HH Town House Living

The Dining Room Mantle

Unlike the big open floor plan of modern homes, in our old Victorian, there is a delineation between the living room and dining room by huge case moldings and pocket doors. We always have these open, but I love having this differentiation of space that gives the opportunity to create a new feeling or aura in the dining room space.

When Tyler first graduated from college, he worked in NYC as an intern for a man who had an unusual ministry and became a deeply impactful mentor to Tyler and later to me. BJ said he had a ministry of “being available” and one of the ways he would “show up” for people was by having beautiful and opulent dinner parties where hippies would sit next to businessmen and enjoy long lavish meals and engage in discourse exploring the deeper subjects of life. BJ had a beautiful NYC townhouse, and these meals happened on the garden level. The room would always be dimly lit with seemingly thousands of candles. Tyler and I had many such dinners alone with BJ and his wife, Sheila. They always had time, long into the night, to listen to us, and let us get out the things that were in our hearts. The outward atmosphere they created matched the attitudes of their hearts; warm, intimate, attentive, and inviting. They cultivated a space that invited you to keep talking and let your dreams and heartaches be known so that relational breakthroughs could be realized.

In our dining room we cherish the same romanic ambiance that encourages you to linger and keep talking. Currently, our dining room is not the place for late-night dinner parties or long evenings of adult conversation. Rather, it is the nightly gathering space for our family dinners. For the past 14 years, our lives have been about cultivating our relationship with 5 specific people: our kids. Every single night, we eat dinner together. The kids set the table, I make the dinner, Daddy comes home, and we all connect on our day. No phones, no distractions, no chaos allowed. Although this event is commonplace for our family, it doesn’t mean it isn’t special. I remember one visit, BJ shared a story of his mother that she lit the candles every night for dinner “because every night is special.” My mom similarly always had the candles lit and Ella Fitzgerald, Bill Evans, or some other jazz album on every night at dinner. Every night with your “immediates” is special, and the effortless act of lighting a candle for a simple homemade dinner can change the tone that helps you reorient out of busy schedules and chaos of the outside world and focus on those investment conversations that are so important for your family’s future. Our kids might not at present have a burning need to talk about things on their hearts, but they will, and the years of being “available” are a worthy investment I’ll never regret.

The dining room mantle is always loaded with ‘thousands’ of real candles that the kids are invited to light every night after setting the table (genius way to get a chore done.)

A few faux garlands in front of a gilded mirror. The giant pillar holders, and pillar candles, you can pick up from anywhere you shop. I love faux candles as well (there are good holiday ones at Michaels, Anthropologie, and Terrain), which are safer when you have little kids, but have at least one real candle on your dining table to keep things alive!