Oh, For Pigs' Sake!

My kitchen is filled with pigs. (I don't mean my family! I mean my collection of decorative pig objects d'art!)

This all began when I was a young wife and my mother-in-law gave me a cutting board shaped like a pig. It was a special cutting board, because she'd had it made using my husband's grandmother's cutting board as a template. (She had 8 of them made after this grandmother died, so that all of her children would have something to remind them of their Nana.) I loved that cutting board so much--I use it to this day--that I decided PIGS were going to be the "theme" of my kitchen. There's no going back now! As soon as everyone found out I was collecting pigs, friends and family began to give them to me as gifts. I have wooden ones, resin ones, ceramic ones, glass ones, cross-stitched ones, and framed pictures of them, too--you name it. I can't change my theme now, because I'd have to get rid of some items that have come to have great sentimental value to me.

One of my most prized piggies is a whimsical terra cotta one with his tongue hanging out. My husband's brother saw it in a butcher shop and thought he'd buy it for me, so he asked the guy behind the counter how much it was. "It's not for sale," was the answer. My brother-in-law came back with, "Everything is for sale," and somehow walked out of the butcher shop with the pig.

Another favorite is a lovely wooden pig in silhouette that was handmade for me by my sister's husband. He cut it out of wood from a tree that grew on his orchard and gave it a dark stained finish. I treasure it, not only because it's beautiful (it really is a fine piece of craftsmanship), but because of the effort he made to create it for me.

I also am quite attached to the cute little piglets I painted on my kitchen wall, copying them from an illustration in one of my boys' favorite childhood books about baby animals.

Obviously, I have made a commitment to pig decor. The pigs, I'm afraid, are here to stay. And it all started with Nan's cutting board.