Shelve it!

We received these shelves as wedding presents from my friends Brian and Jenny. I had been trying to figure out what to do with this wall behind the couch for a while. It is an awkward area because the wall has two depths. Currently, the couch is half on the wall and half six inches in front of it. Someday I would love to build a custom bookshelf, but that is not going to happen in the near future. So, when I saw these narrow floating shelves at Bed, Bath and Beyond, I decided to register for them. They are no longer available, but here are some similar ones. (This is an affiliate link. You will not pay any more, but I could earn a small percentage if you purchase through this link.)

Douglas came home one day after the wedding to see pieces of paper taped to the wall. The shelves actually came with cutouts that could be used for this exact purpose.  I had laid out where the shelves were to go, but it was his job to install the shelves. 🙂 It is something that I could technically do, but since I am short, it is a lot harder for me. The job did not take him that long. (Of course, he may argue with that conclusion, but it was certainly no more than an hour.)

Once the shelves were up, I put some objects on them as place holders until I could spend more time deciding what I really wanted to put on the wall. The wall looked like this for three months.

Is it called staging when you do it in your own home for no one other than yourself? Organizing? Decorating? What do you think? Anyway, last weekend, I staged/organized/decorated this wall. I am still not sure that it is perfect, so if you have any suggestions as to how to make it better, let me know.

The reason that I finally got around to organizing the area is that I needed to put some plants on the shelves. Last week I re-potted many of my plants. You can read about that project here. I also did some research online to find out why my plants were not doing as well as they could. I found out that there were some plants that needed to be in different places. For example, the bamboo should not receive direct sunlight, and I had it in the window. I gave this bamboo plant to Douglas for our first Valentine’s Day together in 2010, and it would be symbolically bad for it to die, in my opinion, especially if it were my fault. In order to put it on one of these shelves and not block the canvas, I had to remove one of the shelves, but I think that it looks good on this wall. The blue plate that it is on is from my great grandmother’s set from the 1950s.

Douglas also put one of the spider plants on a shelf last week, not because it needed less light, but because the cat kept attacking it. Spider plants are hardy and can handle direct or indirect sunlight, so it will probably stay  for a while unless it does not thrive here. This one is not doing so well, but maybe it will like this location better.

The canvas in the middle is a photograph of me in 1999, when I was living in Spain. It was taken at the Salvador Dalí museum in Figueres, Spain. I wrote an entire post about that picture called Salvador Dalí and Me.

The two clear vases were wedding presents from my sister and her husband. She found them at two different antique stores weeks apart. They are made by different manufacturers, but they are so perfect together. I think that you could spend a lifetime looking for them and never find them, and she stumbled across them by chance. I am so glad that she gave them to me. She knows that I collect Artwork of Women. I forgot to mention the vase of the woman in that post, something that of course my sister noticed and commented on!

The red vase is from a Valentine’s Day bouquet from my father. He normally has one sent to me one every year. What a sweet and thoughtful dad I have.

The small shoe vase is something that I found in the trash. I think that it is so cool. I filled it with sea glass, which I have been collecting for years. It is the same sea glass that I used in my wedding votive project. On another shelf, I have a salsa jar full of more sea glass. These are my most precious pieces. You can see some of my red pieces that I am so proud of. Douglas hates that I display it in a salsa jar, but I have been too busy to change it out.

The small sculpture of the lizard on a rock is something that I bought in Panama. It is carved out of a seed. I forget what kind of seed it is, but it hardens over time until it is solid as a rock. The indigenous people have been carving them for centuries.

The blue pitcher was also a wedding present. It is very pretty, and I cannot wait to use it. We did not entertain much this summer because we were so wiped out after planning the wedding for months. Douglas told me that we were not allowed to throw another party for a year. While waiting for next summer, I envision us next summer with some friends in the yard, pouring some drink with freshly squeezed lemons and ice out of our beautiful blue glass pitcher.

The final object on the shelves is the set of coasters that was given to me by a friend from South Africa. The coasters are all carved in wood and keep in a carved wooden box.

I am pleased to be able to display some items that have special meaning for me. I am sure that these shelves will change frequently, but rearranging things is just part of the fun for me. Here is another look at all of the objects on the shelves in October 2012.

Where do you display your cherished objects?

Happy Homemaking!