Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Fiesta Tragedy!

Once upon a time, I had a full set of Cobalt Blue and Chartreuse Green Fiestaware plates. It was a lovely collection in the two greatest Fiestaware colors ever. Then disaster struck. Several years ago, one of the small salad plates broke. I carried the pieces with me from town to town until I finally admitted to myself that I wasn't going to use them in a mosaic or make a necklace or do anything at all with them, other than carry them around, lamenting.

Christmas Eve brought a similar disaster. While I was out running errands, Mr. Mallard hung out with the surly Biggest Girl. In a "mood" because her teeth were bugging her (I can only imagine!), she was in the throes of a fit when Mr. Mallard decided to distract her from her woes by letting her sit on the counter for a spell. It worked for a brief moment before the tribulations of toddlerhood got the best of her and she resumed her conniptions.

In one swift kick, she sent a Chartreuse dinner plate flying and it appeared she planned to follow suit as she wiggled about on the kitchen counter. Poor Mr. Mallard was caught in the age-old quandry: Save the plate or save the baby? What to do?! It's a discontinued color! She's our only child! Oh, no!

He saved the Biggest Girl.
It wasn't until the next day that I realized it was a dinner plate that had perished. A Christmas Un-Miracle.

After some searching, we found we had to options: pay four times the original price for a Chartreuse plate or add another color to fill in the blanks.

So, before:
...and after:
We chose option two: add another color. I feel like I'm betraying the green, but I'm just not ready to pay forty bucks for one dinner plate. Now, we welcome Tangerine to the mix, as well as the lone Turquoise salad plate. We were always running out of little plates and, as long as we're mixing it up, why not just go crazy, right?

It's going to take some getting used to and I don't have a firmly established stacking order to which we will adhere (all in good time), but at least we have plates. And a cupboard to put them in. And a fabulous house for the cupboard. And a Biggest Girl who did express some serious remorse when the plate shattered. Probably because she knew it was a discontinued color. She's smart like that.


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