Bar Styling

Thank you for weighing in on the dining room pillow dilemma yesterday! I love hearing your opinions and I'm liking the suggestion of using the yellow for now since it's summertime, and using the brown come fall. I plan to style the table soon and show you how it turned out.

Today, I'm turning my attention to the area just next to the dining room- the butler's pantry, and specifically, the bar. I'm a big fan of bar carts and bar styling, but have never really "styled" our bar area until recently. It's fun to play around with the different bottles and accessories and see how it looks.

The Raffia tray is from West Elm (18 x 28) and their mirrored trays are awesome too. If you don't have a bar countertop, the West Elm tray comes with a sleek stand that you can make into a bar cart. When our house was first built, the back cabinet wall was just drywall, but I had the mirror added and it made such a big difference in reflecting the light from the windows.

In setting up my bar, I started with six bottles of Pellegrino water for height and because I love the green color. Then I layered in other liquors, keeping the tallest at the back and the shorter ones toward the front. At first, my tray was too crowded, so I moved some of the alcohol to a lower cabinet. I didn't want it to look cluttered.

A bunch of mint adds a live, green element and the colorful yellow and white straws are fun. Mojitos anyone?!

The mini silver cups are sophisticated too.

Being the chocolate lover I am, I always keep a little treat nearby. These Ghirardelli salted caramel squares are so good!

A bowlful of limes is so clean and pretty, but slicing one up made it look even better.

I don't use our gold flatware very often, so I thought it would be nice to put it out on display. I got mine on Overstock. It's currently out of stock, but you can sign up to be notified when they restock. West Elm sells a nice set of gold flatware too. Of course, if I can keep the hydrangea alive for more than a few days, that would be great.