I bought these dishes with a gift certificate a couple years ago: http://www.replacements.com/webquote/SANSPLBR.htm?s1=KX&75997&
Mr. K hates them because the dark part is a shiny glaze (good) and the rest of the glaze is kinda rough (bad). My flatware is all scratched up because of it. I’m thinking of buying another set. Just curious as to what’s out there and where your taste takes you with regard to dinnerware. (I really need to get a life.)
Thanks!
I have a set like this that we are using for now. We have a few odd pieces of stoneware, and various pieces of pretty china that I picked up to use as serving plates and such too. I’d love to have this set though, or this, that, dis other, or dat one for nice dinners. 
(The last two are the same pattern, but one has drinking glasses, the other had cups and saucers.) This one’s ok, it might be good for everyday use, and I like this stoneware set, wish it came in blue or green.
My mother’s wedding china from 1948:
http://www.replacements.com/webquote/N__LYNBR.htm
My “every day” stuff:
http://www.replacements.com/webquote/TAUFRDB.htm
A pattern I “inherited” when it was discovered in a U-Haul truck I rented:
http://www.replacements.com/webquote/POPFLO.htm
VCNJ~
Here is the URL for that stoneware set. :o And I put in a duplicate one too! The 3rd from last should be this one. :o :o :o
I really like modern, different stuff. Square plates, oddly shaped cups. I love how it looks on the table (even if function comes in a close second). My biggest problem is that I don’t have a dining room to do a beautiful table in! I’d love to get something from Pier One: http://www.pier1.com/catalog/collections.aspx?fh_view_size=8&fh_eds=ß&fh_view=lister&fh_refpath=facet_59432454&fh_location=%2F%2Fpier1direct%2Fen_US%2Fcategories<{110300}%2Fcategories<{110352}&fh_start_index=0
The reason I went with white dinnerware is really, no food looks unappetizing on white. Some presentations are lessened if the pattern of the plate is too “busy”, though I’m in love with that Ebony Oval set Kalhoun linked! 
We use this for everyday, and this for formal occasions.
I’m quite hopelessly boring.
I really enjoy looking at others people’s interesting and beautiful things, though (and wishing I had the guts to buy them), so when you decide, please share!
It is rather daunting to take a leap into artsy dishes. But I’m in a position now where if I make a $100 - $150 dish mistake, I only have to live with it for a couple years before I feel like I can justify replacing them. And since I didn’t actually pay for this current mistake, I have no qualms about donating them to the local resale charity.
My everyday stuff is the set my mother got me 15 years ago, even before I moved out of her house: the Correlle Livingware Shadow Iris Set It’s held up astoundingly well, I have to say. The great thing about Livingware is that it is very lightweight and virtually indestructible: it’s been bounced off metal sink, dropped by kids (and a few adults), some of the smaller plates have been used in ill-advised soccer matches by small boys, and I’ve only lost one dinner plate to breakage. The bad thing about it is that once it *does *break, it doesn’t break into a few large hunks and a bit of tiny stuff like stoneware, it pulverizes into a gazillion itty bitty shards of glass and glass dust that get all over the kitchen and are a real bitch to clean up.
My “fancy-schmancy set” isn’t one I would have chosen for myself, but it belonged to my great-great grandmother (I think that’s right: my grandmother’s grandmother), so it has immense sentimental value. It’s Royal Bayreuth, but I’ve never found a pattern name for it. It’s not as bad (read:covered in garish roses) as most RB patterns, though: Here’s a picture of mine, as all the on-line pictures I’ve found of it are blurry.
I’d like a stoneware set next, I think. I do like that chili red set Zabali_Clawbane linked to.
whimper I love these Lotus bowls, and these Gingko plates… sigh Thank you for the link Kalhoun, but also drat you! We can’t afford those yet…
Corelle/Pyrex Spring Blossom (also called crazy daisy I think)
It’s incredibly common- my whole set is from thrift stores, and I’ve actually gotten rid of a bunch of plates because I had too many. I have lots of mixing bowls and bakeware and stuff from the set too. I would like some more glasses (I have plenty of mugs) and 2 or 3 more bowls. I have the butter dish and salt-and-pepper shakers too. I found out after I started collecting it that my mom had the same set when she married her first husband years before meeting my dad. We both love green!
You can sorta see the colors around the edge of the plate–and the matching cups.
http://pics.livejournal.com/om_mani_padme_/pic/0001parc/g13
Frankly I think these are gorgeous, and I can brag because they were a wedding gift from Dom’s grandma. I’m talking a full dish set and silverware set–and the greatest miracle of all is they’re dishwasher and microwave safe. Mmmm hmm. I like them because they’re a little playful and colorful, but really quite elegant.
Your heirloom dishes are lovely- though I wouldn’t have picked them either. I agree about the merits of Livingware. I am terribly clumsy, so the combination of inexpensive and indestructable is very attractive. I aquired them all in a year-long span of weekly thrift shopping with 2 girlfriends. They each had lovely vintage patterns (here’s one) they were looking for, and I tink they looked down a bit on my poor Spring Blossoms, but I wouldn’t have been able to use the dishes they were scoring without terrible fear of breakage. My boyfriend likes them because he can put a slice of pizza or a burrito or something on them and pop it straight in the oven :eek: As I said I have extra plates so when one gets discolored occasionally it doesn’t matter.
This is my everyday set from Target . I have a nice set from Studio Nova that sits at the top of a closet, because with just two people there’s no reason to have 16 plates in use.
The Studio Nova set kind of resembles the stuff from Target - because when I left my then-husband, I couldn’t find the Studio set (I’d bought them in anticipation of us moving out of his parents’ house…which happened but only because I left him), and I went to Target to get some cheap dishes. Happily, my ex found the Studio dishes and returned them to me.
That’s the problem, really. Money is rather tight for the foreseeable future, so I can’t afford to make a bad error in that way. Someday … but for now I’ll just live vicariously. 
My dad has those iris dishes. I love them! And you’re right. In-fucking-destructible. They’re pretty, but I find them to be a bit small. I like those big-ass plates and cups. To accommodate “Man Food.”
Love 'em!
Thanks. I just realized I didn’t pick out the Iris ones either! I did love them at the time I opened them, being all of 17 years old, but I have to admit they’re too frou-frou for me today. I’m into simple classic solids or geometric colors, not delicate flowery things.
Ah well, someday I’ll find the perfect set that’s all me. My mom finally got her dream set this year from my grandmother and I for Christmas: Mikasa’s Garden Harvest (also not for me, but she’s yearned after it for years, so that’s what matters) at the age of 59, so I have a few more years of making do before I can start complaining with justification, I think!
Your everyday stuff is similar to my old Sakura set: http://www.tias.com/6246/PictPage/1922679468.html?mall=%2Fstores%2Fnicedishes;itemKey=1922679468;store=%2Fstores%2Fnicedishes;catId=sakura;itemNo=13175
I liked these a lot, but I tired of them after about 5 years.
