Over the River Dishes

We had a wonderful 4th of July, which I will probably blog about later.  What I want to blog about right now is actually the result of a conversation I had on the 4th.

I am looking for a cheap china hutch that I can paint and make work for a few years to display our wedding china.  Our wedding china is super pretty, and it kind of kills me that it is tucked away in Bed, Bath, and Beyond boxes on the top shelf in our pantry.  I was telling a friend about my hunt and she suggested I look at this new consignment shop I'd never heard of. I had errands to run that would take me right by the store the next day so I decided to check it out.  The shop was freaking adorable.  I wanted everything in it.  I didn't find a china hutch, but I did find these:

This dish pattern is kind of special in my family.  We call them the over the river and through the woods dishes, and they originally belonged to my grandma and now my mom has them.  As the story goes, my grandma was collecting these dishes from a certain store in Utah and would get a few new pieces each month.  In the middle of building her collection this store stopped selling milk from the Utah Dairy Association and my grandma's brother was a Utah dairy farmer.  Her mother (my great-grandmother) told the whole family that no one was allowed to shop at that store anymore.  My grandma loved these dishes so much that she would sneak out to this store to buy them behind her mom's back to finish her collection.  I love the idea of my grown-up, married grandma sneaking out to buy these dishes.

I have my own memories with the over the river dishes.  My family uses them every Sunday for Sunday dinner.  There are two versions of the smaller plates.  One version has an over the river scene and the other version has a steamboat.  There were only five plates with the first version, so my mom got out one of the steamboat plates and said it was the "special plate".  So of course my brother and I fought over the special plate every week.  For a while we actually had an every other week rotation of who got the steamboat plate.  Even now when I go home I feel silently smug when I sit down for Sunday dinner and notice that I am the honored recipient of the special plate.

So obviously when I saw this set tucked away in a corner I had to go see them.  It made me smile and feel sappy and nostalgic, but I wasn't really in the market for a whole new dish set, so I figured I'd get a plate or something to display and remind me of my family.  The first plate had a $20 sticker, and I figured that was a little steep for a used plate so I looked to see how much one of the smaller plates would be.  That's when I realized the whole set was only $20.  I about died.  The cute little high school cashier must have thought I was crazy with how smiley and gooey I was over this dish set.  The two of us wrapped them up and I took them home.

Traditions are really important to me.  There's something wonderfully comforting about doing the same things week after week or year after year.  The love of traditions is something I got from my mom, and something I hope to pass on. Traditions helps me feel closer to my family, especially now that I'm living away from them.  I love the idea of using these plates with my own family; with Erik right now and with our own children someday.   I can't wait to tell my own kids about their great grandma sneaking out to buy these plates, and the best part is my dish set came with a full steamboat set, so everyone can have one of the special plates.