What's Cooking In Our Kitchen

What's been cooking in our kitchen?  Not food! Unless you count Dream Dinners meals and freezer meals I prepped while pregnant with E. What we've been doing (FINALLY) is some decorating and personalizing.

A few months ago we bought some tile from Lowe's to do a back splash and at long last A.R. was able to install it. It took him pretty much three-four hours for each wall/section he did on five different days with all the cuts he had to make around the outlets, but it came out fabulous and we both love it.

In addition, I sewed some sheer curtains for our solarium off the eat-in portion of our kitchen and then went on the hunt for some red curtains to coordinate with our red couch in our adjacent family room. I couldn't find fabric I liked to sew the curtains myself, so we ended buying them from JC Penny. These pictures don't have the top swag up yet as I still have to order them, but I like the look so far with the pale yellow walls and it ties in well with our adjacent family room.

Horrible lighting, but you get the idea...pale yellow walls, sheers, and majestic red curtains

I was very particular about the tie backs I got as I don't really like the long tasseled kind, I didn't want to screw hooks in the wall, and we wanted to be sure to still let some light in. I found these tie backs (see picture) from Ann & Hope and absolutely love them. I just hope my kids don't figure out how to remove them and use the pin as weapons on each other! ;)

I LOVE how our kitchen, casual dining area, and solarium turned out. It actually feels more like "our" home now with our personal touch.

Our next project is putting up a mantle and fireplace surround in our family room. A.R. wants to hide the cords from the television behind the mantle and in the wall. We hope to have that done before E's baptism party on the twelfth. We shall see! We have all the supplies now to do it except the insulation for the wires, so it's possible.