Bookshelf revamp

I plugged my camera in today and realized I have plenty of pics to blog this week! yay! I'll start with my newly de-cluttered and organized bookshelves, though! Like a dummy, I didn't take before pics. Boooo. But, that's okay, just trust me. They weren't horrible, but they weren't pretty either.

After getting rid of a lot of books and moving what was left around, I'm very happy with how they look now!
Here's the full view (this is our family room, by the way):

 All the shelves used to be crammed with books, so there was no space to make them look pretty. Now there is! I scoped out pics of pretty bookshelves on Google images and Pinterest and found that stacking collections and similar sizes of books together can make a big difference. What's with the people who turn the books spine-side-in so they all look white from the front? Um, don't you need to see the titles?? That's a trend I don't get.

 Since this side is less visible from most of the room, I used the bottom shelf for the less attractive stuff--my weights, our stack of library books and our cases of movies and CD's. The blue basket on top holds library movies, work-out DVD's (Casey and I are doing Insanity! but that's another blog post) and some other movies. I try to keep as much junk off the mantle as possible.

 I found the awesome vintage Corningware loaf pan at Saver's recently! It holds remotes :)

 The books we have left are ones we love and definitely will read in the future. I passed along some vintage books that I knew would never get read. It's my philosophy that even vintage things should be useful or get passed on. All of our kids' books and homeschool books are on other shelves in our dining room/homeschool room.

 My cookbooks got pared down too! One can only use so many, right? Especially now, with Pinterest and all!

The stack of quilts gets used almost daily and just makes me happy. So it stays :)

That's that! Amazing how much cleaner and nicer it looks in here now! Since you're looking at it, any ideas about my fireplace?? I don't love the greenish tint of the metal, but I'm not really sure what to do to make it prettier. I could paint it, but what color? Or I could replace it with something salvaged. I dunno. Thoughts?