Gift guide for someone who lives in the kitchen

I have this friend... we'll call her Bethany*... who spends all her time in the kitchen making food for her family. She cooks, cleans, bakes, chops, stirs, serves, sprinkles, wipes, and eats of course (rinse and repeat). I'm sure many of you can relate. Bethany doesn't mind doing all of this stuff on a daily basis, but wouldn't it be so much fun if the things she used were fun to look at? That's where Etsy comes in handy.  Etsy has a Holiday Hub where you can find all these fun things and more. 

I went through the Hub this week and made a list of fun things you can buy me... ahem... Bethany this year for Christmas.

French Butter Keeper from Sawyer Ceramics

Personalized Slate Serving Board from Healthy Inside Out

Writable (ART)issn Cheese Markers from Peppersprouts

Ceramic Salt Cellar from NoeMarin

Linen Napkins from Pillowlink

Bon Appetit Wall Art from Hampty Dampty Art

Personalized Knife Rack from Norden Designs

Gray Ceramic Plates from Bininaor

Peace on Earth Serving Spoon from Milk and Honey Luxuries

Find your own fun things at in the Etsy Holiday Hub here.

*For some reason some people hear Bethany when I say Stephanie. 

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My favourite kitchen tools

I'm in the kitchen a lot so over the years I've come to love some kitchen tools more than others. In addition to my trusty cast iron pans and my food processor, here are the small kitchen tools I can't live without.

Ice cream scoops: I make a lot of burgers... not the beef kind, the bean kind! I discovered early on that a standard sized ice cream scoop makes the perfect burgers for us. The smaller scoop is great for cookies and 'meat' balls!

Tongs: Tongs are so versatile. I use them most to mix dressing into salads and then use them to serve the salad. A small pair of tongs is more practical than two salad spoons because you only need one hand!

Silicone Spatulas: I love my silicone spatulas and yes I use all three! I use the smaller one to scoop out the food processor, the medium one for mixing and the black one for everything including most things I sauté and fry. They're easy to clean and easy to store.

What are your go-to kitchen tools?

Kitchen island of happiness

The house we stayed at in Tremblant had an amazing butcher block island. I loved having the extra counter space in the middle of the room to chop, cook and plate food. I really missed it when we got home and we started looking for options we could use in our kitchen.

We have a quite a bit of space in the middle of the kitchen with no counter space by the stove (really annoying btw) which made it kind of cumbersome for cooking. We'd have to chop something on one side and drag it over to the other. I tried to find a before pic, but I could only find this to show how much space is in between. You can kind of get the picture.

Anyway we were spoiled by our vacation rental. The thing is that we didn't want to spend a ton of money. The plan is to gut the kitchen in about five years which will include taking down the wall between the kitchen and dining room to build a big island. We wanted something decent quality, affordable, functional and that we could easily sell down the road.

We saw the Stenstorp at Ikea and it met all of the requirements. It was a bit more than we wanted to spend but we loved the clean lines and the fact that it doesn't really look like typical Ikea furniture.

We took a little family trip on Saturday and came home with one!

We love it! We weren't sure if we'd find it annoying that we have to go around something in the middle of the kitchen now to cook or grab something from the fridge but honestly it's like it has always been there. Mark found the little stools on kijiji for $50 and picked them up today. I think we should paint them red.

 I love the stainless steel shelves on the side - I was able to move my cookbooks off the counter giving me even more space to work with.

The only problem is that now that we have the island, I'm looking at the dark in the kitchen and thinking of jumping on the two-tone cupboards bandwagon. It would definitely help to hide stuff like this :).

We'll see!

ps - I apologize for the weird photos - I took these at night with my iphone because I was too lazy to get my regular camera...

friday faves - kitchen

I was poking around on etsy this week and found a few things I've been loving for the kitchen.

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I love hanging prints in the kitchen. This one would be so sweet above the stove.

via

I think this ipad stand is such a fun idea and would likely use it for watching movies too since I've been using my laptop to prop up our ipad instead...

via

I'd love these super sweet bowls for mixing super sweet things

via

kitchen dreams

I saw this kitchen on Pinterest this week and fell in love. Can someone come here to build this in my house for me please? Mmmkaythanks.

project reorg: kitchen cupboards

So my kitchen is driving me a batty. I need to reorganize it big time. It's being taken over by jars of bulk pantry items and they're starting to fall on my head when I open the doors. I'm in the kitchen all.the.time so I need to do this for my own sanity.

Also the placement of things just don't make sense. I was telling a friend of mine about people putting things away in different cupboards and had mentioned about how my measuring cup is in a different place all the time. She said "Yes I know - it goes with the other measuring things right?!" I said "Ya - right! Duh!" Except mine doesn't. The cups are in one place, while the spoons are in another. In my head it makes sense for some reason, but if someone were to go in my cupboards to look for them they'd be lost likely.

Which all leaves me on a quest to have it all make sense.

I was reading an article that Katie Bower wrote recently for Wayfair about organizing a pantry and the thing that stuck with me was to make stations for your things. So here are my stations (I will likely have to pare them down or bulk some together but this is basically what I need space for):

• bulk pantry items (all the jarred stuff!) and their leftovers
• baking/spices/oils station
• vitamins/hemp powders station
• cereals/snacks
• coffee/tea
• cleaning/paper towels/kitchen bags
• cookbooks
• potatoes/onions etc
• linens
• cat food
• recycling/garbage
• kids crap dishes/utensils/cups ;)
• misc glasses/plates/utensils
• canned goods/other boxed foods
• cooking/baking utensils/dishes
• pots, pans, storage/tupperware containers
• vases etc.

Did I miss anything?

small things

Sometimes it's the small things that make me the most happy. Yesterday I headed out the door to grab something for lunch and I ended up at Staples. After revealing the disaster nursery the other day I wanted to get started organizing the filing cabinet in the room. While at Staples I found a wall of Martha Stewart fun and grabbed a cute little document hanger thingamabob to hold all the crap we keep at the entrance into the kitchen.

I didn't take a before shot (I didn't think you needed to see more mess!), but here's the after. Ahhh I love how everything is off the counter and out of the way and the colour kind of blends in with the backsplash.

Neat and tidy.

I also picked up a bigger doc hanger for my take out menus! I got the idea from Maillardville Manor. Such a great idea. Now I just have to tackle the rest of the junk drawer :).

mmm pizza.

kitchen inspiration

It's lunchtime here in real-job world, so I thought I would post a pic I just found that has inspired me to think more about my kitchen.

I have to say, my kitchen isn't bad, but it's not my dream kitchen - that is for sure. I found this kitchen via Isabella and Max Rooms the other day and I love it.

Source: 2.bp.blogspot.com via Stephanie on Pinterest

To be honest, it's not entirely different from my kitchen. Ok this is a massive overstatement. I have white cupboards (from 1960), dark grey walls, tumbled stone backsplash and wood floors.

This kitchen is like a grown-up version of mine. The millwork is gorgeous. It has an island. It has a gas stove and marble counters. Yummy.

A new kitchen is definitely on our list, but it's about 10 years down the road I think. I'll just keep this photo in my back pocket for now ;).

Happy Weekend!

red door express

Source: theletteredcottage.net via Stephanie on Pinterest

I saw this pic on Thrifty Decor Chick today and I have to say I'm lovin' the red. I've had a weird love for red my whole life (I think I get it from my Mom for some reason) and this door is just speaking to me.

As soon as I saw it I wondered if a) it would work in my kitchen, b) I'd have enough guts to do it and c) if Mark would think I was insane for wanting to do this.

What do you think? Think it would work or am I a bit nuts?

if all else fails, just fake it

This is my new roman blind in my kitchen. I've been wanting to make this since February, but have been afraid to. You see... when I need/want to make things and I don't really know how to do it I sit and stare at the fabric for god knows how long, thinking of how I should go about my project. Finally the time would come when Mark would say: "Would you just make that already??" or "So how is the blind coming along?" as he points to the fabric still sitting in the envelope it came in.

So one day I brought the fabric upstairs and just did it... I made my blind. I've been trying to tell myself that a lot more these days "JUST DO IT." It feels better when you say it and then do it so I think I'll do it more often.


I knew this roman blind wouldn't really be used (pulling it up and down because ya know, I really love staring at my neighbour in his kitchen while I'm doing dishes and I know he loves it too) so I decided to fake it. I made the blind as one normally would; adding dowels to create nice folds, but then I used velcro to fasten the folds together and then used this crazy super velcro stuff to hold the blind onto the window frame. We'll see if it holds... The first 'warning' on the velcro label says: 'Do not use this on fabric or in sewing projects.' But I'm too impatient so hopefully I don't come home one day to find a roman blind in the dish water.

Mark says it's crooked (so he might be right) but I don't care. It's up there and it's done.

Now on to the zillion other projects I have piling up!