DIY Kitchen Update

This is my kitchen. I love my kitchen. No really. It's the room in the house that when I walked into it for the first time, I just knew it was THE house. I have probably given this room more attention than any other room in my house not only because I spend most of my time in here, but because I want people to feel drawn to it.  I like to call my decor style modern country cottage. The modern mainly because we have some modern elements in our house that came with it and I sort of just rolled with it. I also like things to be very functional and accessible while still looking simple, uncluttered, and homey. This can prove to be hard at times since those things often conflict. Here are some of the latest updates if you want some relatively cheap ideas for updating and making your kitchen trendy AND functional. I'm of the mindset that the things you use most should be the easiest to access, and the time you will waste by making things just look good is not worth it. I want both. This is a picture of my kitchen. Some of my main problems are that I can't find anything because all my food is so disorganized and jumbled up that I don't know what I have and lots of things expire. Since we will be on a much tighter budget, I need that not to happen. At all. So that was sort of my driving force in organizing...well and for it to look cuter..of course. ;)

Ever since we moved in I have wanted a comfy nook in the corner of the kitchen for the breakfast table. Initially we got a glass table on Craigslist which I have loved (glass is super easy to clean). I know all you mamas out there are cringing and I may have to replace it once we have kids...however...for right now it's perfect...and wouldn't you know, just a few weeks ago, I found the perfect handmade nook on Craigslist. We are just using the table and two of the chairs we already had in the kitchen to go with it and I think it looks great! We had the red pillows already, and let me tell you, it is SUPER comfortable so sit/lay at (I'm laying with my feet up right now)! The blue and white pillows are built in, and they come up for tons of nice storage space. It's a little awkward to get them up, so I store stuff in there that I don't need to get out very often. Breakfast nook. Check.

My next area that I desperately needed to organize was the pantry. My pantry is super deep, so it basically serves as a black hole for all my pantry food. Seriously. Because of it's location, it's also really dark in there and has no lights, so we literally have to get out a flashlight to find anything. Yeah, I have found some slightly really expired stuff way in the back. All that to say, that is how I came up with idea for the canisters above my sink. I already had a row of them above the sink(more for the look than the function), but decided in order to make more room in the pantry I need to take my canisters to the next level. I got the idea to build a shelf so that I could have two rows on canisters. But I wanted it to look cute..and organized. I got two huge pieces of wood from Home Depot and had them cut in half to give me four pieces (make sure you get untreated wood as treated wood has chemicals and can be harmful to breathe in or touch). I then stained the three pieces I would need to use (we will use the forth piece for another project). You can get stain in the paint section of Home Depot.  Instead of screwing or nailing the pieces together, I simply placed them on top of each other since there would only be two stacked and that way I could use them sometime in the future for something else. What you are seeing here are three boards all the same size with one in the front and two stacked on each other in the back. These were wide enough to serve as the two shelves for my canisters.

The next step was to decide what foods to put in the canisters and label them. You can find the FREE  and EDITABLE labels I used here (big rectangle labels) and here (tag labels). I used these FREE fonts to make my labels. I laminated them and used twine to hang each label around the canister. I used some tape to make sure they hung just right on the canister. These are the canisters I used. I bought some at Wal-Mart and some at Target, but they are fairly common and inexpensive canisters. I used the 1.0 ounce size canisters. Once I had them all ready I put them up!! The only problem I ran into was that the second row of canisters weren't quite high enough to read the whole label. For some of you that wouldn't be a problem, but because I'm a little crazy when it comes to things looking right, it was driving me crazy. So I got some cork coasters from Target and put one below each canister. I also staggered the canisters so it's easier to see them.You can still see the stained wood shelves behind the canisters. Just make sure you get the correct color of stain to match your cabinets.

Another project that I did in the kitchen was to put out my spices in a way that encourages me to cook but also looks organized (I don't like clutter or lots of things on the counter). I ended up finding this idea to make a magnetic wall and put the spices in labeled tins. First I found a magnetic wall sheet on Amazon (something similar to this) and bought the tins from this wholesale company. You need to buy some kind of magnets for the back of the tins (unless you want to pay a huge amount for tins that already have magnets on the back). I bought little tiny circle ones that were super strong and just put two or three on the back of each tin. Because I didn't want my spice wall to be distracting or look gaudy, I got really minimal clear labels that have the different spices on them. They are a little hard to read, so you may want to get a different kind if you want to be able to see them easily.

Now that I had made quite a bit of space in my pantry using the canister shelf above my sink, I had room to play with. I decided that instead of stuffing it to the gills, I would try to make it really organized and keep it that way by eating what we have before buying tons more (only have two or three cereals instead of five partially eaten boxes)...If somebody outside of The U.S. is reading this they are probably shaking their head...really America...five cereals??? I know. It's terrible. But anyway the point is for us to be able to see what food we have and eat it before buying anything else (I'm trying here). I still had the problem of not being able to see in the pantry. So I decided to put our little clicky lights to good use. Here is a picture of the top shelf of the pantry with our little clicky light. It's actually kind of amazing, and makes my beans and corn look really glamorous, don't you think?

A few other things I added were some much needed cabinet organizers so I can see and access pans easily. I am still working on some of the drawers, but overall it's much better. Something I love in my kitchen that is very me is my apron wall. I'm a huge believer in using what I have and so my little collection of aprons is put to good use by having them very accessible and ready for baking parties and what not (which we have a lot). :) This is probably the most cluttered looking area of the kitchen, but since it's on the wall, it sort of serves as a decoration too, right? Anyway, I used these really cool hooks from Hobby Lobby that are actually three hook in one and they all swing from side to side. This maximizes how many aprons I can hold on the wall. My very last thing I love is my bread box. I found it for a few bucks at Goodwill. I love everything about it. That's about it! Nothing too fancy, but it has made a huge difference in the way I use and enjoy my kitchen. I hope some of these ideas inspire you to make your kitchen feel like you!

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