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weekend to do

and wow. week one of high school and middle school. bam!
absolutely nothing else seemed to happen this week! (the girls are loving their new schools. and I am loving the love. and the fact that E can walk to school once again!)



around the house
order desk for k (long time coming - and while my preference is for homework at the kitchen table, I totally appreciate her desire for a place to study in her room. plus it is currently on sale!)
measure placement for shower fixture
reorganize "library"

#tbt

was cleaning out some files and found this...


2003



same spot this morning




one of the greatest lessons from my mom about living with kids, is to not put off nice things, but to invest in your home and fill it with things you love. teach your children to appreciate that and you don't have to worry about them getting marker on the sofa or being careless with the good china.





p.s. the shape magazine in the top picture actually made me laugh out loud. xo

tres cool

over the last year we have had our beloved fridge go belly-up three times. first off the fan. then a relay. and finally the condenser.

after some heart-felt consideration (we really loved our amana and its clean lines!) we decided it was time to move on.



we didn't have a lot of choices with our restricted cabinet depth location. (also hard to photograph in!) we are so very pleased with what we did find.

brand new to samsung - this model fits perfectly in our space. the samsung food showcase fs9000 has the stainless finish we required (to match our other appliances) and its recessed handles preserve the clean line we were looking for. and its pretty. and cool. (in many ways!)



we did get almost 13 years from our old fridge. not bad. (would likely have been longer if it had been located on a cooler wall, with more ventilation.) and it is so nice to not be worrying about when our fridge will conk out again! (living out of coolers is only fun for a while!)

details of fs9000

youtube review of fs900 with "tour" of its special showcase feature.

our kitchen through time.

life expectancy of major appliances.

tips for extending the life of your fridge.

throwback Thursday

our kitchen 2001

the transformation

hot

based on the pattern in Lotta Jansdotter's Simple Sewing


starting a bit back with quilting the fabric - and taking advantage of the rainy day today, i checked this little project off my list. (i had burnt a big hole in our oven mitt - and decided on making the replacement instead of searching for a mitt i liked.) i am trying to use up my stash of japanese fabrics (this one 'Pear Branch' by Yumeji Takehisa and Yurio Seki) - as well as some yardage of insul-bright i can't recall why i bought (though i have a strong recollection it had something to do with melissa ...). it was simple. and thus rewarding. i was pretty proud of myself getting it done. i should focus on more of these little, do-it-in-an-hour projects.

tradition

2006 / 2007 / 2008 / 2009 / 2010 / 2011

Happy Easter!

we live here.

we've been looking for quite some time for a work to hang in the kitchen. i had originally planned to enlarge a photograph - but this is a very sunny corner - and the cost of an enlargement coupled with the inevitable fading that would take place, put that idea to rest. when i saw this poster (also available as a screenprint) i knew we had found a perfect fit. (and the price couldn't be beat!) d put together a frame, and we sprung for UV plexi. we will see how it lasts.

the girls love finding home on it. i love that it includes all these neighborhoods that i have recently discovered (after living here 12 years!).

ork posters has a whole series around this concept. fun stuff.

my plan to paint the kitchen myself has also been waylaid. april.

hanging this on our puttied and unpainted wall might be putting the cart before the horse, but we couldn't resist.

our kitchen

veni

vedi

vici

we purchased our home from its original owner. they had completed a redo sometime in the early 80s - but the kitchen had remained fairly original. complete with slide-out stove-top - which we perhaps foolhardily kicked to the curb. (it no longer worked.) the narrow kitchen upper cabinets had sliding pegboard doors. cool. but filthy. we replaced them with plexi. the counter top was a fab green and pink boomerang. very cool, but again had aged poorly and was replaced with baltic birch and white laminate counter tops. d rebuilt all the wooden cabinet doors and upper cabinetry, replicating them in the dining room. the carpet (!) and original lino underneath were replaced with cork. the 80s light fixtures were replaced with simple globes. the only real footprint change was moving the washing machine out to a newly created laundry room and building a breakfast nook where the dryer, and another door once stood. (details to follow.)