A Delicious Dining Room

 Dining Rooms no doubt are my favorite rooms to decorate. They bring to mind family gatherings over the Thanksgiving Turkey, entertaining friends over fine wine and great food, and even macaroni and cheese dinners with the kids after a long day at work. Not only do dining rooms have to look beautiful for your guests, it has to function well to avoid numerous trips back and forth to the kitchen during dinner parties.

Like every other room that I decorate, and if the room is large enough, I will define at least two or three areas in the room to support various functions. In a dining room I like to have three designated areas-the main dining area in the center of the room, a serving area, and maybe a seating area by the windows, perfect for before or after dinner drinks.

For today's virtual room, we will create a classic, beautiful dining room that's sure to inspire delicious meals and great entertaining.

Well let's get started, and again we will start with our walls. This dining room will have a lot of classic architecture so we will wrap the lower third of the walls with beautiful wainscoting painted a nice crisp white. We will also add really substantial crown moldings and door casing.

Instead of just painting the walls, we have chosen to add beautiful hand painted chinoiserie wallpaper from Paul Montgomery Studio. This will add richness to the room. We will take our color queues from the subtle blues, greys and apricot colors in the wallpaper.

 Next we'll bring in our dining table. The gorgeous Grand Continental Esagonale dining table gracefully designed to allow as many as eight individual place settings, the Esagonale Table combines the warmth of a round table with the charm of centuries old design. Here's the table shown from different angles.

Time for our beautiful chairs. We'll add six of these gorgeous chairs as the side chairs. Done in this beautiful Duralee fabric

I love to use different styled chairs as the host and hostess chairs. For our room, we will use these wing back chairs from Hickory Chairs. They have the classic wing back style with simpler, more modern lines. We'll finish them off with this gorgeous fabric from Kravet Collections with a lumbar pillow made from the solid apricot velvet.

Next we will create a small intimate seating area by the windows with a couple of slipper chairs and a small side table. The chairs are from Hickory chairs and will be upholstered in the same apricot velvet fabric. The pillows will be made from a gorgeous stripe silk fabric from Kravet Couture.

Our side table is a small scale glass top table

For our window treatments, we will use the same gorgeous silk fabric. We will create beautiful and full pinched pleat panels with alot of puddle (about 6") to add richness and luxury to our windows.

 Next we'll add a side board to the serving area. This beautiful hand painted piece is from Stanley Furniture. We'll add a John Richard Mirror above, and two sconces on either side of the mirror. We chose a pair of this beautiful sconce from Elk Lighting. The free flowing design of the sconce is a great contrast against the geometric lines of the mirror.

Next we will add the rest of the lighting in our dining room. We'll hang a drum shade, crystal chandelier above the dining table and a table lamp in our seating area.

Our room will need an area rug to pull everything together. This beautiful wool rug from Safavieh has a beautiful pattern and rich colors to ground the furniture pieces.

Time for our art and accessories. Our wallpaper is really so beautiful that there is hardly a need for art. We'll keep the art simple, so that our wallpaper will shine.

So there you have it. A beautiful dining room for wonderful family gatherings. Hope you were inspired to create and decorate the home of your dreams.

Now for my top three fun finds of the week:

Evoking the angularity and clean geometric forms of 1940s Parisian design, the Bruno from Restoration Hardware makes a statement in its simplicity. Constructed from premium Italian leather that will acquire a rich patina over time, the chair features topstitching detail and open-edged seams for casually sophisticated appeal. Very handsome!

The unbridled creativity of mid-century modern Danish design finds new expression in the Copenhagen chair from Restoration Hardware. It is is upholstered in sumptuous leather on the front and dramatic hair-on hide on the back. Each chair is uniquely, spectacularly one-of-a-kind.

Inspired by a vintage birdcage, Restoration Hardware's reproduction juxtaposes rustic hand-wrought iron with a precision-cut faceted crystal pendant. Handcrafted in authentic detail and hung from a 3"-thick weathered marine rope, the cage has a hinged side door to facilitate bulb replacements. Quite the conversation piece.