My favorite things, kitchen edition

There are a lot of reasons why I fell in love with this house. It's not the biggest house and it's not the nicest, but to me it's perfect. Today I thought I'd share a couple of my favorite things that were a part of the house, before we moved in. Maybe Ill even make this a permanent feature!

So, today Ill start with the kitchen, just because that's what I took pictures of.

We have an eat-in kitchen with no formal dining room. We spend a lot of time in here, as you can imagine and it's the one room in the house that I insist on having clean.

Neither Jason nor I could remember what color the walls were painted or what the window treatments looked like when we left after signing the papers, before moving in. Thankfully, the walls were ugly and gave me an excuse to paint! But the even better news was that I looooved the window treatments. There are two windows in this room, one in the eating area and one above the sink.

This one is above the sink:

And this one is by our table:

If you can remember my post yesterday about my kitchen mat, you'll notice the similar colors in the curtains. That is one of the reasons why it ended up in the room.

I absolutely love the way these curtains look. They're easy, no-fuss and keep out a good proportion of light. My younger brother (who lives with us) likes to take them down though to block out the sun while he is on his lap top. I cant tell you how much it drives me crazy! I can just never get them back the way they were. Other than that though, they are perfect.

The other great thing is the chalkboard painted directly on the side of our pantry. It goes all the way to the ceiling so there is lots of room and the kids have somewhere to color, other than my walls! That artwork was actually done before we moved in, but I cant bring myself to erase it. Ha!

So there you have it: my favorite things, kitchen edition

Total post time: 18 minutes

This post is part of the mom's 30 minute blog challenge

the story of a mat

When we moved into this home one of the main things on our "to buy" list was a rug of some sort for each of the main rooms. Our last house had mostly carpet and floor coverings just wasn't a priority. But this house is crazy cold on the feet. Directly below my living room is Jason's unfinished workshop/mancave, so of course I wanted to start with that room.

I've searched many a store and have yet to come up with the perfect one. A few months ago I found one I really liked but it was like the baby brother to what I actually needed. I thought maybe it could go in the hallway that's adjacent to the living room, so I brought it home.

Annnnnd, it didn't work.

It looked terrible and the cats tried to use it as a play thing.

So I moved it into the kitchen, where it actually really worked. That room has just kind of fell into it's color scheme and somehow random things I bring home, end up completely working in there. I guess Im just drawn to a certain color set.

Within minutes, I started to have my doubts about this mat and my house. It wasn't big enough for my living room, it just didn't look right in the hallway, the cats seemed to really like it and now it's too slippery for my linoleum kitchen! What the heck could I DO with it?


It was actually Jason's idea to add the non-stick mat. He had some from his bachelor days hidden away in a box and came to my rescue when I was out of ideas.
It's been there for probably three months now and the non-stick thingy is actually holding up really well.

In the end, Im pretty happy this wasn't available in a larger size. I mean I like it, but it just wouldn't have looked right with the new color scheme for the living room. Which, by the way, I can't wait to show you. It's seriously turning into my favorite room in the house and I've barely started it yet. Now, if I could just get Jason to finish all those lovely projects I've asked for...