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?

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?