Kelly's Korner is hosting another Show us Your Life- Kitchens today!
The kitchen is one of the things that made me fall in love with our house. The cupboard space is just incredible! There are more cupboards under the center island with pull out drawers. We hardly had any cupboard space in our old house, and I absolutely love dishes! I have two sets of Christmas dishes and 2 different sets of every day dishes. Then I also have our wedding china and a special antique set of dishes we used to have at the lake. So I needed all this storage!
Since it is fall right now, I have a few fall decorations out. But this is pretty much what our kitchen looks like all the time.
Our house isn't very big, but the kitchen opens to the living/family room, which I love. I like the openness, yet it feels cozy.
Since I missed the living room week, I thought I'd combine ours into this update since they sort of flow into each other! Ha! This is our living/family room. We don't have a separate room for each. I converted our extra room into the dining room so we just use this one for both. We spend all our time in this room. Sometime we want to get a TV above the mantel, but for now we are still using the mismatched armoire I've had for years. I don't like everything to match perfectly, so I think it adds some dimension to the room, but I am getting tired of it and ready for a new look. Plus it would open that corner of the room to make room for another chair/more seating. The little bench by the window is what we came up with to offer more seating and double as toy storage! I didn't want to cover the windows up with a larger piece of furniture.
This is probably one of my favorite things about this room- the picture collage of our son, Andrew. I got the idea from the Pottery Barn catalog, but saved literally hundreds of dollars and went with Target shelves and Kohl's 50% off frames. Looks the same to me! I like to get professional photos of our son taken and hang them in black and white on the wall. It has been about a year since we've had them taken now, so these are sort of outdated. I like to change just a few so I have photos up from all his stages.
One of my favorite quotes hangs on this wall among all the pictures.
We have accumulated tons of big toys, which I have hidden on the side of the couch in a big tote that coordinates with our wall color. This keeps them out of sight, but accessible to our busy little boy!
Another space saver for small spaces- skinny end tables with a basket underneath for storage. I used to keep diapers and wipes in the basket when Andrew was a baby. Now we use it for toys, books, etc. I have two end tables like this and the basket does a nice job of concealing the mess!
On top of our armoire are some special things, like Andrew's handprint at from his 2nd Christmas, and our Willow Tree statue of a family, along with a sign "Miracles Happen," which we truly know is true after our infertility struggles and Andrew surviving two open heart surgeries. We have seen miracles happen right before our eyes! On the wall is a beautiful hand-cut work of art we were given by a special friend when Andrew was born. It says "All creatures great and small, the Lord God loves them all." This is a perfect quote for us since Andrew came 6 weeks early and weighed just 3 lbs 13 oz.
Thanks for touring our house today!
