What a lovely afternoon

What a lovely afternoon we had ... at one point there was 16 adults and 5 children in my dining room
the supply of cakes and goodies were laden on the dining table, such an amazing spread ( thank you everyone for your plate of goodies)
Everyone ate cakes and drank from bone china cups, while talking with their neighbour. It really bought the memories flooding back of those days when I was a child at home on a Sunday afternoon there was always a special cake and we used the best china.
Talking of china ... I always use bone china every day, I really don't like large pottery mugs with a thick rims, I only have bone china mugs, cups and saucers... I don't really understand why people put it in a cabinet and just look at it... it was all made to be used... it is far more resilient than pottery and does not break so easily.
I have had some of my china 35 years the above "Ivy" set was my first tea set and is going strong the tea pot is used every day and it is still perfect and it all goes in the dishwasher all the time
OH! no! I can hear everyone cry... but it is easy you space it out well ( no rattles against it's neighbour)just leave out the dish-washing powder and give it a glass wash, it is not the water that is harmful just the powder.
I have had, may be 2 or 3 breakages in that time and they were caused by dropping outside on the patio, and I would have expected anything to break in that situation.

I bought a china dinner service at Royal Doulton in UK and they told me about the washer trick and that dinner service is now at least 25 yrs old. In fact it is now on Royal Doulton collectors list as it is discontinued it is called Claudia and here is a picture of the pattern.

I just love it. I am just one fruit dish missing ( it was purchased piece by piece not sold in sets in those days) and I did not realise we were short until many years later ... it was to late "discontinued" ......I ask about signing up for a piece and they said it could be run for me on a special at 150 UK pounds or $325 ... you guessed we did with out the final fruit dish.