Amy Beth

June 18, 2013

A Quick Kitchen Refresh

This weekend I made some progress on my kitchen. When we moved into this house I decided I wanted a cheery red and turquoise kitchen. I got my inspiration from these images.

inspiration

inspiration

Aren’t they cute?

But other than some red canisters and a turquoise soffit, I wasn’t really getting the same feel from my kitchen.

before pics

 

 

We have a few problems here. One is the lack of cheery color. There’s a lot of white. White can create a feeling of space, lightness, openness. It can be very nice. But when it’s paired with a dingy floor and countertop that won’t be getting replaced anytime soon, it just looks sad. We needed some color in here!

So, at a rare and recent trip to IKEA I picked up some cheery turquoise frames. Then I just printed out some simple images I made in Photoshop with the help of a free flower brush pack. It was super quick to put together and print out, and now I have artwork in the kitchen in my color scheme!

wall with frames

The other problem in the kitchen was the lack of counter space. Or rather, the lack of free counter space. So much stuff had a home on the counter that I often ran out of room to prepare food. Which is the whole point of a kitchen. So IKEA came to the rescue again.

We got the RASKOG Kitchen Cart in – of course – turquoise. I was so excited about this cart! I moved my often used kitchen tools, the hot pads, and the fruits and veggies that we don’t store in the fridge to the cart. This freed up room on the counter to rearrange some canisters and the microwave and other small appliances. I also still have space on the top shelf to load it up with ingredients from the fridge and pantry during meal prep time.

Pic of cart

I can wheel the cart next to the stove, have all my tools and ingredients within reach, and still have counter space to do the actual chopping and stirring and what not. It’s made the whole kitchen feel much more clean and organized.

after pic

It sounds shallow, but I’ve learned that my mood is greatly impacted by the amount of cuteness in my environment. Sprucing up the kitchen in these small ways has upped the cute factor, therefore making it just a little it more fun to make dinner.

3 responses to “A Quick Kitchen Refresh”

  1. Mommy says:

    Cute has always been important to you. Glad you’ve been able to up the kitchen cute factor recently with such easy adjustments! Now I need to come up with a way to make mine cuter and more user friendly.

  2. […] papers to add a little creative flair to the board, and I knew I wanted the board to match my red and turquoise color scheme in my kitchen, so I set about cutting up little rectangles of pretty paper that would work with […]