Hot summer weather seems made for ice cream sodas and root beer floats.
A scoop of vanilla ice cream, some good root beer (favorites are Stewart’s and IBC at this house) and you are in business. Just be sure to make them right before you’re going to enjoy them.
In Michigan we also have a Boston cooler, [...]

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Combing the dish aisle, looking for vintage snack sets, it is very common to find the plates without cups, or perhaps without enough cups to have a complete matched set.
Or the cups are too small to serve the coffee or tea that you want to have with your desserts.
Yet you want to use these charming [...]

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My grandmother had a set of rectangular glass plates with small punch cups. We always called them party dishes
The plates had a little indent to fit the foot of the cup, to help keep it on the plate.
The cups were small, about 4 ounces, because they were intended only for punch. The plates were about [...]

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Cinco de Mayo (May 5) is only a few days away, and it’s time to get ready for your parties or special events to celebrate.
There are plenty of ways to use your colorful dinnerware to help serve corn chips, salsa, tacos, guacamole or many, many other foods you might be eating to mark this special [...]

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Easter colors of yellow and green, pink and blue are enough to get your table setting ideas flowing. Add in the motifs, such as baby chicks and eggs, bunnies and spring flowers, and you can get your Easter tabletop and entertaining plan off to a great start.
And then there’s the food.
Since I met Chef Lynn [...]

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When my sister visited recently from the UK, I made several of our old family favorite foods, including orange gelatin dessert. Some products that we take for granted here, like fruit flavored gelatin, are difficult to obtain in other countries.
And it’s the food that sometimes makes a place feel like home.
Of course, we had to [...]

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Many vintage china patterns are based on the perennial garden favorite flower, roses. No surprise, roses are romantic and feminine. Many of the dinnerware designs that use this motif have a soft, pastel color scheme.
Make roses your theme for mix and match table setting and the possibilities are enormous. Whether you are planning an intimate [...]

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Dinnerware sets include various plate sizes for various uses, taking their names from the foods they are commonly used to serve. Bread, salad or dinner plates are just some of the possibilities.
Names for different sizes vary between manufacturers, or even within the product lines of a single manufacturer over time. Diameter alone will not tell [...]

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When the weather turns colder, I get a hankering for ice cream. Go figure. Then I found a funky, 1970s soup mug and inspiration arrived.
The dish is probably USA or Japan made, but there is no maker’s mark. It just screams retro, both from the motif and the colors. I was in a home just [...]

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The popular Royal Albert china pattern Old Country Roses came up, on a conference call with some Internet colleagues.
It is a classic pattern, made since 1962 in numerous versions, that is still going strong today. Old Country Roses has a fluted and non-fluted version, the holiday version, the garden and damask versions. And that’s not [...]

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