The Joy of Cooking

Okay, maybe not really. But I do love that cookbook! And I love the changes in my kitchen. 'Twas  a full day's work on Thursday, a perfect job for a drippy day.

I started with the pantry. It was originally full of food, but there were just a few things that kind of drove me crazy. For one thing, the doors were always standing open, either with a teen or two standing in front moaning, "there is nothing to eat in this house...", or with suspicious-looking crumbs of said "nothing" trailing away from it.

Don't you think this is a big improvement?

What's that? Where is the food? Well, who needs to eat? You can just open that pantry and feast on the beauty, the order, the symmetry... Okay, the HS and the kids didn't buy that either.

I switched the cabinets on the far wall to food-bearing rather than dish- and glassware-bearing. It makes more sense anyway. Now the food is where I need it. Why didn't I think of that before? The far right cabinet has boxes and cans, as does the cabinet over the stove and the one over the microwave. Duplicates and extras got moved to the basement shelves. Lots of things got repackaged into canning jars - my  new favorite storage containers.

Coffee, tea, drinks, etc. I know it is a little strange to be so delighted with organized cabinets. Some of you will not get this, and will be confirmed in your opinion that I am one egg short of a dozen. But some of you are kindreds, and these pics are for you. (Yes, I know. If you come to my house in a month and open my cabinets, they will not look exactly like this. But let me live in my dream world for a few blissful days.)

Baking supplies and ingredients. HS hung these lovely little strips for my measuring stuff. I love this, although we all need to learn to open the cabinet with a little less...enthusiasm. It's rather a cacophony at times otherwise.

And, below and to the right is this great lazy susan cabinet, with the rest of the baking ingredients.

And I love this - I am actually able to find my spices!

The thing that caused the most anxiety (those who know my family will get this) - where is the cereal??? There are NO CEREAL BOXES!!! WHAT??????

But look how lovely:

Who needs cereal boxes? Bags removed from boxes fit beautifully in baskets (yes, we've been studying Old English alliterative poetry). So do bags of bread, and bags of snacks. I've had these baskets forever. In fact, everything I did in here was repurposing. I love that too. Cheap and free - two of my favorite words! But getting back to the protest; it's blowing over and the new normal is settling in. You just have to be willing to brave the storm sometimes. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it.

One final view of the kitchen. And I'll see you at Thanksgiving! Perhaps the kitchen will get painted by then.

Why yes, that book on the counter  is entitled "Heal Your Own Back". I wonder why that was out.

Autumn Break

So, I didn't quite keep my promise to post some kitchen shots "in a few days". Here's my excuse.

Summer came. A few little projects seemed to commandeer every waking moment - a book to finish writing and a homeschool academy to get off the ground, nothing major really. Then, summer ended and school started way before we were even close to ready - commence running breathlessly through the next six weeks. And then, along came our much-anticipated and much-needed Autumn Break (ahem...some genius insisted on breaks every six weeks in our academy...thank you, O wise one!)

Auspiciously, the beginning of Autumn Break coincided with the town tag sale. HS, who also happens to be a garage-sale guru (man of many talents!), scored a bunch of great items dirt cheap, which sparked a girl bedroom and schoolroom reorganization. I had already planned to use break for a kitchen reorganization. Of course, it never occurred to me to take "before" pics, as I was so totally focused on the work at hand. But when I was all done, I decided it would be nice to take some pics before...well, you know. We do live here.

On to the girl room.

Here is the fab dresser we found at the tag sale for $35. Two drawers were off the tracks, and it did suffer a little mishap on the way home (some unnamed woman driver took a corner a bit too fast and one of those off-track drawers became an off-truck drawer until I she had to circle the block and re-truck and re-track it.) However, HS fixed all of that up in a jif, and here it is (sock on floor courtesy of teen daughter, just to keep things real):

Notice the CLEAN room. Daughter did clean her room and have it mostly ready for us to do some moving and organizing in there. We "finished" the cleaning and then moved a few things around while she was off doing her barista gig at the local college. HS had painted her room a couple of months ago, but we never got around to hanging the Ikea paper lantern and the bulletin board until now. A few more shots:

The bamboo shades were another tag sale find. I got four of them (two for the boys' room), along with two bar chairs from a kind neighbor for a total of $15. You can see the very edge of one of those bar chairs through the door below. Things that were already in place: the small paper lanterns from $5 Below, the wavy mirror and peg rack from Ikea, the closet doors painted with whiteboard paint - very fun!, and the bedspreads from WalMart. The gorgeous twin beds were inherited from HS's parents when they moved from their townhouse to their retirement community years ago.

I love this room. So glad daughter has a place to read and dream and enjoy being sixteen. And sleep (being who she is). 

Moving on to the schoolroom...a much-needed cleaning/reorganizing there was on my very long summer to-do list, but it got moved to the very long summer not-done list. That was my number one break priority, since it was seriously hampering our academic life. My high need for order (the kind name my sweet and tactful friend Karen calls my obsessive compulsive neat-freakness) was causing me some unrest (code for unable to focus, concentrate, or function). Again, tag sale to the rescue! Here's the tour:

Coming up the stairs (the schoolroom is between the two upstairs bedrooms), it looks cozy and inviting. At least I think so. My kids don't use words like "cozy" and "inviting" when talking about school. But I digress.

The chair was $5. Yes, 5. It has a few stains, and you can't turn the cushion around unless you like big pink spots on your beige chairs, but it's very comfy, just the right size, and it gives the room a nice library feel. And did I mention it was five bucks? (BTW, those bookcases are Ikea, and we've had them for years, but they fit in that little nook at the top of the stairs like they were custom made for the space!)

Three desks for students: on either side of the window, 15 yo boy on left, 12 yo boy on right. In the middle is dear daughter. Mostly outfitted by Ikea over the years, and repurposed often. We still need to paint, and I have some more things to hang on the walls once we get that done. (Clearly, no school was happening this week - dead giveaways: no overflowing trashcans, no eraser crumbs on the floor, no books and unfiled papers strewn about, and no dirty glasses filling up the desks. That is all coming to an end, but at least I have these pics to remember the clean by.

 The "community" table that we can use when we work together on something is a repurposed (or multi-purpose) cutting table, hence the need for bar stools. The table can be pulled out into the middle of the room and extended if we need the space. Beyond the table is my own little office nook, which we converted to an office. Ahhh...so inviting. I am sure that everyone will agree when we hit the books again tomorrow.

The window seat you can see on the stairs has a cushion now - just needs to be painted (that's a theme; this is the winter of painting, right HS?) and I need to sew a cover for the cushion. Boys' room and upstairs bath are on the docket as well. Thanksgiving Break is coming.

Okay, this is  long enough - kitchen update will have to come in a separate post.