Kitchen Projects!

I am so excited about these two new projects that I am telling anyone and everyone about them. We are working on updating our kitchen/dining room (more to come on the other projects).  I haven't really done much to decorate our dining room because honestly, it is the least used room in our home.  I like to decorate my dining room table with fun tablecloths and decorations, but as for the walls or any other decorations, there isn't much in there.  Well, that is about to change.  I have said it before, and I'll say it again, I love vintage items and I have always wanted a vintage drink cart.  I love the look of them but since they are vintage that usually means they are expensive ($60-$250).  About a year ago I almost bought one for $40 (that was a lot cheaper than I had seen), it was a little wobbly, but I thought I could handle it.  I ended up passing on it and I'm glad I did because a couple weeks ago I found one for only $20 (half price!) and it is super sturdy!

It was this horrid blue color 

but we changed that quickly with some spray paint 

and now it is a lovely yellow!

I'm not sure what  I'm going to put on it, we don't drink so it's not going to look like the typical drink carts, but I think I can fancy it up.  Now, I just need to find a picture for one wall and add in a few more decorations.  It's a work in progress, but I have learned to take my time and get items in the colors I really love and to wait to get things I will love for a long time.

The next project I've been working on was so much fun that I didn't want it to end.  We are working on updating our kitchen cabinets, and I started thinking about the decorating possibilities for above our kitchen cabinets.  I measured first and we have about a foot of room between the top of the cabinets and the ceiling. The only issue I have it that we have about an inch difference between the top of the cabinets and where the molding is on the outside of the cabinets; so whatever we sit up there, it 'looses' about an inch of the bottom if it.  I think I can work around that though.  So, of course I went straight to Pinterest to get ideas, and of course I got almost overwhelmed.  There are so many cute ideas but after I found some cute kitchen printables, I narrowed down what I wanted.  I found a lot of framed pictures (with free prints you could download) and canvas prints with kitchen utensils and cute sayings, like a mixer that says 'whip it, whip it good.'  Well, I either didn't like the coloring or didn't want to buy the canvas for $75 (crazy!) so I thought, I can make my own!

All I did was open a word document and the internet.  I started off by searching for utensil silhouettes (fork, spoon, egg beater, spatula, etc) in black (there were a few I had to put in paint and make black).  Then I downloaded a few cute (free) fonts.  I inserted the utensil, centered it, then added my text, and printed.  I did about nine different documents in about 20 minutes.  I then found some document frames at Deal's for only $1.  My husband helped to spray paint those to our kitchen colors (yellow, red, teal, and green).  I inserted the printed documents into the frames and viola! instant cute decor!

On the right is the $75 canvas where I got my idea 

and on the left is my re-imagined creation. 

The printed documents. I kept it simple with just black text

 because I wanted to the frames to have the color 'pop.'  

This one is my favorite because my husband says this all the time.

The collection!

I have a couple ideas of how I'm going to position these above the cabinets.  The great thing about document frames is that you don't have to worry about resizing your printed document, but the bad thing is they don't have easels on the back so you have to get creative.  I loved this project and want to do some more, but I ran out of cute sayings.  Any ideas?

:)
Miranda

Meal Planning....or lack thereof....

I mentioned in an earlier post about kitchen organization that after going through every single item I had in my kitchen, organizing it, and even documenting it, that I was going to attempt to meal plan.  I will admit this, I did try.  But I will also admit, I failed....miserably. 

I searched through the internet looking for meal planning guides and found too many to count; but none that looked like they would actually work for me.  I tried just writing out my own simple weekly plan.  Monday- blank, Tuesday-blank, Wednesday-blank, etc.  But it seemed like every time I tried to fill it out I realized that was the week we had activities every night.  We would plan out Monday's meal, then I knew we would have left overs for Tuesday, then it was we had plans Wednesday after church, so no meal at home, then Thursday I would have to work the closing shift, then Friday we'd have another set of plans, then, and then and then.... It seemed like we never had a week where we could plan out a week worth of meals or even two days without something happening.  So, I figured out.....meal planning does not work for us.  Actually, meal planning kinda stinks.  There, I said it. 

I'm sure meal planning works well for millions of people, just not for us....at least for now.  For just two people it just didn't work out.  Having a list of what we have in our panty and freezer has worked out perfect for us though.  We can quickly scan it, see what we have, and plan our meals that way.  If I do want to make something special, I can look to see if I have the ingredients quickly and plan out what I need easier.
Oh, and making meals and freezing them?....didn't work either....I tried making a couple casserole type dishes and freezing them, but I just got frustrated once I went to cook them because they were so frozen it took almost twice as long to cook them all the way through.

So, it didn't work....oh well...moving on....
:)