use real butter

While I made dinner tonight, Jeremy set about doing a few home improvement projects. One of which was my idea to increase my kitchen rack space for pots, pans, and other dangling objects by adding side racks over the sink. Now I have fast access to all of my Caphalon and All-Clad pans!

it’s not how big your kitchen is, it’s how well you use it

No, not the house, but for all intents and purposes, the kitchen - she is done. I had been toying with asking my neighbor for some aspen log cuttings so I could build some bookcases to go under the kitchen bar. But the more I looked into the various materials, the more I desired some pre-fab, particle board, DIY kit, cheap thing… my answer came today in the form of a $25 bookcase that ACTUALLY FIT the dimensions I needed, while looking for faux wood touch-up marker at McGuckin’s for my crappy busted particle board bookcases that got dinged yet again… Me and particle board - we go way back. These two bookcases fit to within 1/2 inch of the space needed (b/c there are drawers and cabinet doors to the right).

You see, I hate kitchen bars and I hate bars in general. People rarely sit at the bar, and if they ARE sitting at the bar, they are usually in my way. [I also don’t like the social dynamics of sitting at the bar if there are more than 2 people - but that’s a sushi bar issue…] If I had my druthers, I would have demolitioned the bar out of the kitchen completely - set up my Vardes and some stainless steel worktables and really turned it into a kitchen machine. There’s more flexibility with movable furniture versus some fixed thing nailed to your floor. Anyway, so I hate kitchen bars and I was really annoyed with the one we now “own”. The best use of that space was none other than my cookbooks (too shallow for cookware shelving b/c the diameter of the big pans exceeds the depth of the space), but most bookcases are made in dimensions not suited to fit under a retarded kitchen bar.

another view

Huzzah! I am quite pleased with the salvaging of space, the savings in cost and time, and the excellent access of my culinary library (which I even culled before moving!).

First - for Ro:

This is the flourescent strip lighting we installed under our cupboards (3 in total). My biggest problem with these is that the glare is quite strong if you are a short person. I don’t consider myself to be too short at 5′5″, but my grandmother is probably less than five feet now, and standing at that level, I can see the bulb which is bright and annoying. We had to compromise between setting it further back (best for short person viewing) versus in the middle (best for overall lighting).It got so hot this afternoon, but we were mostly working on the two lower floors, which was a little more bearable. Still plenty of things to take care of, but at least now we feel like we live here. In the evening we took Kaweah for a walk around the circle and followed a spur trail up to and past the school. It was still warm for Ned standards, but it was delightful. Easy to see that the flowers are past peak.

Tonight, at Jeremy’s behest, we made some smores:

…and then proceeded to arrange the master bedroom rug and furniture. Then we shut off all the lights in the house and sat on the couch staring out our picture windows at the night sky, coming around to accepting that this is our home.