A "New" China Cabinet For the Dining Room

After I re-purposed my old china cabinet into the living room as a bookcase, I was given another one by a friend about a year ago.  It was really big, and wasn't really my style; but I had another friend who was interested in trading her china cabinet for it.  It took us a while to coordinate the swap (she lives on the opposite side of town, and we're both pretty busy), but we finally did it last weekend.  The new cabinet is an Ikea LEKSVIK cabinet (discontinued):

The bottom half  is full of Sylvan's and my cookbooks; and the top houses some of my rock and mineral collection, which hasn't been on display for the past couple of years since I moved the other china cabinet.  Yay, rocks!

Top: shells in the back left corner; naturally-formed crystal points and clusters
Middle: carved spheres and points, a jar of tumbled stones, and a fluorite plate
Bottom: mostly fluorite, with a couple of decorated rocks from the garden

Somewhere I have a box full of fossils, and another box containing my sulfurs, chalcanthite, and a few other things; but I have NO idea what I've done with the boxes.  I'm so organized.  (x_x)



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Things That Rock

This is my brand-spanking new china cabinet.  Or maybe it's just my same old china cabinet with different stuff in it.   I kept all of my herbs, oils, waxes, and other supplies for making homemade body care products and perfumes for years...so long, in fact, that it was all completely out of date, and most of it was *rancid*.  Eeeeew.

Meanwhile, I have this massive rock collection that's been scattered all over the house and boxed up awaiting some magical day when I had a good place to display the entire collection all together.  Tick...tick....tick...

goodbye, rotten herbs

I was standing around the dining room the other night, just sort of absently gazing towards the china cabinet while my mind was on what I was going to do with all the knick-knacky clutter that lives in my house, breeding like freaking roaches, when it hit me:  a GREAT place to start would be to deal with the clutter by categories...like my rock collection!  Perfect solution!   And I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

the central, open shelves.  The punch jar
and cups are a set my mom bought in Germany
before I was born. :) 

still using this top shelf for overflow from the
spice cabinet in the kitchen 

A few highlights: 

a polished Smoky Quartz point

Citrine sphere

Emerald Quartz sphere

Somewhere, if I can find it, I also have a whole box of quartz pieces, some nice sulfides, a box of fossils... I wonder where they've all gone?

purple Fluorite octohedron with pyrite inclusions

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Enhydro agate, sealed - has pocket of water millions of
years old, trapped inside! 

Note:  IDK WTF blogger is doing with the spacing and format here.  @_@

a plate of tiny Amethyst crytals

Celestite cluster

Rogerley Fluorite, which fluoresces a light blue
in natural daylight

And don't even get me STARTED on my collection of dead sea critters - shells and skeletons and corals and things.  If I ever figure out what to do with those, it'll be another post. :)