China Cabinet Change-Up

First of all - I'm interrupting the regularly-scheduled programming here for a second. A sweet friend of mine asked me to share this:
"I was hoping you could help out my family/step sisters. They came to us last year that their dad was sexually molesting them. After the past year our judge sent them back to their dads this summer and doesn't believe them. We started a petition for the judge to listen! Please share with friends and family to sign and protect my sisters. http://www.change.org/petitions/please-help-protect-us-from-our-physically-and-sexually-abusive-dad"

Natalie & Olivia

Obviously I don't know the details of what's been going on here, but they're hoping to get enough signatures to convince the judge to take another look at the case. If you'd like to sign the petition, just click the link above, but at the very least, please keep this sweet family in your prayers.
Okay, now moving on to much less important things...
When we first moved into the house (two years ago this week!), one of the first things I did was set up our china and crystal in our china cabinet. For two years, it looked like this, with all the place settings in neat little rows:

But at some point I saw this post on china cabinet styling, and I loved the whimsical, artful look of not putting the dishes in their neat little place settings:

(source)

So I decided to get creative with my own china cabinet! We have lots of pretty dishware that was just hiding in cabinets in the kitchen, so I pulled out some of my favorite vases, a platter, a cake plate, and a few other things, along with the vintage dishes from Aunt Lucy, to add to the china cabinet.

And then I just messed with it. I took everything out and then put everything back in slowly, rearranging as I went. And now it looks like this:

The top shelf has a couple vases (both wedding gifts), three dinner plates, a few salad plates, some teacups, and a pretty crystal bowl.

The little sugar bowl is my favorite piece from our entire china collection, so it went front-and-center on the second shelf, along with two more dinner plates, most of the crystal glassware, a cakeplate (a wedding gift from my sisters), the rest of the salad plates, the champagne flutes from our wedding, and the little cream pitcher of course! 

The third shelf looks pretty traditional still - dinner plates, teacups, all the saucers, and some glassware.

The fourth shelf ended up with the rest of the china and glassware, along with a silver pitcher and platter (both wedding gifts).

And on the bottom row: the soup bowls, dessert dishes, and salt and pepper shakers from Aunt Lucy, along with a tiny little cakeplate (a gift from my friend Kristen):

When we got married, I was kind of nervous about picking china and crystal that I'd have forever. I was only 20 at the time, and I stressed over it a lot to make sure we picked something we'd love for a long time. There were a lot of trips to Macy's. Jeff and I didn't exactly have the same tastes in china either, so I spent a lot of time trying to choose a simple, classic pattern that we'd both be happy with for the long haul.
I think we did well though. I still absolutely love it, and I don't see that changing any time soon. We actually use our china at least a handful of times a year (and the china cabinet always looks sad and empty when we do! haha!), and sometimes I drink my morning coffee with a china teacup and saucer just because I can. :) My sweet grandparents bought all twelve place settings for us, and the other pieces and crystal also came from beloved family and friends, and it's just so special to me that we can celebrate special occasions with the china we received from people we love. 



So what do y'all think? For the first couple days after I rearranged everything, I really felt like I had ruined it. But then I kind of started to like it. Jeff likes it, but I don't know. I'm considering switching it back to the way it was. Thoughts?