My Kitchen

Last year, I joined Kelly's (of Kelly's Korner) Show Us Your Home blog tour by posting about a few of the rooms in my house.  This fall, Kelly started the tour of homes again and I am joining in for Kitchen Week.  You can go to her blog to visit hundreds of other kitchens.

First of all, my kitchen never looks this good, but I was inspired to clean a little this morning and try to make it ready for this afternoon's "photo shoot."  The family room is beyond the sink and the dining room is through the doorway on the right.  This shot is from the breakfast area.  I think a backsplash could bring a nice pop of color to the kitchen but so far I haven't made the decision to actually go through with that.  I know exactly what I want from a picture in a Crate & Barrel magazine but in my small amount of searching I haven't found that specific combination of tile anywhere.

I don't have a lot of decorative items in the kitchen...my countertops are decorated with a plethora of small appliances.  With the exception of my KitchenAid mixer, I use them all often enough that it's annoying for me to pull them in and out of a cupboard.  

On the side of the fridge I have a magnetic board that I love.  You can't see how cute it is because it's covered with wedding invitations, save the dates and notes from Jack's school.

To the right of the magnetic board is the door that opens from the garage.  I try to keep the car in there most of the time so that is where we enter the house.  Unfortunately, there's no mudroom or closet when you enter from there.  We've had a bench in the breakfast area since we moved in and it has some drawers for storage but there hasn't been a good place to hang jackets and coats.  I have been drooling over storage solutions from Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel and Ballard Designs for two years.  I just wasn't willing to pay that much money, especially when our little bench only cost $12 and was perfectly useful.

Last month, my parents were in town for a week.  My dad likes to have little projects to work on around the house, so we decided to head to Home Depot one afternoon and put some beadboard up in the breakfast area to help make it a little more functional.  Here is the before picture:

The shelves were there when we moved in and I turned it into my Maine corner.  I really liked how they looked and I was reluctant to pull them down, but they didn't provide any hooks.  My dad installed the beadboard and trim and I did some painting and now we have this:

I still have my Maine shelf (decorated for the season) and now I have hooks.  This has been done for about 3 weeks except for the hooks.  The Kitchen Tour and a morning at home was just what I needed to get those hung.  In the storage bench, Jack and Casey each have a drawer for their hats, mittens, shoes, etc but that basket on the floor just beside the bench has kept that area a lot less cluttered and kept me a little more sane.  I was trying to line up their most often used shoes beside the bench every day and finally I just threw a basket there one day.  Now they can come in the house and throw their shoes in there and it's a lot easier for them (and for me).

Now I'm thinking about painting the well above the shelf and the other two walls of the breakfast room.  I have a green picked out that reminds me of Charleston/southern plantations but then I look at that shelf and see all the blue up there and wonder if they will look good together.  So that project hasn't happened.

Here is the view from the kitchen into the breakfast area.

The picture below is the craft corner.  I originally bought these drawers at Michael's to store my scrapbook supplies, but when I was looking for somewhere to store crayons, markers, pencils, pencil sharpeners, construction paper, scissors, etc., I was happy to give these up for a little more organization and to keep all those things in one easily accessible place.  Jack is always working on some special project or craft and pulling things out of the drawers.  You can see him in the picture above doing just that.

Here's one last view of/from the kitchen.  I left two big piles of paper on my counter to keep it real.  I try so hard to keep the ledge above the sink clutter free but it's a never-ending battle.  One of those piles is the pile of paper I have gotten from Jack since he started school a month ago.  I haven't quite figured out what I'm going to do with it all yet so I just keep stacking it up.

Thanks for stopping by!