Styling a Bookcase

or, what to put on these @#$ shelves.....

I've been helping my niece Miriam and her hubby Ross with arranging stuff on their bookshelves in their living room.

Miriam wanted to be able to store more than books on the shelves, but the stuff she needs access to is not always attractive.

Soooooo.....

I ordered some baskets for them to hold these less appealing items,

 and protect aesthetically sensitive eyes from the clutter.

I mentioned this in my last post, and since then I received the baskets from Pottery Barn.

True to how things tend to go when decorating anything, the baskets were larger than listed on the internet.

Soooooo.....

they didn't fit on the side shelves.

oy oy oy oy oy.....

I first ordered 4, and then thought that if 4 are good,,,,,,,,,,

6 would be gooder!!!!!

So, I ordered 2 more.

plus the basket liners.

I ordered the smallest size of these under bed baskets....

Sooooo.....

by yesterday I had received the first batch of 4, and I carried them up to Miriam and Ross's abode to install them on their shelves.

What a bummer.

I hate when things don't fit.

WELL.....

We were able to use the 4 on the middle shelves, and I will return the other two.

Meanwhile, the liners are much darker than the pictures show on Pottery Barn's website.....

So I'm returning all 6 of them.

Sooooo.....

this is what the bookshelf looked like before I started on it....

And then I added my touch.

This is just part way done, but I wanted you guys to know what I've been up to.......

The baskets looked great on the middle shelves,

 so we started arranging the blue Bristol glass that I had given to the kids, mixing the collection in with their books.

For those of you who don't know what Bristol glass is.....

the kind I collect is from the Victorian era and is an opaque glass most commonly in one of 4 colors.

Blue, pink, sand or white.

It is usually in a vase form and is decorated in an enamel paint, mostly of floral or bird designs.

So, I gave the kids Kris's and my collection because I felt the blue looked pretty in their living room.

Then we ran out of books!!!!!

So I said....

"Don't you have more books?????"

And Miriam said.....

"Yes, we have them in boxes in the basement."

So I said.....

"Well bring them up here and lets put those suckers on these here shelves!!!!!"

Miriam claims that when I recount our conversations to you guys, that I make up a lot of stuff.....

I insist that it is just creative verbaladging!!!!!

Don't bother to look that word up in the dictionary.

The dictionary doesn't know what it's talking about.

ANYWAY.....

Miriam and Ross brought up boxes of books from the basement, and we started arranging them.

But it was getting into rush hour, and I had to travel back down route 95 to get home.

Sooooo.....

I told them to take out all the books and put them on the shelves, and I would help them rearrange them when I came back.

Miriam claims that I was acting like Jeff Lewis, bossing her around.

She's wrong!!!!!

I was acting like Betsy Speert!!!!!

On that note,

Latah, Gatah