Styling the Bookcase

It is hard to believe that I have already been back from Costa Rica for five days. Last week at this time I was planning to walk to one of the most beautiful beaches on the planet. It seemed like a blinked and was here already. I am trying to organize my pictures and thoughts to write about my time in Costa Rica – I know that many of you are anxious to hear about it! The problem is that there is so much that I want to say, and it will be hard to me to convey the exact feelings that I experienced while in that magical country. I promise to do my best starting on Monday!

Back at home all of my projects suddenly seem so trivial. I am not exactly filled with the desire to get back to work, so I decided to start with something small. Last week I shared with you the purchase of my new old clock. It had been sitting on the bookcase that we bought in April, but I still had not gotten around to styling it. Such a beautiful clock deserves a better setting, so I decided to do something about it.

I decided to fill the left side with things that are more fitting for a dining room and the right side with things that would go in a living room since this piece of furniture straddles the two rooms. You can see that there were already two baskets on the left. These are ones that I had around the house. I do not think that they go very well with my decor, but they work for now. One holds my cloth napkins, the only ones that we use in our house, and the other holds place mats. As for the Nestlé Tollhouse box, that moved to the kitchen to hold my chocolate chips of course!

A friend had recently given us a new cookbook –thanks, Junior! I decided that the bottom right hand shelf of the bookcase would be a perfect place to keep our cookbooks. I only had three, but Douglas has a lot. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of all of them.

I used this opportunity to thin the books in the library in the living room. It was just too crowded in there. I moved the yearbooks, art books and poetry to the left hand side of the new bookcase. I also took out the vases that my sister gave us for our wedding. I think that the library looks a lot better now.

The bookcase is also more pleasing to the eye. Things still need to be tweaked – I am not thrilled with the top right hand shelf, but at least it is better than it was. Of course, we still need to rewire the lamps, paint the trim, raise the mirror… but I am not going to think about all of that now! My new motto is ¡Pura vida! Don’t sweat the small stuff!

The final pièce de résistance was to add a cat to the top. Everything looks better with a cat!

Happy Homemaking!