Beautiful Food

Greetings and happy new year!

I don’t know about your resolutions, or if you even made any, but I vowed to revamp my kitchen in a totally fun way.  So, taking to the infamous Pinterest, I set out to reorganize every drawer, every cabinet and every space in my kitchen that I possibly could.  With a little help from Michael’s craft store, and Target, I was on my way with baskets, organizers and labels galore.   What better way to spend the cold days indoors!  Without further ado, I’ll show you the best part of re-doing the kitchen.

I started with plain oak cabinets.  The kitchen was updated a little over 10 years ago, by the previous, previous owners.  Yay.  They are still in great shape so we had no need to replace anything.  I did however want to add a splash of color without ruining the wood.

Wrapping paper, 3M hook stickies, and glue dots to the rescue!

First things first, I measured the inside seam of the cabinets to make a precise fit for the paper.  Then transferring the measurements to the paper, I cut it out, and fit it inside the cabinet to double check its precision.

I then adhered the adhesive strips that come with 3M command hooks.

I also rolled the back of the paper with glue dots to make sure every side had adhesive to stick to the cabinet door.

After securing the paper inside the door, I wrapped my very favorite wash tape around the edges.  Why?  To give it a fun border, of course!

I then took some wooden shims (which are usually sold cheaply, in packs, at at hardware store, like Ace or Lowe’s),

and covered them in more washy tape.  I used some fun colors on one set, and black chalkboard tape on the other.

Easy peasy.

Then, I used another one of my favorite items, a chalk paint marker, and wrote some fun doodles on the chalkboard tape.

I chose to do a combination of screw-in mug hooks and 3M command hooks to use for hanging measuring cups and spoons.  I secured these to the shims and then, using some more 3M adhesive strips, I fastened the shims to the cabinets’ outside edges.

However, I would definitely let the shims set on the cabinets overnight before hanging anything on them, no matter how light.

Before and after:

A little fun for the theater nerd in me:

Can you guess the musical?

Voila!

Admittedly, I looked up some fonts on dafont.com, and sat in front of my computer painstakingly copying the typeface with a chalk marker until I had it right.  I’m sure there are easier ways to do this…

Another thing I wanted to try in a different cabinet was to put up some cork board squares.  I found these at Michael’s as well.  I used a box cutter to slice the command strips into quarters, and then adhered them to the back of the cork squares.

 Small thumbtacks work best to post notes!

Now all I need to do is pin up some of my favorite recipes 🙂

A few other fun items I found at the craft store included some cute canisters, apron hooks, and a chicken wire frame.    I converted the canisters into a make-shift spice rack, again by wearing out my chalk marker and screwing holes into the wall….

I painted the chicken wire card holder to match my kitchen.

 Any type of paint should work…

What should I put here?  More recipes?

Also, the aprons were Christmas gifts from my mother, who got them from people at her church who make them by hand.  One for me and one for the husband.  Yay !

Until next time…

-K