My head is still spinning from Alt Summit this last weekend, so I'll probably put something up tomorrow sharing all of the awesome people I met & the cool things I learned while there. In the mean time, I had a fantastic idea that I wanted to share with you: We just bit the bullet recently & bought a grown-up table! It's our 7th (and hopefully final) table in the last 5 1/2 years. Now that we have a nice table made out of beautiful solid wood, we need to take care of it. This means no naked glasses on the wood! I was grocery shopping the other day & thought I'd see if I could find some cooler place mats than we have currently & had a brilliant brain wave. I also had to pick up some envelopes in the office supply section & came across bulletin board tiles. They were about the right size, a fantastic color/texture & a lot cheaper than the placemats I had been eyeing earlier. BOOM. there you go. We have cork boards for place mats. I think this idea connected partially because we had placemats growing up that had cork on the bottom, to keep from scratching the table top. I loved those placemats! They had pretty illustrations of the English countryside. I wonder if my parents still have them. So, do you use placemats for mealtime? What are your favorite ones? Link to resources in the comments below!