Today I feel like I have passed a major milestone into being a real grownup: I bought a china cabinet. Not that having a china cabinet is really any kind of indication of maturity, but having 12 place settings of fine china and crystal packed in the Styrofoam peanuts it arrived in straight from our wedding registry has made me feel like a disgrace to genteel Southern women everywhere for the last six years, to exaggerate slightly.

Last night, I hauled all those boxes out and surrendered my kitchen to the Styrofoam peanuts so that I could get the china really nice and clean before the delivery men came with the cabinet today. It was quite an arduous process, since most of it still had stickers on it, which is another thing I would probably not admit to in public if I thought I had any kind of chance at ever being on a party planning committee for the Junior League. Things being what they are, I'll happily tell you that I've used the china for nice dinners on a few occasions, but having to unpack it, clean it up, and then repack it at the end of a night is enough to disuade me from using it even when it does occur to me to do so. Since it's been packed away, it's kind of out of sight, out of mind.

Hand-washing all of it last night and drying it to a nice shine, it hit me that every single piece of that set was given to us by someone as a gift when we got married. Really, that's true of every thing we used to set up our first place together, since if we had started with what we had when we combined our two single apartment existences, we'd have been in trouble. When I moved into my first apartment, my mom and I went and bought one of those 4-place-setting box o' plates and bowls from Wal-Mart so I'd have something to eat off of. It wasn't great, but it served the purpose. Flash forward a couple of years to the first day I was by myself in mine and Dan's new apartment, just a couple of weeks after our wedding, and discovered that Dan had apparently been living in this apartment for several months before I arrived and had yet to buy a broom. Who knows what he was eating off of. Needless to say, in addition to the beautiful china and crystal, the Target gift cards and matching dishtowels and kitchen utensil sets were also desperately needed. And people just gathered around us and gave us those things because they love us. It was humbling then, and last night, as I was washing all that beautiful china that is so fragile it's almost frightening to touch, it was humbling again. I don't deserve any of these beautiful things or the love that people put into giving them to us, but I'm thankful for all of it. Even better, now I have a nice place to put the china, where it can stay clean and hopefully make an appearance on my table from time to time. With the season of life we're in right now, when I do use it, I'll probably still be serving spaghetti and a bagged caesar salad. But it will look gorgeous.

Here are some pictures of the china cabinet, which I promised my mom I'd post. By the way, I have to indulge in some shopping bragging, because I found this china cabinet, which is an Ethan Allen piece, on consignment, and got a great deal on it. This really says less about me and more about the fact that there is a wonderful consignment shop just off Eubank called Consignment Interiors that has earned my loyal business over the years. They only buy nice things in great condition, and their prices are very reasonable. I've bought several pieces of furniture there, and it's pretty much my first stop now when I'm in the market for something. End commercial.

And from the front, with the lights on inside. I think it looks nice. And at least when every other dish in my kitchen is dirty, I can look at something that's clean and in order!