If you have to do the dishes anyway (and yes, someone has to), you may as well make the job as nice as can be. Here’s how I have my kitchen sink setup.
I’d been using Method long before I partnered with them, and that is their dish and hand soap in those bottles. I had to water my dish soap down a little bit to get it to flow through the oil dispenser, but after figuring that out I’ve been happy with the bottle for over two years now.
And speaking of my partnership with Method; their last song with Noah is out! It’s time to give your nose a little hug. (You can take a quiz too, to find your perfect scent.)
p.s. I’d like to express my thanks that the skateboarder in the video was a woman. My kids seem to think that it’s me, and I’m not all that concerned about correcting them.
The stairs to the basement are looking cute. Finally.
The stairway is right next to the back door in the kitchen, which is the entrance we use most often. We used to have hooks and a shelf there for our coats and shoes, but we took them down when we remodeled the basement. Then the contractor mistook them for trash (an easy mistake to make), and thus we had nothing up for a while. Outerwear began to migrate throughout the first floor and shoes abounded.
I bought what I thought was an Eames Hang-it-All from a discount shopping site, but it turned out to be a fake. It’s fine, I just didn’t realize that when I bought it. But it’s here and it’s cute, and it’s great for the basement stairwell.
An Eames Hang-it-All
The stairs made installation difficult. I did make sure to locate the wall studs though, and I put together a quick how-to in case you ever need to do the same.
Bye bye, IKEA shelves that were mistaken for trash. Hello, accidental knockoff Hang-it-All. If my house were a reality show, this area would be the bad girl, stirring up drama. And it would be the lamest reality show ever.
This is a pretty simple before and after. We painted the walls pink (Wild Aster, Benjamin Moore) and the door and trim white (Antique White, Benjamin Moore). We no longer needed a shelf because we added a shoe organizer (from the Orla Kiely collection that Target had a couple of years ago), which makes the shoes much easier to reach. Then we hung our new hooks.
We also added children to our family, for the sole purpose of having a reason to keep cute hats and coats around for ‘after’ photos.
Our refrigerator has started making some interesting noises, and they’re getting louder by the day. I know that I should have it looked at and repaired, but there is a tiny part of me that’s shouting “Get a pink fridge!” 1234567
Brandon and I completely redid the kitchen when we moved here in 2007, and we changed everything but the hardwood floor. We did much of the work ourselves, and we came in at about $11,000 for the whole project (a great price for a complete kitchen). But the layout, which we kept because it’s truly the best layout for the space, is odd. The fridge stands alone in the center of the room, leaving all but the back exposed. We bought a titanium/stainless steel alloy of some sort (magnets stick and fingerprints don’t show) and the sides are grey instead of the typical black. It’s a nice fridge, but it’s nothing special.
The kitchen would be greatly improved by the addition of a pink fridge, yes? (That’s an old photo, by the way. The trim is white now.) Smeg,Northstar, and Big Chill all make them (in pink and other colors). This one is perhaps my favorite, but I just pinned over a dozen colorful fridges to Pinterest too. Do you dream of owning one like I do? What color?
The other side of the oven mitt looks like these polka dot napkins. I just picked up two of these for our kitchen, and as you can see, Eleanor’s a fan.
I had planned to get a play kitchen for Eleanor’s second birthday, which is not until April. I thought I would go with something gender-neutral and made of wood, and I even considered making one myself. Then I happened to see this one in an FAO Schwarz store that was closing, marked down to $80. It is made of wood at least, and I can always paint it if I choose to (though the pink isn’t as bright as it looks in the photo).
Plus the bake shoppe section can be detached, and it would be really cute as a puppet theater with just a few slight alterations, yes?
I woke up feeling somewhat energetic (I’ve been exhausted through the first 16 weeks of this pregnancy), so I skipped my morning shower and put on my ugly Ghostbusters Video Game t-shirt. You know what that means…
It’s time to start painting the trim. First up: finishing the kitchen.
