Before I show you my kitchen though I want to ask you to pray for a 13 year old in our community who was hit by a recycling truck as she was getting off the school bus. It is an accident which has had a major ripple effect throughout our area since her family owns a popular market garden in this community. Her parents are keeping people updated through a blog specifically for that purpose. If you have a minute go and check it out at Pray For Lydia. Thanks for taking the time to do this.
This is the kitchen in our new house. In my ideal world it would look like this most of the time.
See how clean the counters are!
See how the alphabet magnets are all on the fridge!
(See how the baby is quiet and happy in the exersaucer!)
It's lovely, right? However most of the time it looks like this...
Yes, dirty dishes piled high and toys on the floor. sigh.
A feature I really like about our kitchen is the open shelving where we have our dishes. I am going to give you a quick tour of my dishes because I have some sentimental things. In the picture on the left the top two shelves are all the pottery I brought back from Hebron, Israel-Palestine from when I lived there. I brought back about four to eight pieces each trip and completed a set of four place settings.
The dish you can't see well on the top shelf in the picture on the right is from my grandma. Her sister gave it to her in 1932 when she moved to Paraguay. My grandma only saw her sister three more times in her life after that. I was so touched when my grandma gave it to me.
On the second from the top shelf is my Dutch pottery. I got it for St Nicholas Eve the year I lived in The Netherlands. The cups beside it are a wedding gift made by a friend of ours which is really special. And the cookie jar on the other side is the one I grew up with. Now if I could just get it filled!
On the third and bottom shelves you can see some mugs I picked up when we went to Austria and Guiness glasses from when my husband and I went to Ireland on our honeymoon. I have a lot of dishes which remind me of different places in the world and it's neat to be able to display it all. Kudos to my mom and my aunt who arranged these shelves for me since I don't have a good sense of how to display stuff like this!
A feature I really like about our kitchen is the open shelving where we have our dishes. I am going to give you a quick tour of my dishes because I have some sentimental things. In the picture on the left the top two shelves are all the pottery I brought back from Hebron, Israel-Palestine from when I lived there. I brought back about four to eight pieces each trip and completed a set of four place settings.
The dish you can't see well on the top shelf in the picture on the right is from my grandma. Her sister gave it to her in 1932 when she moved to Paraguay. My grandma only saw her sister three more times in her life after that. I was so touched when my grandma gave it to me.
On the second from the top shelf is my Dutch pottery. I got it for St Nicholas Eve the year I lived in The Netherlands. The cups beside it are a wedding gift made by a friend of ours which is really special. And the cookie jar on the other side is the one I grew up with. Now if I could just get it filled!
On the third and bottom shelves you can see some mugs I picked up when we went to Austria and Guiness glasses from when my husband and I went to Ireland on our honeymoon. I have a lot of dishes which remind me of different places in the world and it's neat to be able to display it all. Kudos to my mom and my aunt who arranged these shelves for me since I don't have a good sense of how to display stuff like this!
In this corner of our kitchen is the door to the basement (which is only partially stripped of paint and looks a little weird) with our family aprons hanging on it and my son's table and chairs. He eats some of his meals here and loves it! Above his table are pottery fish from my grandparents' house which are as old as my mom.
Between our stove and our fridge is our collection of "food pictures." They are either pictures of us eating things or unique pictures of food we have taken over the years. It's a fun little wall.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed the tour.
Yes, unfortunately there is carpet in our kitchen. It's a sad story, but at least we didn't install it...ha!
ReplyDeleteI absolutely love how you know the history of all your dishes. That's awesome. I also love your clean and dirty pics! My sink is generally piled mile-high with dishes and depending on the day they may be clean or dirty. Kelly needs to host this more often so i have a reason to clean!
Your open cabinets are so pretty, especially with all the dishes that have meaning. You're brave to show the "keepin' real pictures." I kept scooting all of my dirties to other parts of the kitchen to take my pictures!
ReplyDeleteI really like the open shelving, I have considered taking off my cabinet doors. Oh my indecisiveness. :)
ReplyDeletePraying for that sweet family, thanks for sharing!
Love open shelving!
ReplyDeleteLove the REAL LIFE photos too!
I want to thank you for stopping by my blog and leaving a comment. You asked about our coffee machine . . .
Yes, it is a Miele and we absolutely love it! It makes the all time BEST coffee!
Thanks for stopping by my blog. I love your kitchen, it's so personal! The dishes and your food pictures - just my sort of thing! We don't have a dishwasher either...
ReplyDeleteThinking of Lydia's family.