Artfully arranged dishes. Simple stacks of plates and bowls arranged in a way that pleases the eye and complements the surrounding decor. Nothing about it contrived or complicated. Like it just happened.
Well, for me it didn't just happen.
I spent two hours Friday night, (yea, I need to get a life) arranging these two shelves.
I climbed up and down from a stool so much my legs were sore the next day. (I need to get a life that involves more exercise apparently)
I'd move a piece, get down, step back and look.
It was too busy, too stark, too blue, too, too, too...
It finally came around, or else I just got tired of fooling with it, once I took all the blue dishes out. Either they looked to arranged or too haphazard. If I tried balancing equal amounts of blue on top and bottom, left and right it looked like I was trying to hard, if I didn't balance them it looked, well, unbalanced.
I really wish I had photographed each step along the way so I can share how exciting my Friday nights are. Kid you not, two hours arranging dishes, so that they wouldn't look arranged.
I didn't want the shelf to be full of stuff that isn't used to just collect dust and in the end, there are lots of things there as fillers. Now that I really look, it's mostly fillers. I do use those coffee cups and the white dish on the bottom shelf is new but I will use it.
I need to quit looking at these pictures, it only makes me want to go change things.
The stuff in the cabinet, we do use that. No fillers here.
For a little Valentine love, the pretty felted heart from my sweet {former blogger} friend LLA. Former blogger, not former friend.
And a bird. Oh my! Have you seen this?
I got a new sink, but that's a story all its own.
Oh what the heck, as long as I brought it up.
When we built the house, we had a white cast iron sink. I don't remember why, but at some point I decided I wanted to change it. I think it was losing some of it's shine and was hard to clean. Anyway, I got a composite sink that closely matched the lovely dark gray formica counter tops. Blackish gray composite sink with darkish gray formica, not bad. Darkish gray with butcher block, not so good.
I told my loving husband that I wanted the white sink back. It was still here, behind his barn. Yea, it looks like hoarders back there. Not really. Maybe a little. We live in the country.
I'm rambling. It used to look sort of like hoarders. Before Mitch, the loving husband took a huge truck load of junk to the metal salvage yard (he collects cars and car parts like I collect furniture and lamps) and since the sink was cast iron, it went too. That was after I told him I wanted it back in the house. After he told me there was no way he was putting that thing back in. It nearly broke his back taking it out. He said I'll buy you a new one, an acrylic one. He said that to put me off, hoping I'd just get over it. I didn't.
Long story short I have a new sink and it's big enough to bathe in. I don't know how, it is in the same hole, but this baby is HUGE. I love it.
So there you go, I walk on the wild side arranging shelves and putting birds on them and my husband buys me gifts in the plumbing section of the hardware store. Don't you wish you lived such a glamorous life?
I'm still wreaking havoc in the kitchen. I got all the walls and trim painted white. I took the doors off one of the upper cabinets and started putting vinyl in the back. Then I ran out of vinyl. Drats. Here's what I've got so far.
I also managed to sweet talk Mitch into painting the doors in the kitchen black.
Why did I photograph the door from this angle?
I was trying to photograph this guy.
Meet Willie, my new grand-pup. Alyssa got a new baby, the four legged variety. Isn't he a sweetie?
OK, did you enjoy that bit of sweetness? Back to the kitchen insanity. Why not do some closet demo while were at it?
I have a pantry that I really hadn't been using as a pantry for some time. It had really become the closet equivalent of a junk drawer.
So, I pulled everything out, and piled it on every flat surface in my kitchen. Nice.
That blue box up there has the topper from my wedding cake. I've been married 23 years. Do I really need to keep the topper from my cake?
Pretty, huh? Just wait till you see the inside of the closet.
Those big holes are from removing the wire shelving. It's outta here. The dirt, well I have no explanation for that, other than the fact with all that junk, who could see the dirty wall?
I'm happy to say it has been cleaned and painted and will be getting newly painted wood shelving.
Soon, I hope.
I'll be back later this week with a few more projects I've been working on.
I'm very excited to be contributing to pillow month at Sew Mama Sew.
Quietly adding a little Valentine love around here. I'm not one to decorate for Valentine's, or really any holiday other than Christmas, but with the help of my Silhouette, I'm finding adding subtle touches easy and very satisfying.
I am and I love it! Pinterest is essentially an on-line inspiration board. A place to pin and catalog all the things you love.
Not only can you catalog your loves, you can see what your friends are pinning, cause Lord knows, we need to know what our friends are up to. (said with a bit of sarcasm) I like Facebook, really I do, but do I really need to know that you are having a ham sandwich for lunch. Just sayin.
Anyhoo, back to Pinterest, the other day I was trying to think of something clever or inspirational to write on the chalkboard in my kitchen. I remembered re-pinning some wordy inspiration, so I went there to find a phrase. I decided on one I liked and began to write it on my wall. It didn't take me long to realize I'd never get effect I wanted free hand. I loved the subway sign style of the original. Hey, this would be a great way to use my Silhouette. I could have cut it in vinyl, but I really wanted it to be written in chalk. So I cut a stencil with some contact paper left over from another project.
I used a chalk pen to fill in the letters.
Love it!
If you want to see my pins, you can click the link over there in the right sidebar.
On the topic of links, see the one with all the pretty faces, that says join this site- if you are a subscriber of my blog through google reader, would you do me a favor and click that? It may be a bit silly. OK, it is silly, but it's something that's been bothering me for a while. I've been at this blogging thing for quite a while, five years, and I've made lots of friends. According to google reader, I have more than 6,400 subscribers. I'd just love it if that silly little widget had a lot more of your smiling faces on it.
