Gift to myself...

I've been on a bit of a self imposed "austerity budget" of late. I think long and hard before buying lunch out, or any little trinket that catches my eye. But I splurged this week. Here is the story. For many years I have picked up odd dishes and bowls and used them, wonderfully mismatched, for our "every day" dishes. I had part of a set of plain white dishes that I had picked up a while back, but then, tucked amongst them were little numbers that had struck my fancy at a yard sale or junk shop. And I liked this just fine. Until about a month ago when I decided that all those different colors and SIZES were making me feel cranky. Here is what my cabinet looked like, (though it was missing a number of items in the dishwasher when I snapped this shot.) It was mostly the mismatched bowls of differing sizes that pushed me over the edge.

So I began to haunt the internet, looking for new dishes. I wanted something simple, with clean lines. And I wanted dishes that were open stock so I could replace any we broke, because we are prone to "whoops!" And I didn't want to spend much money, see budget information above. My sister has some dishes from Crate and Barrel that I like very much, so on Monday I looked there. And wouldn't you know they were having a sale! Not only that, but if I ordered on that very day I'd get free shipping. AND my niece has some kind of magic powers that enabled her to order them and save an additional 10%! Before you could say "ugly mug" the order was placed!

I heard some thumping on the deck this morning, and lo and behold, the wonderful UPS man was here, hauling big boxes to my door! Yippee! I felt like a kid at Christmas.

Wow, the packing people at that company can really wrap! There was a mountain of packing material and nary a chip in any of my pretty new dishes. After I unpacked them all I popped them into the dishwasher, and then took everything out of the cabinet, peeled up the old shelf liner and gave the whole thing a good scrubbing. Next I was out the door like a shot to buy new liner at my beloved Union True Value hardware store. Back home I lined the shelves, (something I am very bad at!) And...

Now when I open my cabinet I smile. Next I will keep an eye out for new glassware and maybe lose some of my "classy" Mason jars!