Kitchen

What can you put into a wooden wine crate after the wine is gone? You can repurpose it and make one chic DIY recipe box for your kitchen to hold and organize all your favorite recipes.

I promised last week that I would show you one last item that I wanted to make for my kitchen cart island.

A few posts ago I shared that I added a second shelf to the island. One of the reasons I added the second shelf to my rolling island kitchen cart was that I wanted a handy place for my recipe box.

I have a small kitchen with no room to keep it handy. 5 years ago, I totally reorganized my recipe box. How I organized it has worked extremely well over the years so I didn’t change that aspect of the box. I did however want to give the box a

I celebrated my 61st b-day on Monday. I spent the early part of the day at the bookstore, then came home to relax, read and just sat outside enjoying a day without a to-do list.

When Ed asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I told him I didn’t need anything, but he insisted on getting me a gift. After a few days of thought, I told him I wanted a second kitchen island cart.

He said, “but there is no room”. I answered that I didn’t want to add another cart in the kitchen, but wanted to add a shelf to the existing one and the only way to do that would be to get a second cart for the parts. We can use the other parts if a part on the original cart gets damaged or make something creative with them.

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