A little school desk in our kitchen!

The full source list for everything in my kitchen!  I’m also talking about how everything is holding up two+ years later!

My mom is the best person.  She is my person; the person I want to be when I grow up.  She does so much in her life & makes it all look completely effortless.

One of her biggest effortless feats is cooking.  She’s a complete natural in the kitchen.  While I’m over here overanalyzing a recipe approximately 50 million times and pulling it up on my phone over and over, she can just throw some things together and come out with an amazing end result.  Even when the recipes are incredibly precise, she runs the kitchen with an ease I can only imagine doing myself.

I asked begged her to come to my house a couple weeks ago to help me make some grape jelly from the concords my husband and I bought.  My mother made the complex art of jelly making look completely easy and something that even I could do, which I totally won’t because when left unattended with a complicated task, my kitchen may burst into flames.  Even when things started moving fast in the kitchen and I was both internally and visibly freaking out, mom just kept going and never once lost her cool.  This round of grape jelly ended up being the best tasting to date and I have my mom to thank (as well as the wonderful concord grapes from the local vineyard!)



Having a mom like mine has totally spoiled me for life.  If this life makes me only half the woman she is, I’d say I would be doing great.  She inspires me every day to be the best version of myself.  Her effortless approach in the kitchen gives me confidence in my own cooking abilities.  Today, I’m even attempting to make slow cooker apple cider.  My kitchen might burn down, but at least I was confident for a short time!

I woke up in a terrible mood.

Actually, I woke up in a fantastic mood…until I went downstairs.

I took one look at the kitchen sink and my heart sank.

I wish I could be one of those people who get all of their chores done the night before and know what it’s like to wake up in a clean house.

In typical me fashion, I wait until a problem gets too big to be ignored and then stress over it for a million years before I actually accomplish it.  Until then, I tiptoe around a mess hoping it will just go away by itself.  It never does.

So back to this morning.  The dishes were to the ceiling and they had been sitting in the sink for literally days.  As I was actually counting the number of days that I’m too embarrassed to admit here, I was standing in the kitchen in disbelief.  Here I go again, letting things get way out of hand before I tackled them.  The dishes were going to take forever, I just knew it!  I hate doing dishes anyway and the thought of doing them for days took every bit of energy right out of me.  I finally decided to swallow my pride and get to work.  I made this mess, it was time to clean it up.

You know how long it took me to do the dishes?

10 minutes.

I couldn’t believe it.

I’ve been going through some weird personal growth things lately and accomplishing those dishes in 10 short minutes made me stand back and think about my life.  If something that could seem so impossible be accomplished in 10 minutes, what else can I do?!

Only I can draw up a life lesson from a sink of dirty dishes.

You guys...my kitchen will never be this clean again!

I actually took these pictures a couple weeks before we officially moved in so I could share them with my local Habitat For Humanity ReStore. We purchased our cabinetry from there and I wanted to show them what we did with it. I don't think I even cooked a meal in the kitchen prior to taking these photos!

As I said, the cabinets are from the ReStore. Here's what they looked like before my mom and I painted them:


We used two cans of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in French Linen to paint the entire cabinetry. I wanted to paint the cabinets because they were in rough shape and I love painted cabinetry.


I'll have to do a post all about how we painted the cabinets. I will tell you this, though, painting with chalk paint really is the best.


We decided to remove the original cabinetry because even though it was handmade, it was in poor condition.  I also hated the wrap around that the old kitchen had.  By re configuring the layout, we ended up adding several more cabinets than what was previously there.  By removing the door where the refrigerator is now, we were also able to add more space.


You can read the sorry story about how I picked out my appliances here.  The refrigerator is a Whirlpool and the oven is a Maytag.



We have a Delta faucet and double sinks.  No link for the sinks because the company that installed the granite brought the sink and put it in.  We never actually saw the sink until the install.

 
Drawer pulls and a post on how I love them!


We decided to do the same flooring throughout the entire house.  It was supposed to be super easy to install, but my husband hated installing it!  I like it because it was budget friendly and waterproof.


We chose a granite counter top that we ended up having professionally installed because our price included free installation.  We chose granite because even though it was fairly expensive, it was cheaper than quartz yet only a few dollars more per square foot than the less expensive options.  I couldn't find a link for the exact color, but it was available at our local Home Depot.

So there you have it!  In case you missed it, you can check out my 'before' photos here.  This kitchen has made a huge transformation!

A DIY spice shelf above the oven!

A full kitchen reveal is coming soon, but here's a look at the DIY spice shelf my husband & I made for above the oven!

It is one of my favorite parts of the kitchen.  I love having my baking supplies at my fingertips!

One of my biggest pet peeves in the kitchen are cabinets without hardware. I don't know why but it makes me crazy! I totally understand not putting hardware on cabinets, though! It can get expensive and drilling the holes in the doors can be tedious. Our hardware is just the cheap stuff and ended up being over $60! Personally, I think it makes the cabinets look a lot better. Our cabinets already had the drill holes for the hardware so we didn't really have a choice to put them in or what style to get. I really like the cabinet knobs, but it was drilled out for the pulls. 



Here's a link to the cabinet pulls if you're interested.