Welcome to the welcome station!

Every home needs a welcome station. The place where you put your keys, let your change pile up, and basically keep all kinds of junk off your counter or kitchen table.

And finally, after a year of living here, I have a welcome station.

I'm a bit torn about my new place. Which I guess isn't really that new anymore. I tend to have, um, very expensive taste. The important thing is I rarely indulge in my expensive taste. But if I find an $800 chandelier, for example (true story), I can search and search and search for the $150 version, but I will not love it as much. So the question is this: Do I hold out for the stuff I love love love, or do I suck it up and try to decorate my apartment on the cheap, with stuff I feel kind of meh about? Or do I hold out to find the $150 version that I love love love?

I'll let you get back to me on that.

I mean, I know I won't be here forever and eventually I might live with a dude and he probably won't appreciate my Austrian crystal silk tufted princess headboard, but I'm still 31 and grown-up(ish) and it's still is MY space and I want it to be as awesome as I. As me. As I.

Whatever.

Anyways, I had a vision for my welcome station and no matter how hard I tried to find an alternative, more readily available option for it, I just couldn't sway my vision. It started with this mirror that I got on sale at Union Lighting. That mirror has been there for months. And I had to have the PERFECT shelf to go under. And I have to have the PERFECT mail catcher thingie to go under that.

I found the mail thingie from the lovely Umbra (do they make anything I don't enjoy? I don't think so), but I could not FOR THE LIFE OF ME find the perfect shelf.

And so, my welcome station area just sat and waited.

Until, finally, when my parents started packing up for the Big Move of 2010, I noticed that my perfect shelf had been sitting in my sister's childhood bedroom all along.

So I stole it. With my mom's permission, of course.

And now my welcome station is complete.

Here are a few items you should keep in your welcome station:

1. A mini orchid. But rotate with smelly candle for watering and sun exposure. Of the orchid. Not the candle. Duh.

2. Some inferior lipgloss that doesn't make it to purse status. So you can fully buff on your way out the door.

3. Loose change. Because that's just where it goes.

4. Unpaid bills. They make you look important.

5. Your own business card. Because the photo of the mail thingie on the box said business cards go there.

6. Keys to your home. Except not the extra set because if robbers come in you'd be SUPER pissed if they stole your extra keys.

7. Um. That's all.



P.S. I'm fully aware that the mail catcher thingie is not aligned with the shelf. But I prefer not to talk about the 178 holes I drilled into my wall only to drill into concrete/metal/titanium/unidentified undrillable substance and break the drill bit. IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE OFF TO THE SIDE, OKAY!?