Serving Up Useful & Beautiful

I've got this six foot long buffet. . . I purchased it specifically because I LOVED it (more on using that concept to decorate in a later blog. Was a recent light bulb moment for me as a decorator) and because it was the same width as a pair of gorgeous windows in my dining room.

Then we moved.

And another perfect spot became evident in the bar area of our kitchen / great room. Wider than the window behind it, but still with plenty of light to make the glassware sparkle and glow.

But, with a different perspective, how to arrange my favorite serving items to be beautiful to look at (from the living room side)

and yet easy to grab (from the kitchen and dining side) when entertaining.

To start with, I had to decide which pieces really had a purpose. Only items that had a specific use or function within our lifestyle were 'allowed' to live in the collection. Not as hard as it seemed, but I did have to watch myself 'justifying' to keep things. . .

Then I streamlined further by only keeping those pieces that I truly LOVED (there's that word again) and also matched the rest of my dishes, plates and bowls. That eliminated a few more items.

Once that was done, I had to figure out how to best to arrange everything so it looked pleasing and uncluttered on the open shelves. I decided to keep like with like - clear or white together and bowls or cake plates together - with a few touches of whimsy (notice the turquoise leaf dishes,

scalloped stacking mini-bowls

and my little mice).

I added a mini-collection of varying-height robin's egg blue vases on top -

each with it's own 'floral' spray (one with baby's breath, another with pearl tipped sea grass and the last with glass tipped metal branches) for texture and height. The bird-themed ceramic tea set by Mud Pie is one of my favorites that definitely had to be shown off (another bird tea set will find a new home).

And notice the servingware there on one side? Too cute to hide in a drawer, right? And do I LOVE it? Yes. Yes I do. May as well show it off!

Keeping the color theme simple and the arrangement as uncluttered as possible makes this extremely functional buffet a wonderful display piece as well.

Now to do something with that china cabinet. . .

Have a DISHFUL kind of day ~

Robin Z