Shower gifts put to good use

Last weekend my mom and sister visited Chris and I in Dalton for the night. The wedding was over a month ago and I had yet to unpack the vast majority of our shower and wedding gifts. I had absolutely no idea where to begin with the giant pile shoved behind our couch. This had been driving me nuts for several weeks...

When I was little I was always in trouble for something - my mentor teacher, Pierre, once referred to his  daughter as a "feral child." My family thought that was also an appropriate name for me! I was always a mess, in a mess, and making a mess. My room was like a disaster area. When my mom would finally break down and make me clean it I would be locked in there for hours! I would have to stop and play with every. single. toy. along the way.

Point of the story is - I am still the exact same way. Unpacking all of these gifts took me days hours because I had to take out everything and play with it! It was like Christmas because I hadn't seen any of it in months! Once we finally sorted through it all I think I ended up repacking over half of it and storing it in our guest room. I only opened up things I was sure I needed and plan to save the rest for when we get a bigger place. Of course the little kid in me wanted to open everything - but my mom kept reminding me that if I needed any of it I could go in the guest room and get it. It would be like my own personal store! How fun, right? The only thing is, I was really sad about having no where to store all the beautiful serving pieces I received. The ladies at church absolutely spoiled me with so many beautiful things! Hopefully one day we will be able to move back home and I can put those pieces to good use throwing showers for other brides and babies.

Until then, my sister came up with a great solution: to use the items as decoration above our kitchen cabinets. Our kitchen is pretty small, but I really like the cabinets. It's functional but definitely not my ideal set-up. I have always loved to cook and definitely need more counter space. I can't wait until we own our own home and dad can build me the pinterest kitchen of my dreams! Having a dad who is an awesome woodworker comes in pretty handy (more on that later!). Anyway - here are a few photos of what we chose to put above the cabinets. I ended up only using a couple of the serving pieces - I was afraid to use any of my metalworks pieces because I wasn't sure if they would tarnish. I'm handling one area at a time so I'll post some more pictures when I perfect other spaces.

Ignore that gaping hole above the stove - I'm working on something to go there right now. Any good ideas?

The small basket holds all of the cups for Chris's Keurig - I hate those ugly things!

Hey, it put all of our old textbooks to good use! I was glad to get all those ugly electricity guides off the shelf! ;)

We finally found a rug we both loved, so now that the living room is almost cleaned up I'll post some pictures of it!