Sunday Favorites --- A Tippling Tablescape!

We spent a wonderful day on Long Island's East End yesterday, checking up on the beach house. I took loads of pictures, and I'll post about the house and our plans for it, very soon.

The weather was perfect out on the North Fork, and we hated to leave, but here we are back in New Jersey, and it's time for Sunday Favorites, hosted by Chari of Happy To Design.

Click here for more blasts from the past! Mine is from March 2008, and it's rather silly, but I had fun with it! I hope you do, too. . . .

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Oh where, Oh where can my single malt be?

Oh where, Oh where can it be?

For a whole big batch of wonderful tablescapes, all of them better than this silly effort, go visit Susan at Between Naps On The Porch.

Click here to go there!

Don't these Tablescape Thursdays zip around awfully fast? I wasn't going to play along this week -- brain freeze -- but I got to thinking last night, as I watched a DVR'd episode of an Agatha Christie mystery, of a fantasy tablescape I could set up, right in our study.

(No, not one of those fantasies, you saucy minx!)

Play along with me. There's the reveal of a hidden secret at the end! I guarantee you will laugh. Or at least grin. Probably.

Here goes. . . .

Howard and I are not the ritual-cocktails-before-dinner types. With us it's more a welcome home, quick kiss, feed the dogs, pop open a Fresca before dinner ritual, but, just for tonight . . . we pretend. . .

I am sitting in our comfy, feet-up study near seven in the evening, flipping through The Economist (this is a fantasy, remember), and waiting for my guy to return from the trenches of Manhattan. I've tossed a cloth over the coffee table. On it, waiting, are a couple of simple sturdy glasses:

an old cobalt blue pottery ice bucket by Pfaltzgraf that I have had for more than 30 years:

a pretty little Italian pottery plate, with a pre-dinner tease of aged cheddar and whole grain crackers:

2 linen napkins, and a small bunch of Peruvian Lilies:

in an anniversary vase my daughter Anne made for us when she was 12:

and ... and ... and ... hey! Hey!

Something's missing!

Where is that wonderful single malt Scotch we bought at the duty free shop at Gatwick airport?
I think DH deserves a little splash of good whisky at the end of a 14-hour day, don't you?

Where oh where can that single malt be?

Wait.

What is this?

The end of the table is moving!

It's swinging open!

The end of the table swings open to reveal. . . the single malt Scotch, hidden in a secret compartment!

Now the tablescape is complete.

Ta-da!

About that unusual coffee table. . . I found it last year on Ebay. I couldn't resist it. (Yes, it was cheap!)

It's got strong Art Deco lines, and I bet it was made during Prohibition in the U.S.
I wonder if it was meant to help clever hostesses hide their liquor?
I'd be more likely to hide M&Ms. (Aged cheddar would get stinky after awhile.)

Each end of the table swings out to reveal hidden compartments for -- what else? -- booze, and also a small ice bucket,
shot glasses, everything the good hostess needs for a clandestine cocktail party. Except the olives.

It's a neat old dear, in good shape for its age, with great curves and a heavy plate glass top -- just right for putting your feet up.

Its style doesn't really "fit" with my other furniture, but I am a believer is using
what you love, and if you love it, it will work.

This piece is on loan to me; I know that someday one of my girls will beg for it, and I will fold. But meanwhile it's got a home in our study. It cracks me up and I love things that make me smile.

I forgot one of the important elements of a cozy pre-dinner drink and chat in the study:
the dogs join us. They are hoping for a bite of cheese.
Poor Dion and Connie -- always hopeful.

(Sorry it is so blurry; they were a bit quivery with excitement as I was holding
their attention with one of those cheese slices. Yes, they got some!)

P.S. I learned something valuable today; I have no decent double old-fashioned glasses. (I think that's the right term.) Can you tell we are not cocktail folks? But this must be remedied. . . .

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Update 5/31: there were several sets of old-fashioned glasses at the beach house, so I brought a set home yesterday; they are vintage, and very cute. More on them at another time! -- Cass