New Kitchen Cabinet Display

One of the things I love best about collecting kitchen items is displaying them in my glass-fronted cabinets. When we bought this house, having cabinets like these was on my wish list. (It definitely wouldn't have been a deal-breaker for sure, but it helped when we looked at this house!)

So it was a perfect place to display some of my collections. For a while I collected printed glassware (another post on that coming soon), and I inherited some really neat red and yellow pottery, which went with my kitchen's yellow, green and red color scheme. Those made a nice display for a while. But lately I've been collecting Pyrex, FireKing and jadeite, and decided to re-organize my displays to better reflect that.

That meant moving things around and re-thinking what I reallly wanted to look at for a while. It took me the better part of a rainy afternoon last week to finally settle on a layout, so to document that, I thought I'd show you all.

Here's the before:

Not too bad, really, but not as organized as I would like. Some of these things have been in the same spot for ten years! Also the clear glassware at the top right kind of disappears. (It's really neat close-up, with etched stars, but would be better put away somewhere else.) You can see the printed glassware all jumbled in the lower right. I figured, since you can't really make it all out, maybe it's best if I put most of it away and only get out only one set at a time.

Here's the finished display, and close ups to follow:

I tried to organize it by color a little bit, with the red and yellow pottery near the yellow and green Fiesta. Then the jadeite and Peach Blossom FireKing (which is a match made in heaven, I think), then the Pyrex on the right.

The Fiestaware is not old (mostly), and our regular everyday dishes, so they have to be easily accessible.

This is probably my favorite one, with the FireKing and jadeite. The printed glasses in the carrier are the only ones to make the cut right now. You can see some of the Pyrex holiday mugs sneaking into the picture there- guess they wanted a bit of face time in the FireKing cabinet, LOL!

The Pyrex cabinet. I am trying really hard to limit myself to just the primary colors set  (I'm using the yellow 404 at the moment, so it's not pictured) and turquoise Butterprint, plus pink and promotional designs. The lone FireKing wheat casserole in the lower right belonged to my dad, so it still gets a place of honor.

Right now, I'm pretty happy with it and it is a nice change of scenery!

Rainbow's End

Hi PC3, SusieQT here from Practice in Time!

After a hectic couple of weeks, I realized that I needed some retail therapy.  I have about 2 hours to myself on Thursdays while my daughter is at school, and today I definitely wanted to hit the thrifts. It was a very good decision!

I decided to brave the local Sally Ann. This store is only a couple of miles from me and is huge- probably over 10K square feet. I think it used to be a Kmart. It really is that big! You'd think it would be a slam dunk, that I'd be there every week, but no. It just hasn't paid off for me very much. Lots of smelly stuff and smelly people. 

But today I found a few gems, and in the housewares section. Other than the furniture section, which is miniscule, and the jewelry section, (which is non-existent- where does it all go?) the housewares section of this store is probably the worst.

I have never, ever, found Pyrex in this store, let alone a fridgie in great shape and in a pattern I collect. But there it was, a primary yellow 503 with the old-style lid for $3.99. It was very dirty, but cleaned up nicely. I'm halfway there to completing the primary fridgie set!

This is the best find of the day, perhaps the year. Yes, it is jadeite, and not a repro. I think I must have knocked over a few babies and old ladies getting to it. It was $2.99. You're reading that correctly.

It's a large mixing bowl, and I happened to know exactly what it belongs to:

A perfect fit! Never did I think I would find it, and for only a couple of bucks. See, there really is treasure at the end of the rainbow!