Rearranging

I am constantly looking for new ways to arrange and rearrange the things in my home. I can have things a certain way, and love it, but then I get an idea in my head and I have to try it out! For instance, last night I got the brilliant idea to take the doors off my hutch.

I think my hutch is way too small. The shelves are barely deep enough to hold a salad plate. I wanted a place to display my things but quickly outgrew this. Eventually I'd like to get a nice old one, paint it white with the back panel another bright, contrasting color, and use it to replace this one. For now though, this is better than having everything put away.

One of the problems I had with the doors was that even though they were glass, they obscured a lot of what was inside the cabinet. They also cast shadows making it look really dark and dull inside. Covering the back with scrapbooking paper helped a lot with that, but I still wanted to be able to see all of my pretty things.

I went ahead and pulled off the doors, which TOTALLY freaked out my husband. He really thought the doors were keeping things on the shelf, but alas, they were just cheap little swinging Ikea doors that couldn't have held a kitten captive. I moved the cookbooks off the bottom shelf and pulled out a bunch of pieces that were stashed in the "decor" closet. I arranged, rearranged, and moved stuff all around until I felt like it looked okay. I'm still not 100% on that middle shelf, but it's nice to be able to display some things that were previously hidden.

My ironstone collection is in there too. It's grown since I posted about it last! Just last Sunday I found three more bowls. One has a small chip in it, so it will eventually be replaced. The round plates are stacked on the cake pedestal on the bottom shelf and the teacups, saucers, bowls, and square plates are on the top shelf. I think they look lovely all together like that.

I moved my cookbooks over to this big shelf next to the tv. There were board games on there before, so they got moved to the other side. Instead of having the big binders and the document holders with the smaller magazine style books together with my nicer books like they were before, now they're on the bottom shelf (with the subwoofer) and all the cookbooks are in one place. I had to move the houseplant off the shelf so I could raise it up. Those Junior League books are tall!

Totally unrelated to all that - I moved the patio table out to one corner of the yard. It's under a tree which means it's shaded almost all day, as opposed to before on the patio when the sun would just glare in your eyes as it set. I got the idea from Ashley's blog. I swear it would have never occurred to me to put a patio table anywhere except the patio before! Now there is more space near the house for the boy to play and ride his plasmacar.

When I mentioned the idea to my friend, he suggested maybe putting pavers under it. We're renting though, and even though his dad is the landlord, I don't think I want to go through the expense to do that on a property that is not mine. It would look kind of cool though, no?