this is where the books live

The other day a friend of mine posted pictures of five things in her home and wrote a little bit about each one. The idea to do this tickled me enough to come up with my own variation. And so today I will tell you about our five bookshelves.


This folding bookshelf is in my living room. It's home to some fabulous reads including the Nicholas series, Where the Wild Things Are, my collection of New York books, and my Robert Sabuda pop-up. The paper flowers on top of the Harry Potter books, along with the vase they're in, were a find in San Antonio's Mexican Market. The pretty blue and white vase with the totally fake daisies came from Portland, Oregon's Saturday Market.


This is our really, really, super tall IKEA bookshelf. After moving from our apartment in Indiana, which had some pretty marvelous built-in bookshelves, we needed something of our own to house all those books here in New York. Some of my favorites on this shelf include my collection of books by Indiana authors, books by and about the Bronte sisters, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, To Kill a Mockingbird, our poetry collection, works by J.D. Salinger, and a history of the 20th century told entirely in letters. Blake's philosophy books also live here. The bottom left corner is home to our eyesore of an enormous dictionary. It used to belong to BYU's philosophy department and was given to us as a wedding present by the philosophy professor Blake TA'd for. As for a few of the knick-knacks: the wooden car and the elephant came from Blake's mission in Uruguay, the nesting doll is from Russia (via my mother and her killer eBay skills), the Willow Tree statue came from my good friend, Nancy, in Muncie after Garrett was born, and the painting is one we got cheap on the sidewalk in front of the Met. It depicts the Flatiron Building, which Blake sees everyday when he gets off the subway in Manhattan.


If I had to pick a favorite bookshelf, this one would probably be it. It was handmade by some friends in our BYU singles ward and given to us as a wedding gift. It lives in our hallway and houses my collection of children's novels as well as the handmade books I crafted in the bookbinding class I took at BYU. The framed drawing on the top is a glass etching Blake did of an illustration from Betsy-Tacy (which are living on the bottom shelf). The cross-stitch piece was passed onto me by my mom. It was given to her at her bridal shower, which I was shocked to learn because the little family it depicts could very well have been the beginnings of our family: the oldest child is a blond-haired girl (me), and the next two are boys (my brothers, Tyler and Riley). The marbles and the jar they're living in came from Muncie's Jar Museum, and the metal register bank belonged to Blake's dad.


This shelf is in Garrett's room and it's home to the picture books, the board books (which are in the red bin), and Garrett's toys (which are in the other bins). The majority of the picture books were passed onto me when I got married and moved away. They were the stories I grew up loving as a child. I'm a huge fan of the Wallace and Gromit poster sitting on the top, as well as the Slinky Dog, which I received one Christmas shortly after Toy Story was released. Also, the adorable little school chair beside the shelf was sitting next to our apartment complex dumpster shortly after we moved to Indiana. There were no children in our family at the time we rescued it, but I sure can't wait 'til Garrett's old enough to sit in it.


This last bookshelf is also in Garrett's room. It houses the rest of our literary collection. Highlights include my cookbooks, my baby and pregnancy books, the Christmas books, as well as Blake's collection of psychology books that were deemed "not pretty enough" to live in the living room. You can't really see it, but my collection of Classic Winnie-the-Pooh figurines lives on the top, as well as the Winnie-the-Pooh books and Garrett's baby book.

I probably could have also taken a picture of Blake's nightstand, as quite a few of our books are temporarily living there. I think we're going to allocate some of our tax return money to get another bookshelf from IKEA. Our book habit appears to be serious, and pretty soon we'll need more shelf space.