Kitchen Love

Vance took the "big kids" to his mom's house over the weekend so I could have a little break.  Sweet of him, I know!  So after I put Molly to bed on Friday night, I had the house to myself with a million things I could do with my freedom from children.  And what did I do?


Cleaned my kitchen, of course!  


Not only did I clean it really well, I put away the million little things that have been sitting in little piles all over the place for weeks on end.  It took me a good three hours, but for one whole entire blissful day, I got to enjoy a CLEAN kitchen... with absolutely NO piles and NO mess anywhere!


It was truly heaven!

And given that I got a new camera for my birthday that I had yet to break out of the box, I decided that my clean kitchen was surely the perfect occasion with which to inaugurate my new camera!  


Although I'm very late, I'm linking up with Kelly's Kitchen Tour too!


So without further ado...


My very, very clean kitchen!

View into the Kitchen/Hearth Rooms

View of our island from Hearth Room
See the little kiddie chairs - that's where we eat breakfast, lunch, and sometimes dinner!

The whole kitchen

My favorite part of my whole entire house is my oven hood and backsplash!

I love that we have lots of "decorative" cabinetry in our kitchen (this house was a former model home), but it doesn't make for very much useable cabinet space.  So I keep a lot of my dishes out of the cabinets on plates stands and pedestals.

Looking over the island into the Hearth Room

The "Red Table" Eating Area

Another favorite of mine... the ends of the island are cut out to look kind of like furniture.

The Hearth Room where we spend 98% of time during the day!

The other side of the Hearth Room
{As I was enjoying my toy free Hearth Room and clean Kitchen, I also got caught up on the Apprentice!}

My new refrigerator decorations!
Have I mentioned that my children fight constantly?
I stole this idea from a blogger and am trying to implement positive charts as an incentive for being sweet and obedient.

How is it working so far?
I'll let you know after I figure out how to get them to quit fighting over who gets a sticker and whether the other person put their sticker in the correct place!  Sigh!

Tonight I am, once again, sitting amongst piles of toys and other "stuff", my floors are once again covered in crumbs, and my couches are covered with piles of laundry.  And I'm reminiscing about my lovely Saturday... the day which I had nothing but love for my kitchen... my very, very clean kitchen!  

Big Sigh!