Category Archives: Kitchen

While Ben was painting the nursery this weekend, I got a whim to organize. Our “pantry” actually consists of 3 small shelves in our kitchen, but it was bursting at the seams and I was tired of not being able to find anything.
I already had a small spice shelf which you can see if you squint really hard, but I needed a solution for all the packets of spices and seasonings.
Insert Ms. Cute Container from the Target $1 section. I actually sighed out loud when I put all our packets in here and saw that it would work perfectly!
Next up was emptying this bad boy and taking inventory of what we were working with. I wiped down the shelves and checked expiration dates. Apparently, French’s fried onions never expire – weird and gross!
This was the throw-away pile. Not too crazy, but it definitely helped add space.
I put things we rarely use (baking stuff) on the top shelf, canned/boxed foods and our Pyrex on the middle shelf and spices which we use daily on the bottom. I love that there’s empty space. Not too shabby for about 20 min and $1!
Here’s a sneak peak of the nursery painting. I’ll show the final pics later this week of how it all turned out. We are absolutely loving it!

Has anyone else been in the mood for organizing? What’s your favorite organization tip for pantries or anywhere in the home? Would you classify yourself as a “baby steps” or a “jump in the deep end” type of organizer?

Hellooo, spring! I took Cali on a walk this weekend and it was like a scene from Bambi. The cherry blossom trees are out in full force and I’m crossing my fingers for a family photo shoot before they are gonners. In celebration of this beautiful season, I decided to spruce up our infamous kitchen shelf.
Just look at it in all its spring glory! Designing this shelf has been a fun game for me since we installed these floating shelves during our kitchen redo. I’ve also had fall, Christmas and New Year shelves. That white pitcher has been a staple and this time I added 3 bunches of hydrangeas from Michaels.
The candleholder and candle are from Target as well as the fun coral lantern I picked up for $5. I’m trying to incorporate more coral into our home. The bird candle is from Pier 1 and the moss rocks came from Dollar Tree.
Here’s a wider shot – gotta love the dryer/extra counter space in the kitchen:) The small decorative box in the middle came from the $1 section at Target. What are those inside the box you ask? Why those are DIY jute wrapped eggs which I will be doing a tutorial on this Thursday. Oh the anticipation!

Who else has a love for cherry trees? Have the 80-degree temps inspired you to do any spring decorating? What’s your favorite nontraditional place to beautify in your home? Feel free to join the Spring Fling Link Party below!

Call me June Cleaver, but I’m amazed at how a new appliance can completely change your life! Upon receiving our tax refund, we promptly marched to a local appliance store (Siano Appliance Distributors) to buy ourselves a new stove. We did our research and they were by far the best deal out there.
Let’s take a step back and explain why we made this purchase. This is the gas stove that came with our house. The problem was that the 3 pilot lights had to continually burn since it didn’t have electric ignition resulting in our house always smelling like gas!
The other problem was that the pilots would often blow out due to the proximity to the back door. We would often wake up or come home to a gas-filled house and I hated that for Cali especially. Our “work-around” was to turn off the gas behind the stove, turn it back on and relight the pilots every.single.time. Our maid apparently never cleaned the stove-top:)
We opted not to pay a delivery fee. Ben got into it with the warehouse guy who swore it wouldn’t fit in our car. I wish I would have taken a pic of it in the ole’ Explorer Sport, but the guy’s last words to us were, “Huh, it fits like a glove.” We’ve fit a dining set and a couch in that thing – this was nothing!
And… here she is! It took a couple of hours for us Ben to read the directions (in the hopes of not accidentally blowing us up) and get it all hooked up. Notice the fancy-smancy clock/timer/oven control, sealed burners, and oven window.
She’s very happy in her new home with all our other Whirlpool appliances! Ben admitted that he’s already getting used to the good life of not having to light the pilots on our old ghetto stove multiple times a day. I still feel like I’m playing a slot machine every time I use our new dishwasher and garbage disposal.
Oh, and Mom, don’t worry – the stove-top got cleaned. We plan on listing our old stove on Craigslist, so we were forced to give it a good scrubdown which involved baking soda and a vinegar/water mix. I was impressed at how well it worked (and all without using harsh chemicals)!

On a completely different note, I had a reader mention that the new chevron background was making it harder to read the text on my blog. I changed the background to a lighter shade, but what do y’all think? I’d love some honest feedback! Who else has had an appliance change their life?

Do y’all remember how we topped off our mini kitchen renovation with some espresso floating shelves to add storage/pretty decor space?
Well, I’ve noticed a small problem with them lately. Just because we live in Memphis doesn’t mean we need to jump on this trend…
That’s right, our floating shelves have started to sag (a.k.a. drive me crazy!).
Ok, ok, maybe I shouldn’t have piled every pot we own onto that bottom one regardless of how much weight it said it would hold. It’s definitely not coming off the wall, it just looks awful like someone threw them up there without a care in the world for aesthetics (Oh, the horror!).
It’s not just the “pot” shelf either – the other two are drooping their little heads as well. I even stopped storing our laundry detergent on this one which was THE WHOLE POINT of putting a shelf above the washer – grrr! We weren’t able to drill the holes into studs because of where we wanted them on the wall, but we did use heavy duty drywall anchors.

This is me getting on my amateur-home-owner hands and knees begging you please to tell me how to fix these babies! John and Sherry over at YHL decided to install brackets on their floating kitchen shelves which I like, but we need to come up with a solution with the ones we have.

Any ideas? Who else has had a shelf sagging problem? Should I scrap the entire thing and go buy some cabinets?

Saggy pants billboard image found here.