Furniture Rearranging

Several months ago we thought it was time for Baby Love to start piano lessons, so of course it was a package deal—the piano had to go along with the lessons, so our piano now lives at her house. It’s the piano her Papá and uncle used to learn practice ummmmm spend our money—that’s what it was!—so it seemed only right that she have it now. It didn’t get played much at our house, and when we had it tuned recently we were pleasantly surprised to learn that it’s in very good condition!

Once the piano was gone, it gave me the opportunity to re-think our furniture arrangement. It had been a focal point in our home, and I had loved using it for vignettes (if not for playing, LOL). Here’s where it was~

We played musical furniture (thank heavens for those slider-disk things!), and our vintage buffet came to the former piano spot…that was it! Loved it! That’s where it needed to live! ~~

And guess what’s gracing the sterling punch bowl my MIL gifted us many years ago?! Hydrangeas, of course! Today was a perfectly beautiful day, so I took advantage of the beautiful weather to harvest more of them for future use—I’m thinking Christmas, but my ideas are still a secret (to me too!—I’m thinking…I’m thinking…).

I thought you might be curious about the three pictures to the left of the buffet. The top picture is of my parents happily walking down the aisle after their wedding. The second is a portrait of my mother and me, taken in our home in Havana, and the last is of me with my father at the beach—in perfectly clear water (also in Cuba).

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The move of the buffet created a void, of course, and after more musical furniture we settled on my MIL’s writing desk. It had been living in our bedroom (it’s the surface you see in The Nook and Old Ladder post {HERE}). Now it provides me with the opportunity to gather some blue and white~~

The vase on the desk is another perfect vessel for drying more hydrangeas. The black-and-white pictures are a collection my husband and I put together at our other house and repeated it in this home. It’s a collection of pictures of us and the generations before us. (Some adjustments need to be made to the collage, since I had to take some of them down with the new furniture piece.) Sometimes we talk about taking them down and doing something different there…we’ll see, but it’s interesting to me that after so many years of having them up I still enjoy looking at them. For example, there’s a picture of my beloved grandmother holding my baby brother and I’m sitting real close, right next to her. There’s one of my husband eating an ice cream cone that’s almost as big as he is, and an 8x10 of him deep-sea fishing with his parents in Mexico. Lots of good memories.

The sunlight was playing its lovely games when I walked in the room, and I quickly grabbed my camera.

Aren’t they drying beautifully? I know many of you dry your hydrangeas—how have you used them? Have you used them for any Christmas decorations?

I’ve been on the hunt for blue-and-white bowls, and recently I found this beauty at the antique shop where my SIL has a booth. Guess how much?? I HAVE to share the price because it’s so pretty and it was such a buy--$6.00!! It has no flaws, and the gold rim and base are perfect. See the reflection on the desk?

The rest of the vignette—blue and white plates on brass plate racks/candleholders. I got these candleholders years and years ago, I think from the Pier 1 catalog, because I wanted to display not only our boys’ Bunnykins plates, but also their mugs, and I was able to hang the mugs from the arms. It was a precious vignette in our other dining room. (Hmmmm…I wonder if I have a picture of them? They wouldn’t be digital, that’s for sure.)

I’m looking forward to your ideas on how to use dried hydrangeas, so please share them with me, and if you have pictures, please share those too! I can’t wait!

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Taming the Monster in the Basement

The good news is we have a HUGE basement…the bad news is it’s a HUGE basement!  It’ll be eight years next month that we moved into our home, and it was only about six months ago that I decided made peace with the fact that we’re staying—at least for a while.  You see, we moved from the BIG house, thinking we were going to simplify our lives, only to realize, about two days after the move, that we NEEDED a big house.  Too much furniture, too many pretty things I (well, actually we, to some extent) didn’t want to part with.  So….thank heavens for a big basement!

When I finally decided to unpack EVERYTHING a few months ago (we’re staying, remember??), our basement looked like this:

Stuff everywhere, as I got my arms around the massive amount of stuff we had.  Yes, in the old house we DID use all these Christmas trees!  And the hammock…and the wrought iron plant stands…

Then, to make matters worse :) my brother and SIL introduced me to auctions…hmmm.  Just what I needed.  A NEW monster was created, and sometimes our basement looked like this:

Shelves organized, then new stuff would come in.  And the problem with auctions is that you sometimes end up with things you don’t want too.  It’s called box lots, where you bid on a box of stuff because of ONE thing you want, but you get the whole box full of other stuff you don’t want.  Do I need more snack sets (see the boxes stacked under the table?)?  Not.a.single.one.  My parents always had nice big parties—as in no paper plates, regardless of the number of guests—and the snack plates and punch cups were always put to use.  I think it’s a safe estimate to say that they had more than 100 of each, some of which I now have.  And then there are the linens…I can hardly pass up a fine piece of hand-embroidered linen.  See them stacked on the basket? :)

Oh, and did I mention punch bowls?  I have a “thing” about big bowls and punch bowls—maybe it’s my dreams of always having large family gatherings.

This one was an auction find that came with 36 punch cups.  Wait!  I just said I didn’t need more snack sets!  Ahhh, but I DID need THESE.  I really like this pattern!!, AND besides, this one came with the stand!  My identical punchbowl didn’t have a stand…I NEEDED it.  Oh, and did I say I got the whole thing for $3???!!!  Yes, THREE DOLLARS!!  How could I pass it up??  You understand, right?  (And to the right edge of the picture are other punch bowls, and upstairs on the buffet is our sterling one my MIL gave us years ago, which I’ve happily used often—you can see it HERE.)

To redeem myself now that I’ve shown you the bad and the ugly, while all that was going on, the shelves we bought when we first moved here WERE organized.  The problem was the ADDITIONAL stuff from the unpacking, coupled with the new auction stuff…

So we bought more shelves and made progress taming the monster:

But there was always more to go…

But now, I’m happy to report, THE MONSTER IS TAMED!

Yes…new dishes to be put away.  My SIL gave me the Pottery Barn plaid ones for Christmas.  Yippee!!  Lucky me!  I’m anxious to use them, so I’m thinking about how to use them for a non-Christmas table.  Any ideas?

The Christmas things were tamed, but now they’re in a different place, to allow more room for my “play room.”  (There’s still lots of room on the other side too, so the little chickadees are going to get a play room to ride their plasma riders down here too!)

The crystal was safely tucked away months ago when I unpacked.

And unused pieces of furniture were put to good use…

The forest was tamed and covered to keep the dust off.

But here is my FAVORITE fix!!  (I wish I could claim credit for the napkin solution, because it’s SO CLEVER, but no…I got it from Mary at Home is Where the Boat Is.  Isn’t it brilliant?)

  Shoe holders!  They’re the PERFECT solution for napkins.  I’ve had this ton of napkins in deep drawers in the buffet, in baskets, on shelves. None was the perfect solution, but I do believe this is going to be!  (I used kids’ shoe holders because they’re the perfect size for folded napkins.)  I’ve wanted to get a clothes hanger for the tablecloths for some time, and NOW was the time.  I have so many tablecloths that it’s always been impossible to store them in one place, and while these aren’t all of them, I was able to free up quite a bit of drawer and closet space by moving the good linen ones down and putting others here too.  I will check with Susan at My Place to Yours—she’s the expert on caring for fine vintage linens—on how to cover them.  I’m pretty sure she’s going to tell me to get rid of the dry cleaner bags.  (Susan, if you’re reading this, please advise!)

 

So here’s how this spot turned out.  I keep the seasonal placemats I’m using on a regular basis upstairs, but these were tying up valuable drawer space in the dresser under the shelf with stemware.  Now I have EMPTY DRAWERS!!  That means more room for more stuff! :)

So any other suggestions?  How do you store your vintage linens?  Oh, and don’t forget that I’d like some ideas on how to use my new plaid dishes NOW—I don’t want to wait till next Christmas!

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you’ll leave me a comment to let me know you were here—I read every single one of them! And if you like what you see a lot, maybe you’d like to +1 this post or pin it on Pinterest too! Thank you!

I invite you to follow me. If you’ll let me know that you’re following, I’ll be sure to follow you back.

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