Sweet Parrish Place

I'm the girl with champagne taste and a tight budget

Color Coordinated Bookshelf

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I don’t have anything crafty for you tonight.  I have been so busy trying to finish painting my kitchen cabinets that I haven’t had time to do anything else.  These cabinets have taken up a lot of my time this fall.  I will be so glad when they are finished.  Sometimes you can make a small change in your home that has a positive impact, for free!  I have seen lots of pictures of people who color code their books and I have been meaning to do it for a while now.  After all, I color code all of the closets, mine, both of the boys, and my daughters.  So why not my book case!  By the way, this in NOT all of the books I own.  I have books sitting everywhere.  I prefer hardback books, my husband prefers paperbacks.  I don’t display as many of the paperbacks, but there are some paperbacks in the bookcase, and some of them I keep and some I don’t keep.  In this book case are some of my favorite books, but not all.  For example, is the dictionary my favorite book?  Of course!  Not!  But over the years, whenever my children have asked me what a word means, I make them pull out this book and look it up.  I guess you can do that on the computer nowadays, but I still find this book pulled out of the bookcase and sitting around the house somewhere quite often.  So here is a close up of my bookcase before I color coded it.  I actually had things stacked in there from larger to smaller.

Update 11/01/14:  See the current state of this bookshelf here.

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So, what I did first was to take all of the book covers off of the books.  Next I just started grouping them by colors.  I realize that I have a lot of books that are black and white, and not a lot of colors.  I didn’t worry about what size they were, and I also moved them all close to the front of the shelves so that they were even.  No, I did not throw away the book covers.  I asked myself what I was going to do with them, and I found the perfect solution.  I stacked them all neatly and hid them in the bookcase.  They are back behind all of the books!
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Do you see any books in there that you have read?  I have read every last book in the Left Behind Series by author’s  Timothy Lahey and Jerry Jenkins.  I can’t put those books down.  I read a few several years ago, and took a break, and then a year or two ago I decided I had to finish the series, so I did.  It was awesome!  Do you see Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy in there?  I consider finishing that book an accomplishment, and a rewarding one at that.  I have read all of the A Child Called It books by David Pelzer.  True stories, and a heart wrenching read.  I read the entire A Child Called It book while sitting in an airport after missing a flight.  The DaVinci Code Books by Dan Brown are my husband’s and I have read the first.  It was another one that I could not put down.  I need to read the second one.  There are a couple of Dr. Phil books in there.  Love him.  Some tourist books of New York City, my favorite city in America, and I can’t get there enough.  But I digress, this post was supposed to be about how the books look, not what the books are!  I just can’t help myself because I love to read and do so daily.  Here are a few more viewpoints of my bookcase, and a little sneak peak of a small corner  in my living room:

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In case anyone is wondering about where I bought anything you see, I will tell you as best as I can.  I bought that bin to the left of the bookcase at Marshall’s.  I keep blankets and throws in there.  The bird on top I purchased at Homegood’s.  The pottery was purchased on a trip to Austin from a little square where they hand a bunch of vendor’s with hand made goods.  The other square bowl I don’t remember where I purchased.  The glasses are from Pottery Barn, and the book I bought at Gabriel Brother’s.  The metal sculpture is from Pier One, but I bought it at Big Lots.

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And the little dust bunny is evidence that I need to vacuum!  Haha!  I moved something out of the way to take this picture and that must have popped out from underneath.

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What do you think?  Is it an improvement?

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