How My Clam Shell Found Itself a Home

When we moved to Connecticut, we had an amazing team of movers. The two guys in charge of packing and moving us were organized, efficient, careful with our things and...total smart alecks. The more they got to know me, the more the jokes and the sarcasm came out. They had a field day giving me a hard time about how many things I have from HomeGoods (being a serial returner, I leave tags on the bottom of everything), how many chairs one family could possibly own, and....why the heck anyone would want a giant clam shell. 
I tried to explain the awesomeness of my giant clam shell to them but they were wasted words. It just made them bust on me all the more :)

But you understand. Every girl needs a giant clam shell, right?! I got my clam shell several months before our move and had planned to fill it with succulents like this and use it as a dining table centerpiece:

{Restoration Hardware}

but then we found out we were going to be moving and so I put that idea on hold and threw an artificial plant in it and called it good:
Once we got to our new home, I realized that the clam shell wasn't going to work as a dining table centerpiece any more. It is way too big for our much smaller dining room table (we had to take both leaves out of the table to fit it in our dining room). For the past several months, I've heaved that sucker around from room to room trying to find a home for it - the bottom shelf of the office bookcase, the base of our black china cabinet, next to the fireplace...nothing was looking right. 

I had it out again last week giving it a second try on the dining room table (definitely a no-go) and was carrying it back to the land of unclaimed accessories in the family room when the phone rang. That sucker's pretty heavy so I put it down right where I was and ran for the phone. When I went back for it, I realized that my clam shell had found itself an unexpected home:

Because who couldn't use a unique dumping spot for magazines right next to the couch?


Thanks for that morning phone call mom :)