On The (L)edge...and fun with napkins

Remember when I gave a teaser about building new shelves for the kitchen, and that they would be red, just like our new garbage cabinet?  Well, they are done, and here they are!

Oh, I soooooo love them!  We used the plans by Ana White, which can be found here.  They are kind of a richer red than the cabinet, but that's because I took a bit of a different turn with these.  On the cabinet, I gave it two coats of red, sanded it, stained it with a dark stain, and then poly.  On the shelves, I gave them one coat of the red, sanded, stained and wiped off.  But I wasn't feeling enough brown. So, I took the stain and poly in one that I used on the cabinet top and gave them a once over with that.  They turned out really rich, and the bonus was that they were poly'ed!  

When it came time to hang them, oh the fun we had!  We already have two sets of these elsewhere in the house, and each time, we have simply screwed into a stud through the back support.  By the time we load them up with stuff, nobody will see the heads, so no problem.  Well, when we went to find a stud in this wall, we found there was one on the corner, and one about 16 inches out from the other corner.  No dice.  In the end, we punted and went for the anchors.   

The dishes on there are just some white ones I had from several years ago.  I have big plans to keep different dishes on a rotation, which will include my beloved Christmas dishes from Target and my China.  And maybe some not so dishy stuff along the way, just for fun.

While I love the simplicity of how the all white dishes look, I wanted to have some fun with napkins to see if I could get a splash of color up there.  So, I raided up all my napkin sets (and if you've seen how our basement looks these days, you'll understand what an undertaking it was to find them) and got to work...

First up, Yellow napkins from Pier One:

Next up are the punchy, vintage-inspired Floral napkins I got on clearance from Home Goods...

And last, but not least, are these cocktail napkins from Crate and Barrel...

And then I decided to get really wild and sub water goblets for the mugs...

But in the end, I went back to the mugs.  I think out of all the napkin options though, I like the floral ones the best.  As my cousin Gabby would say, they are Super Duper Fun!  

How about you?  Which ones do you like best?  Or would you not put any up?  Or would you go with the goblets?  Perhaps you aren't a dishes person at all and would put pictures and figurines up there instead.  Lots of questions...go ahead and leave your answers in the comments!  I'd love to hear (or see) who's reading this blog!