Too Many Cups!! {How we finally organized the chaos on our kitchen counter}

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Does your kitchen counter ever look like this??

Well, mine does ALL THE TIME!! There are only 4 of us home during the day, and by dinner time no one can seem to find their cup, yet there are about 15 cups sitting next to the sink :) I've been trying to think of a way to organize our cups that works for our limited counter space {and looks cute too!}

The other day, I found this on clearance at TJ Maxx for $12...

Does anyone know what this is? I was thinking either an old milk bottle carrier, or something for wine bottles?

I don't know, but either way, I knew it was perfect :) The brown metal was kinda blah, and didn't look great on my brown counters/backsplash. It just blended in too much.

I chose a nice color of grayish-blue from Martha Stewart {Cloud}, and painted the entire metal frame {except the handle.} I thought it would look more "vintage" to keep that part original.

You can't really tell from the pictures so far, but I decided I needed to add a removeable "base" to go under the cups so they would be raised up enough for my kids to grab them easily. To create this, I grabbed 2 birch plywood boards from Michaels {1/8 inch thick, 4x12 inches in size}. I sanded them a little, then painted one coat of the same color on the top and sides of the boards.

I added a Matte finish spray coat to protect everything from spills and lots of little fingerprints :)

Here's how it turned out:

I added some wooden monograms with magnets on the back so I can remove them,

or switch them around as needed.

To make these, I purchased 4" wooden letters at Michaels, then painted them with white craft paint and added a little black glaze. For the back, I just used the cheap magnets you get by the roll.

Once the magnets were in place, I added our new cups {have you seen these in all the stores recently?}

And our cup organizer was complete!

I had a vase of flowers out in the kitchen and as I was taking pictures, I realized that the openings were the perfect size to fit those round glass vases everyone has! So I thought I would see what it looked like...

Ooooh, now I had to see how many of these vases I could round up in my cupboard. This would be such a fun way to display fresh flowers for a party!

And if you added the tray back in, with some mini trifle dishes - voila! You could create a candy bar, ice cream toppings, or serve snack food for your guests in a unique way. OK, my last idea is streching a little :) But if you have older kids and keeping track of your cups is no longer a problem, use it as a media/cell phone charging station...

The tray is really nice for smaller cups too, and right now we'll be using it for my baby's sippy cup :)

Here is one more Before and After:

Happy Friday!

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