One Room Challenge: Fall 2014 - Week 5

 
 

It is week five.... 

  

 So now the panic has set in. I am going to be spending a lot of all nighters to get this library pulled together by next week.

 

The feature in the room, of course, is the bookshelves, so I spent time this week working on getting the books looking just right on the shelves. These bookcases have been with me through all of my houses, and I have learned a lot over the years about how to style them.

 

First is always to edit down to what I really want to be displayed. I jokingly call it "book shelf worthy".

 

I try to avoid just lining the books up in a row, and instead place some vertical and others horizontal.

 

 

 

Accessories are also added onto the different levels of stacked books to add some interest.

 

 

 

For my favorite books or the ones with pretty covers, I turn them facing front.

 

 

 

To keep the bookshelves from looking too cluttered, I always leave some space mostly empty with just one or two items placed on a shelf.

 

 

Finally I group similar books together to help me easily find them later.

 

 

 

I still need to do a few more tweaking, but it seems to all be coming together.

 

How do you like to display your books on bookcases?

 

Find Inspiration: Adding a Pop of Color to the Back of Bookshelves

 

 

 

I love the white bookcase I have in my living room. But lately I've been think that it would be nice to add a little pop of color to the back of the shelves.



I could always just paint it. That would be quick, easy and cheap. And it would be a great way to add an accent color to the room.

 

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But I would like to add something a little more than just color. Maybe, a pattern with wallpaper would be just the right addition to the room.

 

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A great way to introduce a little texture is by using bead board. The kind made out of wallpaper could easily be cut to fit into the back of the shelves.

 

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Or I could use more unusual materials like tin or wood planks from an old fence.

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And what a great idea to make each shelf different. That would definitely add interest to the room.

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So many possibilities... I will let you know once I finally pick which way to go. What is your favorite?


Link Up with Remodelaholic

 

 

 

Check Out Other People's Books

Anne over at the wonderful and very thought provoking blog Modern Mrs Darcy is doing a great link up today.

You get to check out other people's bookshelves...and there are no worries that you will look nosey when doing it!

I'll be honest. I always like to see what other people liked reading enough that they put it on their bookshelf. I often get some great suggestions on what I should pick up as my next book. Plus you learn a lot about the other person!

Be sure to check out the other participants by clicking here.

I am sharing this post...an oldy but goody.


I needed to organize my bookshelves.

I do not have a before picture to show you, but let's just say it looked something like this...

 

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And here is the after...

These bookshelves have been around through four moves and three paint jobs. A couple of the shelves have footprints in the paint from where my then toddler son ran across them, while they were drying on the floor, during one of the repaints. Needless to say these bookshelves and I have been through a lot together, and I love that now the shelves are cleared and organized. It really shows my books off to their best advantages. I also now have the room to add a few extra decorative items to the shelves.

First thing I did was pare down the books to only the ones I truly could not part with. This was so hard to do! It was a bit like having to say good bye to old, dear friends. I kept stopping to read them.

I looked something like this....

The Bookworm by Carl Spitzweg

 

Finally, I had two boxes full of books, and I carted them off to donate to the local Friends of the Library Book Sale.

 

I decided to organize the books roughly by subject. This has really helped me be able to quickly find what I am looking for.

 

 

 

I placed some of the books at different angles to add interest to the shelves.

 

 

My mother gave me this pillow, and it is one of my favorite things.  The glass vase was hand blown at a glass factory near my hometown.

 

 

The organized bookshelves were such an improvement to my living room, that I went to work on the bookshelf in my children's room. 

 

 

 

We mainly group the books here by subject, author or reading level.

 

 

 

Now that our bookshelves look so great, I declared a ban in our house...no more buying books just to be buying books. As a result, I have to really like the book for me to purchase it and put it on my bookshelf. We almost exclusively get all of our books from the public library now. I would love to see the data of which family checks out the most books at our library. I think we would win.

How do you organize your books, and how do you decide which make the cut to put on the shelves?

Decorate for Fall

Fall is in the air. I love the crispy weather and the beautiful clear blue skies. Watching the leaves change to their bright, brilliant hues is one of my favorite things all year.

It's time to decorate the house with a few fall themed items.

I decorated the table with gourds and squash that I hollowed out to use as vases for flowers. Click here for the tutorial.

The vase on the end table normally holds fresh flowers from our garden through the spring and summer months. Now that the weather has turned, wheat  is more fitting for the season.

I added the same thing to a vase on our bookcases in the living room. The painting is by one of my favorite artist...my older son.

Finally, I few items were added to the front porch. I will add more in a few weeks as the Halloween season approaches, so I kept it fairly simple for now.

Stay tuned for tutorials of how I made the decorations.

Check out the link up on The Inspired Room and Savvy Southern Style

Read a Good Book: September Twitterature Link Up

Today I am participating in a link up with the blog Modern Mrs. Darcy. In this link up, called Twitterature, bloggers are asked to create short, Twitter-style reviews of their recent reads.

I recently finished organizing the bookshelves in our home. Check it out here. One of them is the bookcase in my boy's room. Now that they are in elementary school, I let them decide how they wanted to store the books. They choose to group them by author, subject and reading level.They felt so proud of themselves after we all finished putting the books on their shelves. I hope that now that they have a little ownership in this project, they will be proactive in keeping it tidy...a mom can dream, right!

So in honor of my boys newly organized bookshelves, for this month's Twitterature link up with the Modern Mrs. Darcy, I am going to feature books that my elementary age boys read this month.

I've been reading a chapter a night to the boys from the Percy Jackonson series by Rick Riordan. We are now on book 2. It is a very fast pass, high action story. We all enjoy reading these books.

After we started reading the Percy Jackson series, one of my sons became interested in greek mythology. We discovered the series Tales from the Odyssey by Mary Pope Osborne on a display at the library, and he is now on book 4. As a big fan of the Magic Tree House series, these books were a great way to introduce him to the story of Odesseus.

For my other son, the sports nuts, he read the Million Dollar Shot by Dan Gutman. He really got into the story and quickly read the others in the series including the Million Dollar Putt and the Million Dollar Kick.

As for me, this month I read:

MWF seeks BFF by Rachel Bertsche
A story about one women's search for a new best friend. It reminded me of when I moved to a new city and needed to restart my social circle.

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
A very inspiring read. The book gave me a few ideas on small changes I could make to improve my life.

Ladies' Nights by Mary Kay Andrews
I read other books by this author and liked them. But I just couldn't get into this book. The women in the story were just a little too angry and out for revenge for my taste in what is suppose to be a light chick lit book. Though the main character is a blogger, so the part about her work was interesting for me to read.

Revel the After Photos: Bookshelves

In yesterday's post, I talked about the large amount of books I had and my need for organized bookshelves.

I do not have a before picture to show you, but let's just say it looked something like this...

 

Via

 



And here is the after...

These bookshelves have been around through four moves and three paint jobs. I couple of the shelves have footprints in the paint from where my then toddler son ran across them while they were drying on the floor during one of the repaints. Needless to say these bookshelves and I have been through a lot together, and I love that now the shelves are cleared and organized. It really shows my books off to their best advantages. I also now have the room to add a few extra decorative items to the shelves.

First thing I did was pare down the books to only the ones I truly could not part with. This was so hard to do! It was a bit like having to say good bye to old, dear friends. I kept stopping to read them.

I looked something like this....

The Bookworm by Carl Spitzweg

 

Finally, I had two boxes full of books, and I carted them off to donate to the local Friends of the Library Book Sale.

 

I decided to organize the books roughly by subject. This has really helped me be able to quickly find what I am looking for.

 

 

 

I placed some of the books at different angles to add interest to the shelves.

 

 

My mother gave me this pillow, and it is one of my favorite things.  The glass vase was hand blown at a glass factory near my hometown.

 

 

The organized bookshelves were such an improvement to my living room, that I went to work on the bookshelf in my children's room. 

 

 

 

We mainly group the books here by subject, author or reading level.

 

 

 

Now that our bookshelves look so great, I declared a ban in our house...no more buying books. We almost exclusively get all of our books from the public library now. I would love to see the data of which family checks out the most books at our library. I think we would win.

Check out the link up at Serenity Now,  Calling It Home, I Heart Organizing, Tatertots and Jello,  Not Just a Housewife, The Pink Pagoda, Remodelaholic, A Bowl Full of Lemons