If dishes, place settings and tabletop fashions bore you, I recommend that you skip this post.  Because I’m about to give hunting and gathering tips to those who may be as smitten over eye catching plates and such as I am.

Aqua and blue are my new favorite color combination.  Last week I was looking all over Austin for more bike appetizer plates that I’ve been buying since last year.  (What kind of obsessed person drives to every Target in the Austin metropolitan area looking for additional $1.99 melamine appetizer plates with a little bicycle print on them when she already has several?) Instead, I was delighted to score some happy, new pieces and set up my kitchen table to welcome home our daughter from a week away at girls camp.

When I find something that speaks to me, I get it.  Like this HELLO plate that I bought in Boulder a few months ago at HomeGoods. It literally said hello to me.

I’ve been serving ice cream in these clear glass bowls (centered at each place setting pictured here) since I nabbed a box of eight of them at Costco when we lived in Hsinchu, Taiwan, from 2010 to 2011. These gorgeous blue plaid salad/dessert plates are from Pendleton.  I bought my first few at HomeGoods, then followed up locating more online.  I also have some in red and off-white. Love them.

The blue beaded, wired napkin ring holders are about two years old from HomeGoods.  I seriously can’t go into that store without finding something that I have to have.  The lovely whitewashed wood-look charger plates are from Kirtlands, a store that I had never stepped foot in until about two weeks ago.

The tiny clear flower vases are from Target, and the tablecloth, glasses, green bowl with spoons and striped kitchen towels are too.  The silverware are from Dansk in Fort Collins, Colorado, from about two decades ago.

While dinner wasn’t anything fancy, the table definitely was appealing.  Hannah was delighted and exhausted from a week away at girls camp, and she really appreciated coming home to this warm welcome.  She is crazy about pasta, so after Isaac’s Tae Kwon Do lesson, I stopped by HEB and bought a pound of Italian sausage and a few other ingredients to throw dinner together super fast.   Got home, cooked the sausage, added spaghetti sauce from a jar and served it with penne pasta.  I also took shortcuts by buying a packaged salad mix and tossed it together, plus garlic bread that I reheated in the oven. For dessert, we enjoyed Blue Bell ice cream.  I picked black walnut and coconut fudge, topped with Hershey’s syrup. Yum.