home inspiration: my dining room

Home inspiration: My dining room

I love dinner time in our house. I love to have all of our family come together around the dinner table to talk about the adventures of the day and I love that in our home we have a separate room where we can do so. As there are so many of us in our family, I have tried to keep our dining room simple but family focused. 

Here is an overview of what the room looks like:

I did not want to have the room looking too bright with the colour scheme and wanted more of a relaxed feel as we have some fun and heated discussions around this table! I also wanted to use this area for extra storage as I don't have very much storage in my kitchen. I am happy with what we have put together and it suits us well for now.

On the right hand side of the dining room I have a kitchen buffet that I picked up on ebay. It is where I store my extra pantry items that have a high turn over. I store large jars of flour, sugar and rice and other items that I use regularly to cook with. Some of them include: desiccated coconut, popcorn, split peas, barley and pasta. I picked up the smaller jars at Woolworths and the larger jars I just picked up at a discount store. Inside the cupboards I store larger trays, pots and tablecloths. I also keep a supply of napkins, paper plates and plastic forks etc for those nights when I am too tired to clean up and everything is just going crazy. I love having that option saved for those motherhood moments!

Probably not a good idea to show where we hang our keys but I love this key holder I picked up in a home store. We have a variety of responsibilities that come with different sets of keys and this is an easy way to hang them so we can quickly grab them and head out the door. 

Now, this is not a very good picture as it is so cloudy here and the lighting is not very good but this is one of my favourite wall hangings in our home. I really wanted a positive happy image of a large family hanging in our home {apart from taking a picture of ourselves}and searched every where to find one. I could not find one anywhere so I created one myself. I found these two pictures in a calendar and decided to put them together to create one family. I was very excited to see that when I put them together it worked out to be an image with seven children in it just like us. I then had them framed and right now it is sitting on top of our buffet instead of hanging else where in our home. I like having it in our dining room. It gives me something positive to look at when the kids are going crazy over dinner!

The glass brick next to the large picture was a gift to us from some friends and is commented on so often in our home. It has our family name on it - Ellis, with the words families are forever across it. Adore it! I like my buffet. Simple and practical.

When Matt and I were first married we purchased this eight seater dining table. It was on sale and a bargain price. It was not the table we really wanted but we could not pass it up. We had one child at the time and our goal was to fill every seat around the table. We were giddy with the excitement and prospect of the journey ahead of filling those seats. 

Well, we filled those seats and added one more. We now have nine seats filled around our table and even though it is not the style I really like in a table, I can't bring myself to part with it. We have had it for years and it has been a joy to see so many of our children move out of high chairs and slowly join us around the table. 

We now all can sit at this table and I often I look around and can't believe how much my cherubs have grown. I was really glad to get rid of those high chairs but every so often I wish we had another cherub in one and miss those messy days with cute baby cherub smiles....anyway...back to reality!

Also included in this room is my extra storage cupboard. I originally wrote about it and showed a picture of it in my blog post, my large family budgeting tips, but now it is looking a little different as I am weaning sugar out of our house. I am using up all of the sugar foods and slowly replacing them with healthier options. I also have another storage cupboard for tinned food but I will show you that another time.

On left hand side of the room I have another simple table that is mainly for decoration and a dumping area for items when I am working around the house during the day. It is like the half way place for me when I am moving items back and forth around the house and by the end of the day it is normally clean. It is a great storage spot for me and I also love this mirror as I can use it to see what is going on in several rooms around the house when I am cooking dinner. It helps me have eyes in the back of my head and one of my secret weapons on watching the kids! Sssshhhh!

This basket is where I store the kids lunch boxes. It took me ages to work out where to keep seven lunch boxes and since coming up with this idea it has been wonderful. It is a lunch box basket that sits under the long side table in our kitchen. After emptying out the kids lunch boxes after school they can be placed in the basket until it is time to load them up with food again. I love that they are still in the kitchen and not spread out in bedrooms. It looks organised and I can just pick up the basket each morning to unload them onto the bench. Love it!

So there you have it, that is our dining room. Not very fancy, but simple and family focused. Pretty much the theme of my whole house actually! I hope you enjoyed having a look. It was fun sharing it with you.