A Group of Owls is Called a Parliament.

It's no secret that I love every square inch of my apartment. Seriously. I know, you're looking around your house right now thinking I like that window and I like my counter tops. But you don't seriously love every little bit. Nope. You don't. No one really does. I do. I even love my teensy-weensey bathroom that is unreasonable for anyone over 5'8". I love it. My mom said that if you love something, you'll want to take care of it and keep it clean. Well, my house isn't exactly spotless. In fact, I made chili on... Tuesday. Is there still boil-over dried onto my stove top? Absolutely there is. I'm a human. Is there a stack of months-old mail on the dining room table? Of course, who uses a dining room table? A lot of times I don't even put my dinner on plates, much less a table.

Anyway, my friend, Deanna posted about her favorite display shelf and I thought I wanted to do that, too. You know why? Because I like it when people look at my stuff. ...I'm going to leave that and let you chuckle at the inadvertent adianoeta. I have a camera but it's kind of having a tantrum these days so we're going to make believe that my camera phone produces a much better product than it really does.

I put all of my favorite stuff on the mantle. Why? Because it is the very first thing that people see when they turn the corner into my home. When people first walk into my house, they're greeted by a stairway. The stairway isn't that impressive and it's often dusty and I forget to clean it because, well, once I'm not on the stairway it's hard to think about it. I imagine that people think, "Libby's kind of icky, I mean look at this dust. It couldn't even pass a beige glove test!" But then they turn the corner and they're all, "Ooh! Peacock feathers!"

I switch out all of my stuff pretty often. It's usually on accident, too. It happens gradually.

My favorite thing on the shelf is this framed card that my sister got from a delicious little Etsy shop. These were the thank-you cards that she sent out after her baby shower back in October. Inside this card is more than "thanks for the onesie". It's a lot of heartfelt I-Love-You's from my sister. She's a really great writer. Read her blog, it's better than mine. She has real-life stuff to talk about.

Next to the thank you card is a bottle of Muscatto wine that Sarah gave to me for Christmas. It's filled with the peacock feathers that were all up in my tree this year. It adds a glorious height. I needed that.

Joshua drew that dude and he's come with me on every move I've made since I left college. It's kind of fading but I still love it and when the lighting's dim you hardly even notice.

I'd like to say that jar is filled with rocks from a highly sentimental trip that I took while I was out finding myself and backpacking across Scandinavia (because that's where I'd go, screw Paris). But really it's a bag of black rocks from Walmart. The owls (and there are plenty throughout my house) came from my sister-in-law who has single handedly provided me with my collection. The orange speckled guy is the newest member of the parliament.

Further down the line is another bottle of wine and my favorite Christmas card that I haven't had the heart to take down yet.

Lastly, isn't this chair bad ass?! My little brother left it when he moved out and I'll be damned if anyone other than myself will ever remove it from my house. It is simply incredible.

This post wasn't that funny but look at all the pictures!