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Make Your Own Spice Jars: A DIY Quick & Cheap

by on January 20, 2013

This was the straw that broke the camel’s back:

Four baskets randomly crammed with cooking spices.

It was my breaking point and the moment that I finally HAD to do something.

Looking around the kitchen I found these:

Hmm…small, compact, stackable, and I have tons of them from all the baby food we’ve been buying. (Right….because my reality doesn’t include puree-ing food the homemade way.)

The lids are more secure than some other brands (I tested them) and they could fall out of the cupboard without the top popping off.  That was pretty much the only credential that really mattered. :-)

So I grabbed a roll of painter’s tape, a pen, and went to work. Two hours later I had this:

Interestingly, one full bottle of a spice fit perfectly into these little tubs. If you want a prettier look there are all kinds of lovely templates out there for spice labels which are nicer look at, but these spices are hiding in my cabinet and the system just needed to happen fast and be functional. For me, this DIY cheapie does the trick.

You can see that these go 3 deep, so there are 5 rows stacked 3 high and 3 deep. That’s 45 total spice tubs with 9 in each row.

Here’s the view of the entire cabinet.

Now those 4 baskets of chaos have turned into only one small shelf in a cabinet.  When I made gingerbread cookies the day after this spice organization project, it only took me about 20 seconds to find all the spices for the recipe. That was a first for me!

Cost for the whole thing was $20 that I already spend for baby food. So it was actually a free up-cycle project!

Ahh…makes me all kinds of happy to have even this tiny space of my house completely organized.

 

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A little Christmas in the Kitchen

by on December 5, 2012

I’m not going nuts with the Christmas decorations this year. Can’t actually. Between the new baby and the new business this year, Christmas had to be simple.

And I really REALLY like it.

I made those little boxwood wreaths on a standard wire frame you can get at the craft store. Boxwoods grow so slowly that I didn’t want to take many clippings, which is why I did these in a small size.

My mother-in-law (also the world’s best yard sale/thrift/bargain shopper), found a set of four pewter Jefferson cups for $2 at a yard sale. Can you imagine? She’s the secret to some of my best finds. Anyway, she gave me this lovely set of Jefferson cups which I wanted to use here in the window. I filled them with Epsom salt to look a little like snow.

It smells so good!

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Before-and-After Kitchen Makeover

by on May 14, 2012

My parents still live in the house that I grew up in. It’s soaked with memories and seared in my mind’s eye the way it looked when I was a kid.

But the kitchen had been showing its age for a long time and was ripe for a makeover. After talking about it for many, m a n y  years, my parents finally settled on a plan.

Here is where we started:

A typical 1970s kitchen, but they’d already begun a transformation by updating appliances and flooring a few years ago.

I helped them pick out colors, paint, finishes and hardware but they did all the work themselves. (Mom is now an expert painter!)

Before:

After:

OH. MY. GASP!

You can see that the counter top is still pale yellow (they’re planning to update it) but even so, the improvement is massive. The green is Sherwin Williams ProClassic “Sliced Cucumber” in smooth enamel satin finish.

Here’s another Before:

After:

I didn’t even realize there was a tile backsplash until now!

Goodbye 1970. Hello 1940…in 2012.

Dad put LED lights underneath all the cabinets too. Talk about bright and airy!

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The kitchen facelift inspired some painting in the adjacent family room too. Now the hutch on the other side of the room looks happier.

(Sorry for the grainy Before shot.)

I can’t get over how the wood grain pops against that warm gray wall. Yummy.

Before:

(I know Mom had the place spick-and-span when we arrived. Can I blame my 3-year-old for this mess?)

After:

I SO want to sit down in those cushy chairs.

Oh YES.

Nice work Mom and Dad! It turned out beautifully!

 

 

 

 

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Black & White Kitchen Redo

by on January 21, 2012

When we moved into our house, the kitchen looked like this.

Clean, bright and well-staged, yes. But it lacked vibe and I believe in kitchens that make you FEEL something. After all it’s the central gathering place for most families and I wanted some character in it — some warmth, welcome and a touch of farmhouse aesthetic.

We didn’t chronicle every step of the process because our kitchen redo predated this blog, so I’m just going to show before/after shots and tell you what we did to bring in that warmth and character.

Here is our kitchen today.

From another angle, here’s a before shot.

And after.

Here’s what we did:

1. Bought a refrigerator. Naturally. Because it’s kind of important for this room to have one. We went for the counter-depth fridge so it wouldn’t protrude into the walking space of the kitchen and I’m oh, so glad we did this.

2. Put in black granite countertops. (We hired a friend’s company and they did an excellent job!)

3. More than doubled the size of the island to accommodate seating for four, and moved the chandelier to be centered over the island. Hubsy drew up the plans, found the new table legs online and hired a carpenter to build the extended table frame and attach it to the legs. We LIVE on this island.

4. Changed the hardware on the cabinets from knobs to handles.

5. Installed a beadboard backsplash. Hubsy did all the work on this and it remains my favorite feature of this kitchen. It pulls in the farmhouse feeling I’d been wanting.

6. Put in a new sink and faucet hardware.

Here’s another before/after:

And now, here are waaaay too many after shots, but hopefully something will inspire you!

You can learn how to make the faux roman shade here.

 

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