Apartment Bar Cabinet Reveal + Styling 🍸

      Ryan and I recently finished my favorite home decor project to date: our bar cabinet area! This is such a glow-up from how this area of space in our apartment used to look before. I shared all the details on my Instagram last week, but I wanted to share here on the blog as well.

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     I have been collecting Starbucks mugs when I travel for the past 10 years. I bought my first one during a college summer internship in Kentucky in June 2015, and haven't stopped collecting since! Prior to our bar cabinet, this space in our apartment foyer housed all of my Starbucks mugs. The first two shelves (pictured below) are ones from my own travels, and the bottom shelf were gifts from friends' travels, and a couple of Goodwill finds over the years. 

      My mug collection still means so much to me, and I knew I didn't want to get rid of them! But the desire to give this space a glow-up and also to have a dedicated bar space in our apartment kept getting stronger. I finally decided around the holidays that I would be okay to take down all of my mugs and put them in storage until we move to a bigger place. So that's what I decided to do! Here's what the space looked like before:

      And here's the grand reveal! I was debating whether I wanted to do a bar cabinet or a bar cart. We ended up finding this bar cabinet on Amazon, and instantly we both agreed that this was right for our space. We measured and the dimensions looked perfect, too! Ryan and I tend to have different home decor styles. I'll be honest that the dark door pulls and glass design style on this piece weren't my personal favorite, but I did like the light wood top and white cabinet door combo, and I knew this piece would match the overall decor vibe of our current apartment very well. And it did! I'm so pleased how it looked once we got it to our space. I also love the fact it has built-in lighting that can change colors- how fun is that for entertaining?!

     Ryan did say that it was a lot harder to build than he anticipated, but after a few hours he was able to get it all done by himself (I was at work that day). I feel like it is so high quality for the price! We used Amazon gift cards that were wedding gifts to purchase it. 

      I decided to do a light gold and floral design for styling the bar cabinet. I found the gold floral lamp of my dreams on a whim at our local Homesense store! I can't find it online, but it's from the brand Rachel Zoe Home. (This lamp from another retailer is pretty similar!) 

      The fun story behind the lamp is that Ryan and I were randomly browsing our local Homesense store one Sunday afternoon, and I saw this lamp and couldn't stop thinking about it. One of my mom's best friends had given us a Homesense gift card as a wedding gift, and I knew I wanted the lamp. I had to work the next day but Ryan was off for MLK Day, so I sent him to the store to get it with our gift card. The best news ever was that overnight it had been marked down from $70 to $35! It was meant to be ours. We also love how the base lights up, too! 

      More wedding gifts are pictured below! I was so excited to receive this beautiful cake dome as a wedding gift. Thanks to our new lamp, I wanted to stick with a light floral styling theme for the top of the bar cabinet. These two flower related coffee table books that I received as bridal shower gifts were perfect here!! 

      We were originally registered for a much more expensive decanter set for our wedding, but no one ended up getting us that. For Christmas, I found an almost identical decanter and glasses for Ryan for a fraction of the price! I was a little worried about the quality, but it's excellent! Highly recommend this as a gift item or wedding registry item if you don't have one. 

     Behind the decanter, you can see a few of the beautiful champagne flutes that friends gave as bridal shower gifts! And below, you can see our Love is Blind gold wine glasses that Ryan got me last year. 😊

     I love these fun and colorful margarita glasses! Various friends pitched in to get them for us in the different color schemes. I also have used them to make rum daiquiris and cosmopolitans since getting them. 

      Ryan and I both came into living together with each having a random assortment of mismatched wine glasses (most of mine being from Charlottesville wineries). I was so excited to register for a receive a set of 12 "grown up" wine glasses as a bridal shower gift! They fit perfectly in the built-in wine glass storage in our bar cabinet.

     My friend Katie got us this lovely Virginia decorated board as a wedding gift! This was not a registry item that I had, but she guessed my taste very well and Ryan and I both loved it. I feel like this is the perfect unique display spot for it! 

     And finally, this chic gold gallery wall frame set was another wedding gift! My matron-of-honor Caroline and her husband gave them to us as a wedding gift. It was actually Ryan's idea to do black-and-white prints instead of color! We each did a photo with our side of the wedding parties, one of each of us getting ready, and each of our favorite pictures of the two of us from our wedding day.  The frame set comes with nine frames, so I have three left! Once we have a house, I'll probably use the remaining three for something in a guest room or bonus room (not wedding related). 

      Everything in our bar cabinet is linked below! What truly makes this space special is that 95% of the things in it and on it were wedding and bridal shower gifts from dear friends. Even the cabinet itself was purchased with Amazon gift cards that we got as wedding gifts! This special space in our apartment not only looks great, but will always make me smile when I think of the love and generosity bestowed on us during our engagement and wedding seasons.

     While I do share snippets of decorating our current apartment often on Instagram, I realized I haven't done any dedicated blog posts since I moved into this space over a year and a half ago. Let me know if you'd like to see a full apartment tour blog post at some point! 

    

      God Bless,

      xoxo Annaliese