Some Enchanted Evening - Imagined

 

we've all been to places we simply cannot forget... & I'm about to tell you about one of those places, visited a few years ago, and which has just been brought to mind...

I was a guest at this splendid old home in the French Quarter of

New Orleans, complete with a greenhouse roof, like the one above,

but their roof retracted!!   Will you please come play with me....
Imagine this room as it is and the floor-to-ceiling

glass wall on the right leads out to a beautiful interior courtyard

filled with flowers and tropical plants

and on the far wall, facing the dining room is the most exquisite

wall-mounted fountain, it's water creating lovely sparkles

and for one night only, for Valentine's Day, we are having a

 beautiful dinner party with a few of our beautiful-people friends

who will all be dressed formally.

All us girls are interested in making a beautiful table,

complete with our finest china, crystal, & silver,

along with beautiful flowers, music & conversation.

So I thought it would be fun to imagine our party,

set the table and decorate the room

for everyone to see.

The room looks too bare to me, so I think installing this

huge canvas opposed to the opening to the courtyard

would be perfect...

I love the glass table, but for tonight

  these chairs slip-covered in gray/silver shimmering silk
I love the lucite ones, but not for tonight's dinner...I think
we need a more intimate & cozy look...because it's a formal  
dinner party...

the flowers, hi-lo arrangements with many column candles of
various heights marching down the table


and now for the china.

1st, this Arte Italica Crystal Charger

which I happen to own in beautiful inlaid silver

I dreamed of these so much that my husband's daughter & son
gave 8 of them to me for Christmas many years ago.

with this beautiful Versace Arabesque Dinner Plate

& the William Yeoward Avington Magenta Salad Plate

\\
the magenta plate will fit exactly inside the gold border of the Versace
Of course, we will need beautiful crystal wine glasses, like these old Varga Raspberry red wine stems.

& these beautiful William Yeoward "Orleans" water stems

Dessert Plate with be this Versace Butterfly Gold,

brought to the table on the same crystal charger...

one can recognize Versace china anywhere it is so beautiful

and this is the dessert

a ribbon-wrapped 2-tiered cake

made entirely from fresh flowers...

see the little green chrysanthemums

so we shall all celebrate

with a lovely champagne

(has anyone tried Coppola's "Sofia" - it's very nice)

served off a silver tray

in various vintage crystal stems

and the hostess wore this nice little

New Orleans-appropriate

Oscar de la Renta gown

Splenderosa's

(my jewelry-design studio)

Tourmalines & Green Amethyst

Earrings

won't you join me ?

:)'S3