Dishes, Dishes Everywhere!

I love dishes and I am easily bored. Put the two together and you end up with a girl who buys new dishes all the time. This used to drive JB crazy, until I finally convinced him that he should be happy I was only getting bored with my dishes every six months and not my husband!

Until I got smart a couple of years ago and bought the white embossed set of dishes - I would give my old dishes away and replace the entire set - serving pieces, everything. Yep this got expensive. The glass set is Princess House and I have a fairly large set of these including serving pieces. These are usually reserved for holidays.

Then I got smart, when I would find dishes that I loved, I started purchasing 4 dinner plates, then I decided which other piece was important - the sandwich/salad plate or the bowl. So, some sets like these yellow plates and cute floral sandwich plates - that's all I have of those. But they mix well with some of the other dishes that I have. When I saw these dishes on clearance, I fell in love! I have 4 dinner plates and four bowls. These are green with a purple circle around the inner and outer 'edge', a light blue swirl in the center/bottom and navy blue flowers around the rim.

The Princess used to work at Pier One before moving across the country. She picked up these beautiful dishes for me. The plates are have purple rims with brown circles. Those circles are etched into the rim. Because we are into mix and match dishes in this house, she also got me four salad plates. The plates are square with a raised grid on them. A cut sandwich and some fruit look beautiful on these plates. The square plate makes a great presentation. She then broke the rules and bought the purple circle matching bowl. These bowls are JB's favorite for having ice cream in. They are also great soup bowls because they are stoneware, they really keep soups warm. Finally, last year for Christmas, The Musical One bought me a complete set of 4 of these pretty white dishes with blue, green & silver stars. These were also from Pier One. The got me the dinner and salad plates, bowls, and coffee mugs. The problem with this is that I don't use the coffee mugs that match any of my dishes. I use the ones I pick up on travels, that I get as gifts - you know the ones that we all use. So, I exchanged the salad plates and mugs for some really pretty irregularly shaped stoneware plates that mix and match with the original dishes. The new salad plates are blue and are a perfect match to the blue in the star dishes. The bigger dinner plate is olive green. Both of these pieces are stoneware and are irregularly shaped so the plates are perfectly round. I love them.

The only problem I have now is that I have run out of cupboard space (I literally have 3 cupboards filled with dishes) to put more dishes. I don't get as bored with my everyday dishes because I have plenty to choose from and I am far more selective when choosing new.