Eating with animals!

It really is no surprise that I fall in love with cute animal stuff.  For some reason, I'm just attracted to it - I can't really explain why, but I've always loved cute animal stuff.  When I was a kid, I had a gigantic collection of stuffed animals.  My mom devised a way to store them - we hung a hammock from the ceiling in my room over my bed and put my animals in it.  If we hadn't devised this storage solution, there would have been no place for me to sleep on my bed.  I distinctly remember when we had to clean out my stuffed animal collection to get rid of some old ones to make room for new ones.  I remember one time that I agreed to get rid of a few animals, I woke up in the middle of the night and was crying because I didn't want to get rid of any.  I snuck into the closet and took back the ones I thought I could part with.

I saw these plates at West Elm some time ago, and absolutely wanted to buy them, but my Husband, the voice of reason, asked, "Do we really need them?"  Of course we didn't really need them, but they are so cute!  I really wanted them, but refrained from buying them.  Until... they went on sale for $6 each.  And.... we have four of them now to mix in with our regular plates.  Husband actually really likes them too.  There is something so whimsical and cute about these.

When I pulled them up to include here, I see that there are four new versions of them now...  Love the bunny and badger and rooster and blue jay!   Uh oh, I may need a set of these too.

These cute owl mugs, also from West Elm would make a happy addition to the animal collection.  I love the metallic gold one - super cute!

If ceramic plates aren't your thing, West Elm has these darling melamine plates (and serving trays too)!

Anthropologie also has some absolutely adorable animal stuff too!

Love these animal plates - there 10 designs to pick from, including a parrot, butterflies, a monkey, a lion, a cheetah, a little girl, an owl, lady bugs, a bunny (my fave), and a humming bird.

These little dessert plates are absolutely adorable.  There are several designs to pick from too - giraffe (my fave), lady bugs, red birds, owl, bee, chameleon, humming birds,  and a praying mantis.  I love the slightly different shapes of each of these plates, and the varying borders for each.  Imagine getting one of each of these - love love love!

And, these canape plates are super cute!  Not every one of these is an animal, but there are several in the collection - dog, horse, love birds, narwhal (one of my faves), octopus, bee, unicorn (one of my faves), and zebra.

I can't possibly use all of these plates, but, hey, a girl can dream, right?

Finally, I saw these foxy juice glasses the other day in the Paper Source catalog.  I love getting this catalog and looking at all of the cute little things they have.  But, these glasses really stood out.  They have tea towels, aprons, and a variety of other adorable fox things to go along with these glasses.

If you are in need of any little animal tchotchkes, Kikkerland, has a TON of amazingly fun, cute, and inexpensive things.  I picked up this little hedgehog toothbrush cover over the weekend.  I could spend lots of time and money ordering from this site.

And, hey - eating with animals is way more fun than eating with a boring white plate.