House Tour--Kitchen and Back Porch

Let's move on to my kitchen. It's a small room without enough room for a table, sparse counterspace, and a less-than-wonderful view out the windows, but it's my kitchen and I love it. I feel deeply satisfied when I cook something for my family and see them enjoying it and being nourished by it. It's one of the most rewarding tasks of homemaking, I think. We don't go in for fancy food in our household. Man of the House commented last week that I cook like my grandma. He meant it as a compliment. (I think! I hope!) We are more like hobbits than any other of Tolkien's races; we like "plain food and plenty of it."

This is what you see as you enter. A major problem with the design of this kitchen is that it has only one entrance to the dining room. If we aren't careful we run into each other! When we moved here, this room had a major 70's hangover. We eventually painted the dark brown cabinets a creamy off-white. Man of the House pulled down the striped olive green wallpaper and painted the walls the same color as the cabinets. Once upon a time I had stencilled various quotations in blue and yellow on the walls, but they have since been painted over. The countertops are still yellow, but by using a yellow and blue color scheme, they work pretty well. Besides, they are still in good shape.



Here's the kitchen looking from the other end of the room. See that homemade bread? Alas, it's from the bread machine. I wish I could say I made it all by me little onesie, but I never learned that craft. Auntie Leila says not to store bread in plastic bags, so I'll have to think of something else. And those are blonde brownies in the pan underneath. We had company last night. :-) The recipe boxes between the toaster and the sink are mine and Girl of the House's. Girl Out of the House kept hers here too before she got married. It made me happy to see all three recipe boxes stacked up, but of course, hers lives with her now in her new home and is being put to excellent use!



What's behind the curtain, you ask? My bread machine, cooling racks, electric mixer, cutting boards, etc. That space used to have a microwave (came with the house), but it has long since gone to its reward. It was a huge monstrosity that filled that space, but all of our subsequent microwaves weren't nearly that big, so I put a curtain over the opening and use it for storage. See that thing to the right? It's my organizer. Yes, indeed it is; it's just not very . . . organdized (as my very great friend Pooh Bear would say). Yes. Well. One of these days.



This is the view leading out of the kitchen into the dining room. (Sorry it's so blurry! It's the camera's fault, I tell you!) See my blue and white transferware on the wall? I L~O~V~E blue transferware! I hunt for it at yard sales, antique shops, even shops like Marshall's, which sometimes has Spode at deep discounts. We use it everyday. These two plates were gifts from a friend, and I got the rack at the dollar store. The toile heart is re-purposed Christmas ornament. See why I chose yellow and blue as the color scheme for this room? The pictures on the far wall were, I think, $6 each from Aldi, and they have adorned many walls in this house.



Here's a close up of the plates for your viewing pleasure:



Here's a pitcher I bought at an antique shop. I use it for gravy most often. And see? Even my houseplant is sitting on an orphaned transferware saucer!



Off the kitchen is this little ramshackle porch. It's drafty and leaky and not terribly attractive. We use it as overflow for the kitchen, a make-shift mud room, plus the Cat of the House's litter box is there. I'll spare you a picture of that. ;-) It's such a tiny room that I can't get a decent picture of it, so these will have to do.





The shelves are just the right height for these window boxes. I'm growing parsley, oregano, and basil.



If you look out at our eency-weency backyard, on sunny Saturdays you'll see sheets on the line. Is there any felicity in the world like climbing into a bed arrayed in sheets that have been dried on the line? Methinks not.



Thank you for touring my kitchen! Next, we'll move upstairs and see my bathroom.