them. Water won't hurt them a bit! The collection of shells looks great without the flowers, too.
- Use a very large shell as a fruit bowl.
 | | Waverly Place |
In an English mood, on a sultry day when the family dog takes refuge under the dining table, set your afternoon lunch on the welcoming refectory table from the WAVERLY PLACE COLLECTION.
- The English love their gardens and their indoor plants as well - and terra cotta and light-colored flower pots make wonderful additions to the table.
- Use a brand-new pot for a bread bowl, lined with a napkin or a pretty tea towel.
- Use plants in small pots to mix with vases of flowers.
- Gather plants in a basket for a fresh and living centerpiece.
- On the long table, get the effect of a window box with a row of plants and flowers down the middle.
- Pewter is a cooling note for a table in the English style, from goblets to chargers for the plates. With white ironstone dinnerware, they're absolutely classic.
- All England is mad for sandwiches, and a tray of tasty ones with watercress will be delightful on a hot day.
- An ironstone pitcher filled with lavender adds a beautiful statement to a table in the old English tradition.
Click here for more dining room collections.
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