Category Archives: Kitchen Design

Kitchen Before and After

We decided to change up our kitchen by painting the majority of the cabinets white. Some of you might cringe but our eyes have not enjoyed oak lately, mostly on cabinets.

We are keeping the island as it was.

The pantry has not been painted yet but is next on the list.

The process is not easy but Dear found it a good job to do while the temps are freezing outside which makes it hard for him to work the construction of his shop.

We are pleased with the new look. I’m thankful for a husband who is not afraid of hard or tedious work.

I showed you the wheel barrow that we bought our granddaughter for her 3rd birthday. Her she is hard at work outside. This photo was taken yesterday by her mom.

This family works hard together and they are not afraid of dirt! Anybody else out there who calls a wheel barrow a wheel barrel?

And yes, it is still cold outside here in Northeastern Washington State!

Stay safe and keep the Faith!

Before and After…

So now all of our appliances in our kitchen are matchy matchy. Our real estate agent was happy.

We had our first container dropped off to fill and wouldn’t you know we are now going to have a weather event on Saturday so we will have to delay filling it. Lots of rain and wind is in the forecast for Saturday. The containers are water tight but if the doors are open while there is a lot of moisture, that moisture will get trapped inside. Oye. We’ve been selling items we can’t use anymore on Offer Up and have had some good results. I’m happy to put a little cash in my pocket instead of just dropping everything off at Goodwill. We’ve been working from morning to night packing and I am having little free time to blog or visit blogs.

Tomorrow while the guys work hard my daughter, DIL and sister are heading north for tea at a Camomile Farm. Looking forward to getting away from boxes for a few hours.

How is Spring shaping up in your corner of the world?

Sneak Peek

So happy to announce that our counter tops were installed on Wednesday by noon. We are still miles away from a fully functioning kitchen. Our cook top is connected to gas and ready to go. Our sink and dishwasher still need some plumbing parts to get things running well. The new sink is deeper than the old one so we have to make adjustments. Dear started the layout and planning for the backsplash and as soon as the sink and dishwasher are up and running he’ll start on the subway tile. Last but not least will be the window trim. Good thing he’s retired!

When it’s all done I’ll do a full before and after post. We are pleased with the quartz! It’s called White Peppercorn.

I’m off to a Seattle Sounders Soccer game with my kids tonight that will determine if we go to the finals again this year. Go Sounders!

UPDATE:

We won! The Seattle Sounders are Western Conference Champions again this year!

The Sounders will play Toronto in Toronto on December 9th.

These two booked their flight to the game and now all they need are tickets for the game!

What a fun time celebrating together and now we are looking forward to watching the final.

My Sister-in-law Kelly has been an educator for many years and she’s posting an Advent Series called Advent in Art. It’s free and you can sign up to receive the daily prompts by following the link. If you are homeschooling this will enrich your art history program.

The Advent Season has begun and it’s snowing on my blog again. Thankful!

All In A Days Work…

…the first stage of the kitchen cabinet installation was completed! We had a weekend filled with hard work and lots of fun. My brother Tim (on the right) arrived with his dear wife Letty late on Thursday night for the weekend. On Friday, because of Tim’s expertise in cabinetry and installation, Dear, Josh and Tim had all the cabinets installed in Josh and Laura’s kitchen. Our son in law Andrew has also been working alongside Dear on the complete renovation of the kitchen/eating area of J & L’s home but he has classes on Friday and had to wait for Saturday to join in the fun.

While the guys worked on Friday Letty and I shopped at a couple Goodwill stores and had lunch at Ariana (an Afghan restaurant). We bonded with the hostess/owner who spoke Russian to us and offered us the most delicious roasted pumpkin appetizer (pictured in the center) which was her mother’s recipe. I will be on a quest to try to duplicate it. When I asked her about the spices in the dish she was close-lipped, guarding the family recipe! We enjoyed Lamb Shashlik for our main dish and each had a cup of the restaurants special steeped tea.

On Friday night we had a full house for dinner and dessert. Letty and I made chicken fajitas and Letty made her signature Mexican rice and beans. I was photo challenged and only got one shot of the fajitas in process not the nice finished product with tri colored peppers and onions mixed in. Oye! We had a pumpkin dessert that I will be posting on the Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog on Thursday.

On Saturday the men (Dear, Tim and Andrew) headed back to Josh and Laura’s to work on trimming out the cabinets, electrical, installing the island pendant lights, and taking out a few more walls to add much needed insulation in the home. The girls, Letty, my sister Lana, Katie, Laura and I had a girls day out shopping and eating lunch together.

Our favorite store of the day was Charming Charlies. Do you have this store chain where you live? We all were able to find something we liked and we each left with an item or two or three.

On Saturday the guys took a lunch break, too, and ate at a Mexican restaurant together while we were eating at Coho. We all gathered in the evening at our house when the days activities were done and enjoyed left overs.

On Sunday after church we headed to Josh and Laura’s again and Tim and Dear added some finishing touches to the kitchen. Tim added the knobs and pulls, in less than an hour with the jigs he made. We were all so impressed! Dear tweaked the electrical while Josh added insulation to some walls. The ladies gave their expert opinions and guidance! We went out for one more meal together before Tim and Letty had to fly back to Southern California.

Our kids really appreciated the willingness of their uncle to fly up and add his expert assistance and skill in completing the kitchen cabinets. They would have never been able to complete this project so quickly without his help. Because my brother has the gift of helps and service this was not work for him but a joy! Thank you Tim and Letty!

Happy Monday to all of you. We have a free day today so time will tell what calls to us…

Where Do You Keep It All?

Time for fellow Bloggers to link up at The Tablescaper and show the world where you keep your stuff. All my storage is a work in progress right now. I’m tweaking here and there and shuffling stuff around to be more organized.

 

I’m working on getting all my candles and candle holders together. My tablecloths are out of control and I need more hanging space for them.

 

My tiered servers are too tall for a shelf so they sit on the floor of this closet. One each of my different tea cups are finally all in the same place. The extras I have of some of these patterns are down in the basement on my latest storage space!

We just bought this unit from Ikea and set it up in our basement. This room is gutted right now and needs to be worked on but I’m so happy to have all my plates in one spot so I can see what I have. I like this arrangement because I don’t have to dig into the back of a lower kitchen cupboard to get at all my plates. My everyday dishes are still in my kitchen.

Now to my actual kitchen storage…

Everyday dishes, Italian Countryside by Mikasa, that I bought at Macy’s for a super price. Soup bowls and cereal bowls and tea mugs and dessert dishes that were all purchased at Goodwill or other Thrift stores..

 

Water goblets and Cocktail glasses. I really enjoy different styles and shapes of glasses.

My large platters and some cutting boards.

 

The cupboard above the refrigerator. My sets of champagne flutes in their boxes for special occasions. My pitchers, vases, fondues, punch bowl, cookie cutters, etc.

Oh dear more glasses. These are the everyday kind and then some fun sets way on top. I think I could give water to 200 people easy in all different shapes and sizes of glasses!!

 

I really love my stainless drawers.

 

And right under my everyday stainless is another drawer with dividers for my serving pieces and extra stainless.

My Le Creuset and my bake-ware. Maybe I should just insert here that I was a Home Economics Major so these are just the tools of my trade.

 

My baking, measuring, and other stuff drawer.

 

More specialty equiptment and my large stock pots.

More bakeware. This is where the cake pans, bundt pans, muffin pans, pop over pans and mixing bowls, etc. are.

 

Springform pans, tart pans, pie pans.

Believe it or not there is more stuff and more cupboards but this post is getting way too long!! Before you click away here is a photo of my kitchen with all the cupboard doors shut!

Photobucket replaced all my photos with ugly black and grey boxes and they are holding my photos hostage until I pay them lots of money. I’m slowly going through all my posts and trying to clean them up and replacing some photos. Such a bother.


Three or More? ~

 

So I’m trying to figure out exactly what the 3 or more boundaries are. I’m going out on a limb here. I’m going to show you the inside of my kitchen cupboards in our home in Washington that definitely have more than 3 in all of them. I’ve been asked many times where I store all my thrift store finds. Where do I put all the dishes that I enjoy. On Monday for Metamorphosis  Monday I showed my kitchen with all my great cupboards. Well here’s what’s inside of them.

Everyday dishes, Italian Countryside by Mikasa, that I bought at Macy’s for a super price. Soup bowls and cereal bowls and tea mugs and dessert dishes that were all purchased at Goodwill or other Thrift stores..

Wine glasses, Water Goblets, and on the top shelf some of my creamer collection. Bottom shelf all our coffee making accessories…

 

Water goblets and Cocktail glasses. I really enjoy different styles and shapes of glasses.

 

Serving bowls, serving trays,  platters, and bread baskets.

My large platters and some cutting boards.

Cake plates and shower and tea plates, doilies, napkins, place cards, mirrored coasters.

More luncheon plates. Some thermoses. Oh and those old fashioned glasses for my gin and tonic ( don’t tell my mother).

 

The cupboard above the refrigerator. My sets of champagne flutes in their boxes for special occasions. My pitchers, vases, fondues, punch bowl, cookie cutters, etc.

Oh dear more glasses. These are the everyday kind and then some fun sets way on top. I think I could give water to 200 people easy in all different shapes and sizes of glasses!!

 

I really love these divided drawers for my flatware.

 

And right under my everyday stainless is another drawer with dividers for my serving pieces and extra stainless.

 

Knife drawer and knife sharpeners.

My Le Creuset and my bake-ware. Maybe I should just insert here that I was a Home Economics Major so these are just the tools of my trade. And while I’m inserting stuff…can you feel my pain that I am living 1200 miles away from all this equipment. :0)

 

My baking, measuring, and other stuff drawer.

 

More specialty equiptment and my large stock pots.

More bakeware. This is where the cake pans, bundt pans, muffin pans, pop over pans and mixing bowls, etc. are.

 

Springform pans, tart pans, pie pans.

 

The mixer and the food processor plus the large bowls and flour and sugar in the bottom of the pantry.

The tupperware I haven’t gotten rid of yet :0)

I’m so sorry for this boring post but now my insurance company knows some of what they’ll need to replace if anything happens!

So does anyone need to borrow something?

For more Three or More visit Tam at The Gypsy’s Corner.

Photobucket is holding all my photos I stored with them from 2007-2015 hostage unless I pay them a lot of money. I’m slowly cleaning up many posts from this time period and deleting their ugly grey and black boxes with a ransom request. Such a time consuming bother.

8 Random Things About My Kitchen ~ Meme

Hello everyone! We made it to Seattle at 12:30 A.M. this morning. 17 hours on the road. I’m brain dead but I had this little meme in my drafts and decided I needed to put something new to look at on my blog. Since the kitchen and cooking and eating and fellowship were the theme of the last 3 days I thought this was a good filler for the time being. Hope to get around soon and see what you are all up to! Blessings.

Here’s a little Meme about the Kitchen. List 8 random things about your kitchen. You can combine things about your kitchen with your cooking style…

1. My Kitchen in my home in Washington is also my Dining Room. It all happens in here….

2. I have a gas stove top that is separate from my electric double oven.

3. A center rectangular work area with cabinets and a section of bar seating doubles as a buffet service area.

4. My kitchen has loads of cabinets that were an Oak finish and Dear painted them for me in two shades of green with my walls an even darker shade of the same green tone.

5. We used to have fluorescent light fixtures in this space that we jokingly said we could do surgery under. Dear replaced them with recessed lighting and drop down pen lights over my Island and a light fixture over our table.

6. We have seated up to 16 people around our dining room table!

7. We like to cook classic comfort food and also experiment with the latest recipes we see on Food Network!

We clean up all the messes in this wonderful sink. It’s deep and wide and I can fit a cookie sheet in here and my large pots and pans.

8. We love to share our space and our food with no expectations of reciprocation…

If you’d like to participate in this meme please do and let me know if you do…

Photobucket is holding all my photos I stored with them from 2007-2015 hostage. They have blacked out all those photos on my blog posts. OH BOTHER! I’m slowly cleaning up my posts.