Shelves, shelves, shelves

I never thought there was such a thing as too many shelves. It was one of the selling points of this house - all those great built-ins. Now, let me give you a sad tour of what they all look like 6 months later.  Warning, it's not pretty...

You've seen these shelves before. They tend to be pretty utilitarian.  And, a catch all for stuff that the boys don't otherwise know where to put. 

I will step back so you can see the bigger picture (excuse the low quality night shot).

We currently have it set up so that photo albums, framed pictures, and desk stuff are loaded up on the family room shelves.  

Then, we have the master bedroom built-in unit.

Here, it's segmented out to his and hers sides. Not sure that's working for us. My stuff spills over to his side and it's completely lop-sided.

These gems live in the corners of the dining room. I fully intend for them to be un-green-ified soon.  The hold up is deciding if those hot curves will be allowed to stay (that and bringing the paint equipment home from Superior Condo). 

I stuck a few random vases, baskets, and "pretty" kitchen stuff on them. They make me wish I had a collection of white ceramic pitchers, bowls, vases, and such. I'm thinking about dark gray for them. Might make baskets and wooden bowls pop out nicely?

And, here's our final set of shelves (on the main floor, anyway). The whole fireplace desperately needs a makeover. We are itching to eliminate the country blue from this room. It is looking a whole lot better now that it isn't toy central. Though, I think the shelves looked better with the few cute toy items, puzzles, and games. 

So, any ideas? Should I just leave the blue and green ones unstyled until we get them reprinted? That's Brian's vote, of course. I think I might go digging in every drawer and cupboard for anything else I can find that's pretty enough to display and work on establishing some shelf themes. It would be so nice to have them looking pretty and functional as well!

Have a great weekend!