to finally, finally, finally allow the gorgeous, classic china that we received at our wedding to have their debut party in a real-life display cabinet. you see, i’m going to be honest….we’ve never used it. (and, anyone reading this, give me a show of hands if you have china…have you used yours?)

just because we’ve never used it doesn’t mean i don’t love it. i mean, i do. (pardon the pun) i realize that in this day and age, having china and crystal is a huge privilege. but when we got married, there was something very traditional about getting china. my grandmother had china. my mother has china. it’s a keepsake. something that can be passed down. 

we selected the most classic pattern we could find….it’s a line from vera wang and the china is plain white. no pattern, no metallic rings around the edges. just plain white. the crystal was just as simple. simple and classic, i loved it.

and it’s been nine years. my poor china and crystal have been sitting in the same boxes they were packaged up in from l.s. ayres (any of my indiana peeps recall ayres?) until we had to start making room for little mr. re-nest #2…(just like johnson & johnson said, having a baby really does change everything. including closet space allocation.)

a display cabinet was needed. now, all of y’all know by now that mr. re-nest and i tend to be on the more modern side when it comes to furniture. we looked online and settled on a trip to ikea to see what we could find and make work. surprisingly, we found it. the ikea besta system. it had the ability to add some small lighting within the cabinet, along with glass shelving to let the light pass through (i had visions of the crystal glassware gleaming with the light and glass shelves….)

the cabinet with its glorious lighting

little mr. re-nest’s baby china

the crystal. finally able to breathe.

mr. re-nest did a fantastic job putting together the cabinet, and i didn’t do too shabby of a job installing the glass shelving (which required a follow up trip to ikea since they were of course, out of the shelves when we were there buying the unit). but what is super cool is that all of the beautiful china and crystal that has spent the last nine years in boxes and wrapped in tissue in a closet now gets to see the light of day. (oh, and the added benefit that all of this opened up much-needed closet space for us and the new baby too!)

here’s to letting pretty things have their time to shine,
ashley