Whimisical Wednesday:: Mini kitchen makeover

Hey all! I have a fun change I made to my kitchen I made a few weeks ago that I wanted to share. I bought a set of some lovely green plates at a friend's yard sale about 2 years ago with the intention of hanging them somewhere in the house but I could never figure out where so they sat for a loooong time. Finally it hit where I could put them one day & then we moved and the plates got packed away along with the hangers for 6 months. Then we moved back to our house & I was determined to get these plates up & change up our dining area a little.

Aren't they pretty??? I love the tan trim around the edge of the plate.

Here's a before shot of the area before we transformed it. I got the lovely iron cross at Micheal's on sale once; it almost has the exact same color as the plates with rustic brown accenting.

Our kitchen it very large & there's an opening in the wall that looks into the living room & there's always been this blank space above that opening that was just begging to be filled with something pretty. Here's a better before shot...

I had 7 plates in all & used plate hangers to attach 3 plates on either side of the cross for an extra something. Hubby did a great job hanging them up for me. :-) They were about 5 inches down from the top of the ceiling & we spaced them about 6 inches apart from each other. Here's the after shot...

Nice huh? Complete with the measuring tape on the shelf on the right & my dirty kitchen fan blade. :-) Just keeping it real peeps...

I love the extra pop of color it adds to the kitchen. I do as much as I can to detract from the bright yellow walls since our landlord won't let us paint. :-/

Here's a shot of the entire opening looking into the living room. Those little shelves on the side are my achilles heel of decorating, I'm always at a loss of what to put in them because inevitably the back of something is always showing on one side of either room so I try to use things like round candle holders or those kissing birds on the top left of the opening that look good from either side.

What do you think?