Monday, March 8, 2010

Just call me "Martha"

Just for fun, I thought I'd share some of the projects I've been working on recently. Since the kitchen has become my reclaimed domain, I've had a lot of fun re-organizing and decorating my food lair.

The pantry was the first place that needed major attention. Since I am spending a lot more time cooking, I needed to actually be able to see what food I had.

Before



After



Next to be organized was my spice shelf. I am pretty sure we received a spice rack as a wedding gift but I didn't know what half the spices on the rack were so I never used them. In one of our five moves since being married, the rack disappeared. My spices have since become a mess of plastic bottles that get shoved around the shelf each time I look for something. I found a great idea for organizing the spices using small tins I ordered online. The total price of my spice shelf remodel was about $13.00.

Before


After


Now that the boring organizing projects are done, on to the fun stuff...

I bought this mirror for $7 at a garage sale. Super cute. It was a gaudy gold (which I actually almost liked) but I wanted to put it in the kitchen so I painted it a fun blue to match my rug and curtains. I think the mirror may be the one item I save if my apartment burns down. I love it.

Before


After



Last, but not least, I've been trying to come up with a better way to store my bread without involving zip-locks. As if she could read my mind, Amy Walker had a recent post on her blog, Homestead Revival, where she wrote on just that issue.

Using a vintage tea cloth (that for some reason I had never used) I made a bread bag to help the bread "breath" but not dry out.


The next step is to find a fun bread box for my new bread bag and it just so happens that one of our thrift stores is having a 50% off sale on Wednesday...wish me luck!

5 comments:

  1. You ARE Martha! Love love love the mirror! When you have some free time you should come and reorganize MY pantry--there would be no Before pictures allowed. Yes, its that bad.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your bread bag is darling! And I love the spice tins! Very Martha, but I'm thinking MARTHA STEWART, too! Actually Dean and Deluca sells their spices this way and I think it is so cool!

    I had to borrow some white thread Sunday from your MIL because I was working on my own bread bags and had no white thread in the house. I'll post my tutorial on Wednesday for any of your readers that want to learn how to do this. But mine isn't as cute as yours!

    ReplyDelete
  3. OH! Oh! OH! I saw those spice tins and my heart went "pitter patter", as the hubby puts it. LOVE them... and all things cute and organizational. Melissa says I have a "container infatuation", and I think she must be right.

    Love all the projects. So fun...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks ladies! I found the spice tins on specialtybottles.com. They have a lot of cute containers Mariah so beware :)!

    ReplyDelete
  5. That mirror was a great find, I'd have bought it myself, you thrifty chick! Love it painted. And those tins, I'm going there, seriously. Love your blog.

    ReplyDelete