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I’m Using the Damn China

Even if you’re not the Queen.

Michelle Lee-Ann
3 min readSep 17, 2020
Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

I’ve always loved beautiful, overpriced and delicate things. Soft lace, even softer fabrics, wallpaper speckled with gold, anything beautiful just for the sake of beauty brings a smile to my face. When I ended up inheriting my Baba’s teacups, crystal and silver, I was delighted. I couldn’t wait to put it all on display, showing people that I wad actually fancy and full of class.

I got so excited at the idea of using real silver for my Friendsmas dinner that my now-husband and I polished up candle sticks, salt and pepper shakers and a butter dish to perfect shine to place next to …paper plates. Yep. Garish red paper plates sitting next to silver candlesticks and salt and pepper shakers. Don’t worry, just for fun I added some plastic cups (It was 2013ish and we still naively believed that recycling would fix our plastic woes). I was still living in my first house and hadn’t enough plates to feed 15+ people, so paper plates it was. But, it was okay. Because I had silverware. Real silver ware. I was fancy, right?

Fast forward a few years and a move later and that silverware sits in a box still waiting for the velvet-lined drawers of my dream china cabinet. I’ve now purchased more dinnerware (aka I broke so many plates I needed to buy more) so the next time I pull out the silver salt and pepper shakers…

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Michelle Lee-Ann
Michelle Lee-Ann

Written by Michelle Lee-Ann

Recently published kid's book author, lover of all things Karl Lagerfeld, Golden Girls enthusiast, and finds happiness in books from Hemingway to Harlequin.

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