A Thank You Dinner

Our Christmas gift to Grand girl Lucy was my childhood rocking chair.    A rocking chair that was a wreck when I discovered it in my mother's basement when we settled her estate.    It was broken and missing pieces and when I brought it home I found someone who replicated the missing pieces and glued it all back together.

And then it sat.   In my basement.   Awaiting.      And finally, it came!    It being Lucy.    And this year, I reasoned, she was big enough to enjoy the chair!

But the chair was not perfect, it needed help although it was whole again.     And so, I asked my friend Shirley Ann if her husband Jack would refinish the chair for Lucy.    He's a woodworker by hobby and has built furniture for their home, built their kitchen cabinets, refinished and replicated their grand stairway.     My rocking chair, I reasoned, would be simple.

And so he did and when I picked it up, I had tears in my eyes -- it was perfect.    I looked like new!

And Lucy loves it!!!!     It is her chair!

Jack, of course, wouldn't accept payment for his work.    But there was a way that I could "pay" him!

Last week, he and Shirley Ann came for dinner.    A "Thank You Dinner" for all the hard work that he put into making my old chair perfect for Lucy!

It was just the four of us, but it was a nice meal and so the dining room is the proper place for a thank you meal!

When it's four of us at our oblong table, I always like to sit two by two.    Much better and much closer than one on each side.      My Christmas present lace tablecloth that I adore.    Candles in the silver candlesticks and the very last bowl of paperwhites as a centerpiece.

My grandmother's china, Noritake Marcisite.    Jim's grandmother's cutlery, Towle Louis XIV.   And a crystal knife rest to the right so that dirty knives don't dirty the table!    (Shirley Ann was with me when I bought them -- a souvenir of a visit with Daughter Sarah in Buffalo.    We found them in Ontario-on-the-lake -- one of our favorite Canadian towns.)

An elegant table for a thank you meal for Friend Jack.

Dinner?    We started with crab tassies in the living room, then had a tossed green salad -- steak house style and the entree -- a big (and thick) Kansas City strip steak (cooked restaurant style), twice baked potato and green beans.  

And for dessert -- Jack's favorite:

Pecan pie!

It was a fun evening.    We had good food and I sent the rest of the pie home with Jack and Shirley Ann -- a final thank you.

No Valentine's tables for Valentine's isn't until Saturday and I'm hosting my Valentine's Ladies Luncheon on Friday.    

It is Thursday and I'm joining Susan at Between Naps On the Porch for Tablescape Thursday.