Kitchen Decor

We spend a lot of time in our kitchen, Brian cooking and me budget tracking or blogging. It's divided into a food prep area and my desk or home office. I'm not a cook by any means, but Brian isn't always around so I sometimes need to do the deed. This is made possible by a bright, happy color scheme. No dark, beautiful kitchen for me. It would be just for looks and we'd get take-out. So when we bought our house and it looked like this...

...I dreamed of white cabinets and trim. This is how it turned out:  

kitchen island explanation - here

Well, that's five years later. It didn't look that decorated right away. And the windows might complain they still aren't decorated, but I can't decide between some fun print cafe curtains or a frosted window effect for the lower half, like I did in our bathroom. I think a cut-out pattern could be fun, but it might look weird if the top half is clear. Either way I'd like the lower half covered to give us some privacy without blocking the light. 

picture frame - Target (painted) | spoon rest - Michaels | timer - Anthropologie

The best part of being on a tight budget is you're forced to think outside the traditional box for decor. When I wanted more color in my kitchen, I got rid of my boring stainless steel canister and found these containers second hand. The orange one's a planter and the blue is a vase with a big enough mouth for kitchen utensils. These have so much personality, they make me smile inside when I see them. So if you're looking to freshen up your kitchen, consider housing your kitchen utensils in something new. If you don't currently store them out on your counter, you'll love how easy it is to grab what you need. 

This view seems like it fell off the colorful train, but I'm working on it. Curtains would also add some color and or a fun fabric on the back of the chair, since the navy's faded. A colorful something next to the lamp would also help. Maybe a corally pink? 

A friend affectionately calls her home office "the command station." That seems about right. I like to keep mine tidy, but it's not often that way. You can see how "on top of it" or "behind" I'm feeling by looking at my desk. Lots of stacks equals, "life's been too busy so everything's waiting for me here." Seeing my desk like this makes me groan because it always takes longer than I think when I finally tackle it. Still, it keeps the piles from being ALL over the house. I often move them from the coffee table, the dining table, the buffet and even the island to here. It all seems more manageable if I can sit down in one place and knock it out. 

So that's the kitchen all buttoned up. I'll open the cupboards (such as they are) and show you what we keep where! I'm warning you, the lower cupboards aren't very nice because we couldn't afford to replace them when we renovated, but they need it. In some other phase, our kitchen will get new lowers and solid surface counter. For now, we love it. It's the prettiest kitchen I've ever had.