This Just Makes Me Smile

There's this tiny wall in the eat-in portion of our kitchen.  It was screaming for some kind of artwork.  It's a really odd size, which made finding artwork tricky.  

This space has had me stumped ever since we moved in.  That is until the day I saw this post from Kelly's blog: A View Along the Way.  Isn't that plate wall to die for?  After seeing her plate wall, I knew that's what that odd space of mine needed.  

So I began collecting plates a year ago.  I cruised the clearance aisles at Target, TJ Maxx and Crate & Barrel looking for cute plates.  I also scoured the plates at Goodwill and Red Racks.  I had some very specific criteria: it had to be cute and it had to be cheap.  Eventually I came up with enough plates to fill the space.  

I decided to tackle the project this past weekend.  The first thing I did was buy these plate hangers for the heavy plates.  Then I used Kelly's plate hanging hack for the lighter-weight melamine plates.  Once I knew how I was going to get the plates on the wall, I had to decide where to put them.  So I traced each plate on paper and played around with the arrangement.   

Once I had an arrangement I was happy with, I started to put the plates on the wall.  At one point I discovered a spider in the crack where the wall and ceiling meet.  I tried to play it cool for Jazzy and squished it in some paper.  The spider managed to escape my paper trap and crawled on my hand.  I almost fell off the stool and landed on my plates, but I was able to pull it together without falling.  I think Jazzy might have laughed at me. 

Here's the final outcome: 

I like the wave arrangement because it's not too perfect.  Plus it was nice not to have to carefully measure each plate's placement.  I also have some extra space to work with in case I find some other cute plates later on down the road.  

Now whenever I walk into our kitchen, I can't help but smile.  I've noticed that Jazzy smiles when she comes into the kitchen, too.  But that might be because she's thinking of me almost falling off the stool. Either way, there are more smiles in our house, which is always a good thing.