The Interior DIYer
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Kitschen shelves

Last weekend I spent some long overdue focus on our kitchen. I enjoy silly things like fussing over arranging a display, and sadly our kitchen was lacking this attention. Since I have so many little fecky kitchen things I’d love to show off, cheap shelves were purchased, colour was applied {‘winegum’ spray paint from Montana}, father’s skills and drills were summoned, and kitsch was applied to the kitchen. 
This space had hanging storage already, but it was driving me insane as it never looked tidy. You may have noticed, our shelves are placed up against a door. We haven’t opened said door in 4 years, so this is not a concern {it’s just a secondary entrance to our hallway}. 

I’m not finished tweaking and rearranging the shelves just yet, but for the moment I’m very happy with how its turned out. I like the balance of old lady / nerdy stuff / old and new mix that’s going on. I’m contemplating adding either a painting above or below, or some action along the lines of bunting / dangly stuff, but I think I’ll let the shelves settle in first. 
xx A
Top shelf – coral {thrifted}, vintage vase {thrifted},  matroyshka measuring cups {ordered online}, tea cup plates {thrifted}, Star Wars Cookbook {ordered online}, other cookbooks {store bought}. Bottom shelf – Marcel Wanders candle {store bought}, milk pourer kitty {gifted}, teacups and saucers {thrifted}, cheese plate {thrifted}, skull salt and pepper shakers {thrifted}, and weighing scales {inherited}.
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Ring my bell

I’ve been scouring the internet high and low for inspiration regarding what to cram into our gorgeous {and flamingly massive} cloche. There are some amazing ideas out there, so I’m feeling quite excited about what can be done with ours. Behold, the fruits of my labour …

Above – as creepy as this will sound, I’m really intrigued at the more clinical and/or ‘creepy’ bell jar arrangements out there. Skulls are an obvious yes for me, but there’s just a certain something about what’s going on with the above. 
Every ounce of me is already screaming for team Teacup Bell Jar. This is fighting strong and definitely appealing to my obsession with dainty things, so a load of dainty things in a massive display? Hell yes. But my fear for shattered porcelain might be trumping that.

I’m always conscious of our home being too me or too feminine, so I try to impress hubby by incorporating man things. We unfortunately don’t have a robot collection, but this may be substituted with something, dare I say, Star Wars related …

I’m also into simply placing a load of stuff in a pretty glass or cup under the cloche. For me this would immediately scream knitting needles since I have some that are in quite lovely colours as well as some inherited from my nanny.

Once I saw this  mini skeleton action going on, I couldn’t not include it.  That’s all I have to say about that. 
And finally, I’m including the below picture because of the parallel-living-room-universe that is going on here. This is the exact layout of everything I have in my living room – rectangular tray, stack of books, mini cloche, amethyst, skull, second stack of books, and even the ratio of couch-to-coffee-table-to-wall layout. Except our living room is a much darker version. Mind = blown. 
What do you guys think? Do you have cloches or bell jars at home, and what do you have in them? I’m still open for influence.
TFIF homies. Bring on the weekend. xx A
Image cred 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.
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I’ve got a ‘pot problem

The following fancies I hoarded over the past couple of months from local charity shops all around Dublin. In total, we had enough teapots for our wedding to have two per table, and three at the head table – which is a whopping … 25 teapots altogether. These babies deserve a post of their own …

A tall antique coffee pot {I know, not tea, but fit the theme} which is  now home for our kitchen utensils, along with a wooden tea caddy which I spray painted a deep cherry hue to fit in with our weddings’ colour theme. In the lamest way, I was excited to use this as a center piece as it broke away from the other traditional tea pots, yet was still in theme. Just the variation we needed. Now used {shock-horror} to store husbands tea.
And below, jazzing up the bathroom. I had a massive hydrangea from the wedding in this right up until a couple of days ago. He is in a better place now. 

And one of my favourite teapots – one of my parents’ engagement gifts from way back in the day. This one can be spotted on my blog a couple of times at this stage. An oldie, but a goodie. 
These last two teapots got the job done. Nothing too fancy about them, but I’m thinking of maybe Sharpie-attacking the taller one for an alternative look. Or they may go back to the charity shop from whence they came. 

We had many, many more teapots as our centrepieces for our wedding, but some of them were borrowed from family, so they went home. Some of the charity shop teapots we re-homed to friends and family who fancied them more than I did. All of which you will hopefully get to see from our wedding pictures, which are due to arrive any day now. So exponentially excited. 
I’m saving two very special teapots for a later post. Let’s just say they incorporate hydrangeas and are very close to my heart. So what about you. Do you have any favourite teapots? Are they inherited, or were they cheap as chips? Both are my favourite kind. I hold no prejudice against ‘pot lovers.