Finally completed my tea display accouterments

By Elizabeth Prata

So tomorrow will be a week since I've been off from school. Working 190 days out of 365 certainly has its positives. We have another week to go. I love the mid-year two week break.

One goal I'd had this vacation was to organize my teacup saucers. I've been collecting teapots and bone china teacups for about 4 years now. I have 8 teapots ranging in age from over 100 years to modern. I have 13 cups, ranging in age from 75 years old to 40.

One thing in a small apartment (410sf) is that space is a premium. Having extensive collections of anything presents an organizational and display problem. I also actually use all my teapots, so they need to be accessible. I like beauty and organization, so they need to be smartly displayed.

I struggled with this, not having the display just as I wanted it, until I recently found this display shelving. It can be put together in various ways and slid to accommodate different sized objects.

I love this display, it's perfect for my needs.

As for the cups, they are 95% the way I want them. I used a traditional cup and saucer display rack hung up nearby. But there isn't any further wall space to accommodate two more of these racks on the wall and me being able to reach the top one. Hmmm, what to do.

I had one old and one new shower caddy. Voila! Use what you have.

I say 95% because the shower caddy above has a crooked lower shelf, which displays the two cups crooked. Oh well.

I'd had the matching saucers stacked in fours and fives in the cupboard. But whenever I wanted to use a cup I'd have to hunt for its match, and rustle the saucers in and out hunting for it. This leads to cracking and chipping.

So what to do? I know! A dish rack! Someone gave me an Amazon gift certificate so I bought this rack and installed it under the other shelving I have in my one cupboard for dishes. Now I can see the matching saucer I want and I can just slide it out.

So that's the end of that.

I promised myself I'd read some of the books I need to complete in order to come under the wire to conclude my 2019 Christian Reading Challenge for the year, but I've been vegging out in front of the TV (laptop) streaming stuff and bingeing. I'll have to stop that. It's not productive. And I don't like breaking promises to myself.

I've had a good year. The Lord has been kind to me. If He allows, I'll do the same thing next year as this year: serve the children at my school with the best educational teaching and the most love I can muster, to be a good cat mom, to read and sip tea, and to continue living my quiet life in service to the Lord.

But we urge you, brothers, to excel more and more and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, (1 Thessalonians 4:10-11)