Kitchen

After taking a break the past few months from doing big projects around my house, I started one this week.

Meet my pantry closet.  She is small, but I am determined to make her shine.

You may remember when I painted the stained brown trim and louvered doors, white.

My small pantry is not a walk-in style pantry, but a small closet right off my kitchen in the hallway that runs between my studioffice, hallway of darkness, and the foyer.

It is teeny compared to the pantry in my previous house that I wrote about here: How I Transformed a Coat Closet Into a Pantry

We made this pantry by adding onto and doubling the size of a single door coat closet that was in the mudroom. It made for one easy accessible and organized space that stored quite a bit.

I even covered the walls in

Before and after small pantry closet makeover. How to make a small closet into a functioning pantry on a budget and basic DIY skills. 

I finally am going to show you how I made over the small pantry closet right off my kitchen.  In my previous house I had a large double door pantry that fit everything from big bags of pet food, canned goods to paper products. It held everything I needed to buy from the supermarket and more.

I was a little spoiled by it and when we moved to the lake house, I missed having that large and highly organized pantry. I loved that I could open it up and see everything at a glance.  The problem with the lake house small pantry closet was that it only contained deep shelves that made finding anything that migrated to the back almost impossible. Plus visually it was dark

How-to tip to organize pots and pans so they don’t get scratched in your kitchen cabinets.

Like many of you at this time of year, I have been purging items I no longer need and organizing areas around my home.  January it seems is the perfect time to do this since most of us our house bound.

After making over the small pantry closet, I got the energy to delve into the contents of my kitchen cabinets, especially the base cabinets.

Two years ago when we moved into the house, I literally just placed “like” items into the cabinets thinking I would re-organize them once we were officially all moved in.  That never happened.

I finally found the time on a cold wintery afternoon earlier this month.  A perfect time to get something inside the house done. Completing the task also made me feel somewhat upbeat and productive since

 Simple Spring kitchen decorating ideas that you can add to a kitchen that are both pretty and budget friendly.

Yesterday, I shared how I decorated my living room mantel for spring and how I shopped my house to find decorative items to use. Today I am sharing how I added a few old and new decorative items to my kitchen to get it ready for spring. My kitchen is white and in past years I added spring color by making shelf backdrops for open shelves. This year I added spring colors in a different way.

Spring Kitchen Decorating Ideas

You know I like to decorate with white so I can accent it with pops of color.  For spring this is easy to do since spring is blooming with so many vibrant and happy colors. I chose to use my favorite colors… blue, pink, and green in the kitchen.

If

How to Create a Floor to Ceiling Chalkboard on a Wall

In my early days of blogging I wrote a post entitled, How to Draw Like an Artist on a Chalkboard. It is where I shared all the chalkboard drawing tips I learned over the years, like dipping the chalk in water before using. In my previous house I had a large chalkboard in the kitchen and later moved it to the dining room where I enjoyed changing what was on it for the season, like drawing a turkey on the chalkboard for Thanksgiving and a 3-D Bunny on the board for Easter.

After we moved to the lake house and I painted the kitchen cabinets, I hung a small chalkboard on a wall to continue drawing on it for the seasons, when entertaining and for celebrations. It was fine, but small for the ideas I wanted to

When you have a small kitchen like I do, there are not a lot of options for an affordable and functional kitchen island. I have looked into making one to hacking IKEA shelves into a narrow island, but finally found the perfect option to fit my decorating style.

I have “a thing” about a few things…  like pom-poms and polka dots, but I also have “a thing” for furniture on wheels. I made a craft cart on wheels when I first started blogging and the rolling desk that I made for a BHG furniture hack contest. I even added wheels to a bifold door in my previous house.

For the past year I have been seriously searching for a small island to buy or make for my small kitchen. In my previous home, we had a nice sized kitchen island.

I took for