China Cabinet

What would we all do without friends who have trucks? Miranda and Travis saved us again this weekend, which was jam-packed with rearranging, decluttering and organizing.

At the rate we're moving, we'll be decorating for Christmas in January. While most people were digging out their ornaments and lights this weekend, we were making messes upon messes in an effort to get organized.

We were fortunate after our wedding to receive many of the things we asked for, albeit without anywhere to put them. Our kitchen cabinets were stuffed to the gills; I had two drawers so full of linens you couldn't really open them.

Once we stuffed all the leftover wedding stuff (centerpieces, decorations, napkins, etc.) into the guest room, we piled the gifts in there, too and suddenly it went from neat and tidy to an episode of Hoarders. And if you saw my collection of empty boxes, that's not far from the truth.

We agreed the solution would be a china cabinet, but to make that happen, we had to move our big IKEA Expedit bookcase out of the dining area and into the guest room. And to make that happen, we had to clean out the guest room. You can see where I'm going with this, can't you? That was our entire weekend.

We bought this Federal-style china cabinet with George Hepplewhite-style drawer pulls off Craigslist. Although the wood is quite pretty, I'm not a dark wood kind of girl, at least not in an apartment that gets almost no sunlight.

I can't paint it just yet, since it's winter (I would totally take the risk if Sean hadn't stopped me), but I wanted to do something to make it a little more me. I sloppily (I'll admit it) lined the back of the cabinet with gold metallic kraft paper I bought at Target. It looks sort of Christmas-y and festive. When I can paint it, I'm thinking white or a whitish gray on the outside, with a blueish gray on the inside, possibly with stripes.

I was excited to finally display all my pretty things in one place. The William Rogers silverplated dessert plates came from Plantiques in Newport News; the Wedgwood pieces were my grandmother's and the gravy boat is from Crate and Barrel.

The jadeite cake stand is a new purchase! I spotted it at the Williamsburg Antique Mall (my fave!) and had to have it. The teal pressed glass sundae cups are from there, as well.

For our honeymoon, Sean bought us the creamer and sugar bowl from Heath Ceramics in San Francisco. Their color is more green than you can tell in this picture. The dessert plates also came from Plantiques.

Another new purchase! Zinc placecards from Paper-Source.

I was most excited to have somewhere to stash my linens, especially because I just bought a pretty white linen tablecloth in Alexandria, along with a taupe hemstitch linen runner.

And voila! The only scary part is that the whole thing wobbles a little when we pad by it, so I've been walking very, very quietly. Also, the glass is loose in the right pane there, so that will eventually have to be addressed.

Tomorrow I'll show you some incredibly embarrassing pictures of how messy it got in the guest room. I'm redoing it again, and my goal lately has been to bring more cohesion to my home. I'm trying to prune out my belongings a bit, and repeat colors and patterns. Wish me luck!