Kitchen Update- Starting to Come Together!

My mom and I went shopping over the weekend and I got a couple of pieces for the kitchen; red gingham fabric for curtains and rugs for the floor. I was a little nervous about the rugs, because the were not the braided rugs that Tom and I had in mind, but I am so happy with the end result. The kitchen feels like it is coming together now, and it feels a lot warmer than before. Excuse the Halloween lights in the picture, it is that time of year.

The curtains are handmade. A couple of years ago I was looking for curtains at a department store and the prices made me gag. A curtain is more or less a rectangle of fabric with the edges turned over and a sleeve stitched into the top to run a curtain rod through. That being said, why are curtains so darn expensive? I made the decision that day to make my own from now on and I've never looked back. Not only is it extremely cost effective, I also have the luxury of making the curtains specifically for the window, with the exact fabric that matches with my decor.

Our kitchen window overlooks our balcony, which we set up with some window boxes full of herbs and a bistro set. It's a nice view with a lot of sun, so I opted to make cafe curtains. This was actually my first time making this style of curtains, usually I make drapes, but I really like how they came out.

It took me about 3 hours to cut and sew curtains for both my window and the door to our pantry. I was able to get them done the same day I bought the fabric. Tom was impressed and took me shopping for curtain rods so that we could hang them the same day. Needless to say, I am pleased.

Next on our list of projects for the kitchen? Refinishing our baker's rack with a nice coat of black spray paint. I just need to wait for the rain to stop for a few days.

Our Kitchen Shelf

Tom and I had a big empty wall in our kitchen, so we decided to fill the space with a shelf. Tom inherited a butcher block from his grandmother, so I wanted something wooden to tie in with the butcher block. I knew what I was looking for, a deep shelf with pegs that we could hang stuff from.

Our mission to find the shelf began at a local unfinished furniture store. We found a shelf that was the right length and depth, but it did not have pegs.

Tom immediately refused the shelf because it was poorly constructed and stapled together. Tom and I subsequently left the unfinished furniture store and headed to a home improvement store, where we quickly learned that the lumber necessary to build a shelf cost more than the shelf at the unfinished furniture store. Tom responded by heading to the hardware aisle and purchased some screws. Our new plan was to purchase the shelf at the unfinished furniture store, take it apart, and put it back together, correctly. We purchased the shelf, some pegs, and some wood plugs and went home.

In terms of taking the shelf apart, Tom was easily able to pull the shelf apart, which I found kind of disturbing. I am not going to name the unfinished furniture company that we went to, but I am also never going to return to purchase furniture from the store either. I distressed each piece of the shelf with rocks, a meat tenderizer, and just overall abuse. Distressing is awesome, you should try it some time. Tom drilled holes in the cross piece and I attached the pegs with a bit of wood glue. We then reassembled the shelf with wood glue and screws. Tom counter sunk the screws and capped them off with wood plugs. Once assembled, the shelf felt much sturdier than when we started, always a good thing.

The next day, I finished the shelf with an oil product both stained and protected the wood. Five coats later, we ended up with a color that we liked. The stain also made all of my distressing stand out. This morning, while I was at work, Tom hung the shelf. He mounted it right into the studs so that the shelf could support weight. Originally, Tom had our cast iron frying pan sitting on top of the shelf, but I wanted to decorate, and that completely defeated the purpose of having the pegs. We fashioned some pot hooks out of 4 inch segments cut from a wire hanger. The top is decorated with some random knickknacks that we've accumulated.

Inspiration Source

Finished Product

Overall, I'm impressed with our project. I have been purchasing Tom tools for Christmas and his birthday for the last couple of years, so it was nice to see him actually use them. Also, if you compare the finished project to our inspiration, I think we hit our mark. It is nice to have little bits and pieces of our kitchen coming together, it makes me excited to go shopping for rugs and fabric to make curtains tomorrow.

Kitchen Inspiration

Sources: Pot Rack, Clock, Mixer & Glasses, Dishes, Pans, & Casserole Set, Braided Rug, Shelf, Curtains, Baker's Rack, Butcher Block, Canister Set, Dancing Snacks, Inspiration Kitchen paint chips courtesy of Sherwin-Williams Chip-It tool

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how we wanted to make over our kitchen, both to make it more pleasant to be in, as well as to make the kitchen more functional. Thanks to Anna's tutorial on How to Create a Design Board, I was finally able to put my vision together. I feel a ton more comfortable about it to, because we already have the majority of the items on the board, it's just a matter of putting everything together in a cohesive way and altering a couple of things. For example, we have a baker's rack, but right now it is ivory. It's just a matter of some sanding and a can of spray paint to update the baker's rack and have it match the rest of our kitchen. We have a large empty wall on the kitchen, and I have been collecting some antiques, so now it is just a matter of finding an unfinished shelf so that I can match the finish to the antique butcher block we already have. The goal of the pot rack is to get the pots and pans out of our limited  cabinet space. I only insist that we purchase the new pans first, so that I have something I will be happy to have out on display. Tom is happy because he finally understands why I'm going nuts with the spray paint and sees everything as a cohesive plan. The fact that red is his favorite color helps out a bit too.

What do you think?

The Orange Cat Company

I like to fidget, it is part of who I am. It's hard for me  to sit still, and I need to constantly keep myself occupied with something. My mom noticed this trait in my rather early on, and as I grew up she taught me various craft projects to keep me busy. First it was plastic canvas, then on my tenth birthday she gave me my first embroidery set. By the time I hit high school, she decided it as time for me to learn how to crochet. Initially, she attempted to actually teach me, which proved to be an absolute failure. Several weeks later, my mom left a learn to crochet book out on a table before leaving for work. By the end of the day, I was crocheting coaster sets and Grannies squares. Soon after that, I learned to crochet with thread. That was about 15 years ago.

I still love to crochet, especially in the evenings when I'm watching tv. Several friends have taken notice of my work and have encouraged me to open an Etsy shop to sell some of my doilies and other crocheted projects. After a bit of coaxing from the hubby, I finally took the leap. Allow me to introduce to you the Orange Cat Company. My cat Nachos is quite proud of himself to be the official mascot. Right now I only have a couple of things put up, some doilies and photography from around Maine. I hope to be increasing my inventory over the next couple of weeks.

Be sure to check the shop out, and if you like what you see, or have any special requests, drop me a message. You can also find the Orange Cat Company on Facebook. I am brand new to Etsy, so any feedback would be graciously appreciated.

Our First Anniversary, or How the Hubby Makes Everything Right

Let's see, where were we? That's right, it was almost 8pm, vacuum exploded, hubby on crutches, and our first anniversary seemed to be going completely down the drain. As you can probably tell from this week's Friday's Letters, things turned around rather quickly. Tom told me to jump into the shower, once I got out I found Tom in our room with a dressed up in his black dress pants and burgundy dress shirt. He had a matching burgundy and black dress hanging on the door waiting for me. Once dressed up, we went out for dinner. By this point, it was almost nine, so we ended up at Texas Roadhouse, where we feasted on ribs and rib eye steaks. We mentioned it was our anniversary, and they spoiled us rotten, as always. Tom managed to finish his dinner, I had a second night of steak and ribs the next day. After dinner, we went across the street to Walmart to get a bottle of champagne. We were all dressed up, and Tom road around on one of those motorized shopping carts. Definitely not the classiest of wine establishments, but at about 10pm, it got the job done.

Once we got home, we pulled our cake out of it's freezer box. The cake topper fit right in. While I was setting up the cake, Tom pulled our champagne flutes, server set, and unity candle out of our curio cabinet. We toasted our first anniversary, and cautiously tried the year old cake. The buttercream frosting was fine, the cake a little dried out, and the lemon curd... well it tasted okay, but definitely a different texture. All in all, I ate my slice for the sake of tradition, but I do not think I would go about saving cakes for a year again in the future. At the same time, I now have TONS of extra space in my freezer.

Before we cut into the cake, Tom reminded me of something I saw on Pinterest that I wanted to do (he's totally a keeper). Someone posted the idea on Pinterest of taking a picture each year on your anniversary holding last year's anniversary picture. I had almost forgotten, but as we were taking pictures of the cake and everything, Tom asked me to get one of our wedding pictures. I'm so happy he reminded me, because that is definitely a tradition I want to continue in the future.

So the lesson learned from this whole experience? As cheesy as it sounds, life really is a roller coaster. There will be ups and there will be downs. In marriage, the best way to weather the downs is to rely on each other. Our first anniversary was far from perfect, but we still got to do all of the little traditions. We also got to spend the entire day together, which originally was not in the plan.

In other news, we went to see the bone specialist on Friday. Tom and I were both expecting the worst: surgery with weeks of recovery. As it turns out, while the screw in Tom's ankle has definitely moved, it looks like it has moved slowly over time. In other words, the bone and the joint look perfectly healthy and the pain Tom is experiencing is likely related to inflamed muscles and ligaments. The doctor prescribed Tom a month of physical therapy, and we both breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Pinterest Project of the Week- Wedding Invitation Ornament

For those of you that have not yet discovered it, Pinterest is a wonderful thing. It's essentially a website to store visual bookmarks of stuff you find around the web. It is great for organizational purposes; but the best part is browsing the various projects and recipes that other people have pinned. I'm not going to lie, I've started to accumulate quite a collection. So, now that I've started a new blog, I decided that now was as good of a time as any to attempt either a project or recipe that I find on Pinterest at least once a week, and write about it. Who knows, maybe I'll create a link-up with it of some sort.

For this week, I made a wedding invitation ornament that was inspired by the blog From Glitter to Gumdrops The project itself is really easy, take a your wedding invitation and cut it into 1/4" strips. Wrap each strip around a pen to make a coil, and then place the coils inside a glass Christmas bulb. This was especially easy for me, in that I actually designed our wedding invitations, so I simply printed out an invitation on ivory cardstock. Our invitation happened to have a lot of blank space, and I wanted to add a little bit of glitter,

so I used some gold glitter glue on the blank strips. Everything fit nicely inside the ornament, and I used some extra pearls and crystals that I had from my handmade wedding jewelry to make a loop for hanging. The finishing touch is a simple white satin bow with some wedding rings.

Overall, I really like the finished effect of the ornament and I cannot wait to hang it our on Christmas tree in a couple of months. I was careful to cut the strips line by line, so as you move the bulb, little details become visible, like our names, the date, and the lines from the poem. The glitter

adds just enough color an contrast to add interest, otherwise I think the ornament would look a bit monotone. I can definitely check this project off the list, now the question is, what to make next?

Have you made a project that you found on Pinterest? Did you blog about it?

Updating with Spray Paint

As anyone that may have followed me over from Our Day (In the Making) could figure out, I really enjoy crafts. There is just something awesome about putting a handmade touch on something to come out with a one-of-a-kind item. This is why it may come as a surprise to find out that in my 31 years, I have never used spray paint. When my sister found out, she said she joked that she was embarrassed to know me.

It all started when my mother gave me a wooden spice rack from the 90's that she no longer wanted. Tom and I definitely need a spice rack, but we are trying to update our kitchen, not add more hand-me-downs to the mix. Tom suggested spray painting it black. At first I was skeptical, but we found a nice satin black spray paint and the end result was perfect. I would post pictures, but now I'm in the process of updating all the labels on the individual spice jars, so, more on that later. I was so impressed with the results of the spice rack, that I decided to salvage some of our other wooden kitchen accessories, like the mug tree.

Sadly, I did not take a picture of my mug tree before I painted it, I definitely should have, because I could not find a picture of it on the web. So my "before" picture is the closest image that I could find. Same wood color and overall shape, just slightly different form. My after picture is after a single coat of black satin spray paint and the addition of a cork bottom to prevent slipping.

Before:

Source

And after

It would go without saying that Tom has created a bit of a monster by introducing me to spray paint. I have our "new" paper towel holder drying on the back deck right now. A matched set for the price of a can of spray paint! Yay!