Kitchen company

I love a kitchen table. This is the place where we can build up our quality of life, eating home-made food in our own homes, around a kitchen setting - where conversation can't help but happen and where the various day's activities are pulled apart, laughed about, and where plans are made for the next day. 

With no distractions such as television to take hold, this communal space is a place to really be together. When the busy creativity of cooking is under way, others can sit at the kitchen table to keep the cook company - out of the way but not too far away. If your kitchen table is piled high with newspapers, magazines, a finished cup of coffee, then be glad - you're obviously using the space and making it part of the home. Even if you don't have space for a kitchen table, pop a couple of stools in the kitchen for people to sit on - a place for them to be so they can chat and be around the creation of meals.  But don't be strict about what is done at the kitchen table. Let kids do their homework if they're not distracted, let little Mia or Max listen to their iPod if they insist, let Grandpa read the newspaper. Just being in this environment, doing whatever you do with other people around, makes it so much more relaxed and a place everyone wants to be.