Auntie Leila's Linky Party

Auntie Leila of Like Mother, Like Daughter (one of my favorite blogs!) is having a linky party about kitchen sinks! I thought I'd join in and show you mine.

First is a picture of my kitchen sink area in its entirety:



It's a small room~~just 13' x 8'~~but I've decided I don't really mind because everything is only a step or two away. Leila has been talking about making the kitchen work for you instead of you working against it, and that's really quite easy to accomplish when the space is so small. In fact, reading her post about her kitchen made me laugh because our kitchen set-up is almost identical!

The windows up close:





I like to put these "gingerbread" Christmas decorations in the kitchen. Girl of the House made the paperbag gingerbread boy when she was four. Isn't he cute? The little red gingham bag was made by the director of the preschool where I used to teach and is over 20 years old. The felt ornaments were made by my grandmother, the one who lived to be 96. She gave them to Girl of the House a few years ago. Remember when sequined felt decorations were all the rage in the 70's? Grandma made oodles of them and have passed lots on to both my girls. Of course, those belonging to Girl Out of the House now reside with her. (You can see them here. A grammatical aside: Aren't you so glad she capitalized "is" in her title because ALL verbs are capitalized in titles, even when they are only two letters long? I'm so proud of her!) And don't you just love geraniums on window sills? I brought this one in from my front porch when the weather turned cold.

The curtains are just dish towels put up with clips and cafe rods. Very inexpensive and easy to care for. I just unclip them, wash and dry them, and hang them back up.

Notice the view? Yes, it is really that dismal. The house next door sits a mere six feet from ours; hence the blank white wall. That's why I try to keep pretty things on the windowsills. I have to have something to look at!

The little objects between the two windows are my British thimbles. My mother bought them all during her visits to Great Britain over the years. The first is of Clandon Park, then Victoria and Albert in silhouette, the Queen Mother sporting one of her famous hats, a Wedgwood thimble, and lastly a thimble from Windsor Castle. I'm sorry the picture isn't clearer. I miss Girl Out of the House for her photography skills!



The colors in this room were horrible when we moved in: olive green walls and floor and dark wood cabinets and paneling, which were not so bad in themselves, but this small room needed to be lightened up. So we painted the walls and cabinets a color just shy of white and leaning slightly to yellow and refinished the floor, stripping away ancient vinyl and even more ancient linoleum until we got to the original hardwood. We kept the gold counters. Much, much better now!

That's my contribution to the linky party. Be sure to visit Like Mother, Like Daughter for more kitchen sink fun!