While the cat was away...

...this mouse did play!

That is, if you consider this sort of thing 'playing'.

While hubby was away for the weekend I got a wild hair and started dumping. Once I plugged my ipod into the stereo system and started jamming some tunes, I really got into my groove and had a blast!

We have a pretty extensive book collection, ranging from some Shakespeare favorites, to quite a few by Kahlil Gibran, lots of political and economic books, books about wine and entertaining, interior design books, world travel, family heirlooms, and a wide range of religious and philosophical books. All of the travel, sports and finance books went upstairs, most of the rest stayed down here.

This is a very busy and cluttered 'before' shot of the bookshelves in our living room. Hubby actually set the original version up when we moved here over 3 years ago. I've spruced and edited here and there, but never had I pulled everything out and started all over, until this weekend.

'After'

Edited down about as far as I can take it.

{click on image to see both sides}

I pulled everything down, organized the books by theme, and separated all of the knick knacks on the coffee table with a favorite pile and a giveaway pile. Once I thoroughly dusted the shelves, I started putting only our favorite books and 'stuff' back onto the shelves.

It took some thinking, looking through saved images, and texting good friends, begging for pictures of their newly re-done shelves {thanks for the sneak peek Lins!}.

Magnums of wine up top and some neutral books and decor below. That plaster owl is a favorite as I have a thing for owls. They remind me of my father and since he passed away a few years ago I've had a few strange owl-encounters in my neighborhood.

This is such a focal area in our home and while I would love to have a matching collection of all antique vellum books, that would leave us nowhere else to house our collection of 'our' books. This unmatched collection is my favorite as these belonged to my father and were some of his favorites.

A picture of hubby proposing to me in our old backyard. A small group of close family and best friends were sitting around the table when he popped the question. When they brought the bottle of Dom outside during a casual Sunday evening get together I began suspecting that something was up. In this picture he's holding the ring in the silver box after giving me a sweet intro into why he wanted to marry me and that he'd already obtained my father's blessing while at lunch earlier that week. I'm looking at Ashley, saying 'did you know about this'? I think I asked her that before I actually said yes. ;)

He knew I'd say yes. Best friends, soul mates, travel companions~ and now parents to a little angel bug~ for life!

Ok, I digress....back to the shelves.

Books from a street vendor along La Seine in Paris under the cloche, dried lavender, gray pot and gray kooboo basket. I love the neutral and simple feel of these shelves.

The left side:
The right side.

On the fourth shelf down from the top you can see an owl canister with a top, on the left of the large stack of books. This canister belonged to my dad and he'd had it for years and years.

So there you have it, a bit less cluttered overall.

I've already edited and moved stuff around a bit since snapping these pics so I'm sure this will be an ever changing thing, but I'm glad the hard part is finally over. It only took me 3 plus years~ ha!!

xo~

Tricia