hot love for little plates

Leave it to me to find an entertaining/home decor inspiration at a funeral. Heh. I mean, my favorite movie of all time ever is Harold & Maude, right?

Well, here's how it happened. TheMostImportantGuy and I went to a funeral last weekend (see if you can follow along:  it was the mother of TheMIG's recently retired guitar player, but he had also dated the old guitar player's sister all throughout high school and college, and that ex-girlfriend of his, she keeps the blog of the very first blog I ever read, and the very first time I met her, it was just me and MyFavoriteKid having dinner with her...without TheMIG.  Crazy, right?!!)

Anyhow. So we went to this funeral of the mom, and it was huge. LOTS of people. I'd have to estimate a couple of hundred. It was at this really cool old church, and after the service, everyone was invited into the fellowship hall for refreshments. At the head of the buffet table were stacks of the coolest snack plates I have ever seen in my life, and it was love at first sight.
 





I put a brownie in one of the tiny square sections, and I filled up the rest of the plate with this and that, and while I was waiting to get through the buffet line, I realized that oh-my-gosh, I totally had to find some of these plates because they are The. Perfect. Party Plate.  I knew I'd probably never find them because they looked like they had been with the church since like, forever and probably came about because church members had collected blue chip stamps or something and did a SnackPlateDrive. But I loved them so. They are heavy and substantial, and way more charming than a regular plate. 

And let me tell you, the charm factor went up about 200% percent when we got to the end of the row of buffet tables and I realized that the church ladies were serving up punch into little matching cups, and that one of the little side sections on the snack plate was actually meant to be a cup holder!!

Could you just die from the cuteness?!!

Obviously, as you can see from the photos, I came home, surfed the internet, and found some of these great little dish sets. I ordered 3 sets of service for 4.  The set I am showing you here arrived in perfect condition. The set I showed you Thursday came as plates only (but I had found another shop that had just glasses). Sadly only 1 of 4 plates survived.  Today another set came in I lost another cup and plate.   I now have 8 plates and 7 cups.  I'd like more, but I've got to make sure the seller knows how to pack correctly before I risk this again.

I learned something interesting about these plates as I was ordering them.  That little section I had put my dessert into like a TV Dinner?  Well, these plates come from and era that pre-dates TV Dinners. That little section has a divot in the corner because it is actually AN ASHTRAY.

I don't smoke. But your cancer stick would go right where that pencil is ;-) 

Sooooo 1940's!

Kinda gross, aint it? 
I mean, even when I was a smoker (many many moons ago), I never put my ashtray on the same plate of food I was eating off of, for crissakes! 
Ewwww!

So. Now that everything I have ordered has arrived, I have been wasting way too much of my time planning parties and looking at punch bowls and pouring over punch recipes.

Of course, I also went surfing for more plates, to replace the broken ones...and maybe some of them will be in the other patterns that didn't quite make it through!

Don't you dare go buy them all up before I do.