Reprise - A Christmas Breakfast

This was first posted on December 9, 2009.     We enjoy leisurely breakfasts on December Sundays.    With a table properly set.     We still use the china every day during December -- for breakfast, lunch and dinner.    The bowl on the table is now on the living room coffee table (and we brought the German wooden pyramid up from the basement this year for the breakfast room centerpiece).    The Christmas cactus has grown.   It's still in the breakfast room on a pedestal and bloomed profusely -- in November!


I'm joining Chari at Happy to Design for Favorites Sunday.

A table set for two

The first Sunday in Advent (usually the Sunday after Thanksgiving) is the time to get out the Christmas dishes. And except for soup nights, breakfast, lunch and dinner are eaten off the Christmas china. My new blue oriental bowl is filled with a non-blooming Christmas cactus.

A red napkin in a silver napkin ring, the plaid Royal Doulton, Tartan; the German silver cutlery

It's a pattern by Royal Doulton from the mid 80's (when, I think, lots of Christmas patterns began to be made (other than Spode Christmas Tree which has been produced "forever"!).

Plaid is a good choice for Scott Christmas china and the pattern name is Tartan. There were a series of three (I believe) that could be interchanged -- all with the same shades of red and green and all by Royal Doulton.

Our china has a history. I had wanted Christmas china but couldn't justify the cost to use just once a year (for Christmas dinner) and so I resisted. But then I read the story of a lady who brought out her Christmas china on the first Sunday in Advent and used it all during December.

THAT made sense to me and I could justify buying another set of dishes that I would use for a whole month! The search was on . . . Husband Jim did not and still does not like Spode's Christmas Tree so that pattern was out and then . . .

We took a trip to England and stopped by the "potteries" in Stoke-on-Trent. And there in the Royal Doulton "seconds shop" was the green and red plaid Tartan. At a really good price. So I bought eight plates and eight cups and eight saucers and the final price was $12 (can't remember how many pounds).

I hand carried them home.

Can you figure out why when the dishes were so cheap that I didn't get 24 or at least 12? Neither can I! I have, however, over the years increased my plates, cups and saucers to 12.

And we use them for the whole month of December!

A favorite breakfast -- roasted asparagus and scrambled eggs

Napkins, too, are often red in December -- red ones look so good with the plaid plates. Husband Jim prefers mugs to cups but during December he knows that morning coffee will be out of the Royal Doulton. This breakfast it was served from my grandmother's silver coffee pot.