Kitchen Love

I am solar powered.  This is the time of winter that always gets the best of me.  Especially when there's a cold going around our household- Hubby had it last week, now it's my turn.  Fuuuun. But I'm trying to stay motivated so I can have progress to show you. If you follow me on instagram, you probably saw... we have new appliances!!

A new fridge and a new stove are very pretty.  Yes, we need a new range hood still.  We're really excited with the change, although the stove will be MUCH prettier once it's working.  As I mentioned when we ordered the appliances, we're getting a propane tank hooked up to power our new gas stove in our gas-less house.  We have the plumbing, and the stove.... but the plumbing inspector needs to approve the pipes before the propane can be delivered and the stove can be hooked up...  and we're impatient... yay for a gas stove!!

I wanted to style the kitchen Sunday so I could take some good pics in the light to share, but I got a little side tracked and scrubbed every single surface in the room instead.  It had to be done.  After scrubbing, I did start to think about styling in the kitchen for the first time since we moved in. 2 years ago.  It's about time, don't you think?

I found the perfect tray at target to organize a few useful things on the countertop and I LOVE how it looks there.  Awkward corner no more!  Hubby's on the fence about it, but says he'll defer to my judgement.  That boy can be so smart sometimes.

I'm really excited to start using the new stove and to finish beautifying the room that I've been ignoring for 2 years!

January Motivations

Sorry I've been neglecting you this past week.  It was a blur of a week and I've been struggling to get back in the swing of things after the holidays.  I finally took my decorations down over the weekend, though. Today has been 2 years since we moved into our house & organization has been a HUGE challenge in this tiny house.  Some areas function flawlessly while others collect stuff we don't need.  I've actually been spending quite a bit of time in the basement trying to organize my life house from the bottom up.  After pseudo-organizing the basement last winter, it got totally lost again when my parents started prepping for their move.  My basement ended up inheriting more than a few boxes of things saved from my childhood.  Can I interest you in over a dozen original Carebears?  I still am undecided about saving or selling.  But anyway, that's not my point for this post.  I've been spending a bunch of time down there as opposed to tackling some more of the 'pretty' projects on my to do list.  I'll spare you the "unorganized" to "slightly less unorganized" before and afters and wait until I have something a little more glamorous to show.  I have lots of basement ideas- we'll see if I can actually keep up the motivation in the basement long enough to make it happen.

For now, I'll play show and tell with a super cute love birds print that my sister got me from etsy for Christmas. (from here)

It found its place on our dresser.

Don't you love it?  I know I do.  Thanks Sis!

Accidential Appliances

So have you noticed that I never talk about my kitchen? It's been a little bit of a thorn in my side for the past 2 years.  It's a nice kitchen.  Nice.  It's not bad enough or cheap enough of a fix for it to be at the top of my to do list, but it's always there taunting me. (What, your kitchen never taunts you?  lucky).  On the surface, it doesn't look too bad.

The last time I really showed you a picture of it was right after we moved when I showed how we added a dishwasher.  We've done no other work in there.  No paint, no lights, no real design whatsoever, and it doesn't look bad.  The countertop is a nice composite stone that we're really happy with, and the cabinets look nice if you don't look too close or want to organize your items efficiently.  The key there is "if you don't look too close."  It's when you look deeper that you find issues.

Ignoring my ongoing feud with the cabinets (solid wood, laminate and veneer all within 1 square inch? what were you thinking??), the 2 greatest offenders in the space are the fridge and the stove.  There's only so many veggie-sickles you can pull out of the crisper drawer before you decide enough is enough.  After futzing with the temp for months, the final straw was a fully frozen head of cauliflower on Saturday night.  This last straw lead us to Sears the very next day.  Since we didn't want the fridge to feel singled out, we decided it was time for a new stove too.  Goodbye electric stove that can't cook or bake anything consistently!  Will it take twice as long as recommended to bake my cookies, or half as long as recommended?  Cooking roulette is not as fun as it sounds.

Hooray for after-holiday appliance sales!  In 2 weeks, our long-neglected kitchen is getting belated Christmas gifts.  It kind of feels like an impulse purchase since we weren't planning to buy any new appliances this weekend, but in reality we've been planning these upgrades since day one.

Why yes, that IS a gas stove.  We heart gas stoves.  Too bad our house doesn't have any gas line.  Solution? We're getting a propane tank put in our yard that will fuel the stove.  AND we got $300 off this stove because it was the last of an in-stock clearance.  I loves me a good deal!

I can't wait to get these in the space and start seeing a change in the only untouched room in the house.  AND as a bonus (for me), I'll take some REAL pictures of the kitchen for the first time.

Fridge source, stove source