BUTTERFLIES ARE STILL FLITTING AROUND IN MY BRAIN!

That’s better than “Bats in the Belfry”, right?

This past weekend, we celebrated the last of our April family birthdays. Our daughter and our son requested a Mexican dinner for their combined birthday celebrations.

I served Taco Soup in the individual casseroles I bought at Trees, Trends and More last year.

Following the soup, we ate tacos, tostados, refried beans and Mexican rice. (dinner plates: Susan Williams-Ellis Botanic Garden; flatware: William Rogers “Eternally Yours”)

The centerpiece butterfly is an outdoor solar decoration. I brought him inside and stuck a votive candle between his wings. (He didn’t seem to mind).

The eyelet edge on these napkins reminded me of butterfly wings. (When I was putting them in the washer, I realized that the look of butterfly wings would have been enhanced if I had put a pastel napkin under this one).

Butterfly demitasse cups served as salt cellars at each place setting.

I put paper nut cups inside these trinket boxes to use them for individual shredded cheese servers.

I don’t know how all of you take such good photos of candlelit tables. It doesn’t work with my camera.

A couple of people have asked how to make your photo look like a box (as in my header and my button for Favorite Things Saturday). I use Photoscape for everything I do to my photos. I previously posted about making mosaics on Photoscape here. Photoscape is a free program that you can download on your computer (unless you have a MAC).

While in the “Edit” mode of Photoscape, there is a section entitled “Filters”. When you click on that, there is a whole list of effects you can use for your photos. One is entitled “Make A Box”. If you click on it, the photo you’ve chosen magically becomes a box.

I am linking this post to these fun parties (click on the button to go to the host blog):

There will be a linkup for Favorite Things here on Friday. Hope you’ll come join us. Thank you so much for your visit to my little blog. laurie

THE MAZE IN MY HEAD

I’m confused about whether there is a maze in my head, or if my head is in a maze.  In either event, it is not unusual for me to be confused.

My inspiration for this tablescape started out being the butterflies on these dinner plates, but then…

I was looking at the vine-like border on the plates and remembered I had some salad plates with vine-like borders.  The fact that the salad plates were botanicals (not butterflies) didn’t occur to me, because I was in the  “green vine border” section of the maze at that moment,  and then…

I realized that I didn’t have six salad plates that matched, but I did have six that were similar, then…

I remembered my mother’s stemware and my coffee cup plates with a vine-like border, and then…

I wandered back into the section of the maze where I had started–the “butterfly themed” section, and I remembered my butterfly tea cup set.  Since I wasn’t going to serve tea, I decided to use the little cups to serve salt (sort of like a salt cellar, but bigger-(we do use way too much salt), and then…

I remembered my mother-in-law’s butterfly candle, which had never been lit. I also started looking at the pretty box that the above-mentioned tea set came in, and I decided to use it to elevate the centerpiece, and then…

I realized that the cobalt blue on the box (which I had used to elevate my centerpiece) might need to be picked up someplace else on the table, so I got out my cobalt butterfly napkin rings instead of the yellow and blue napkin rings I had planned to use (I put those on the cobalt box, which is elevating my centerpiece!), and then…

I remembered a couple of cobalt blue ceramic butterfly boxes that I have (you understand, there was a cobalt blue section in the maze, and I got stuck there awhile), and then…

I thought about a little pedestal server that has butterflies on it.

 

Mother’s soup tureen has butterflies on top, but I have no idea where I was in the maze when I put her floral divided vegetable server on the table!  Now… 

 I realized that I could use my Aynsley steak knifes to try to pull together the colors on the table -the pinks, greens and cobalt blues.  (I’m trying to not mention that the cobalt is a bird - not a butterfly).  These knives are as confused as my brain.  I know that the blade is supposed to face the plate, but look what happens when I position them on the table correctly.

 I think somebody at the knife factory was running around in a maze the day they put the writing on the wrong side of these knives!  Or did they put it there just to confuse me?  They had no idea I was ALREADY running around in a maze – just trying to find my way to a tablescape that makes sense.

Maybe now you understand why most of my tablescapes end up being a hodge podge (“hodge podge” is my term for a lot of unrelated things mixed together). But then… When it was time to serve dessert, I wound up back in the part of the maze where I was thinking of the green in the vine-like borders again!

Whew! Living with my brain is exhausting! I feel like I spend most of my time looking for my brain in the maze, and my brain is running all over the maze trying to keep me from finding it!

I’m linking to Tablescape Thursday at Between Naps on the Porch.

Thank you for coming by my blog and taking this journey through the maze that is my mind. I hope you’ll join in for Favorite Things Saturday. Hopefully, I’ll get out of this maze in time to get the link sign up list here Friday night. laurie