A Kitchen Tour + Weekend Things

Cocobutter

That’s Coco’s “please don’t leave me” face. It cuts like a knife, straight through my heart.

We took her to the park on Saturday to stretch her legs and get some fresh air. She’s never been one to play fetch but she loves to run {for short periods of time} so we did a few sprints in the grass together. Running with Coco

Running with Coco

Running with Coco

She beat me the first few runs and then tired out. I tried to explain to her that she just needs to pace herself better next time but I’m not sure if it got through.

After that we took her to the farmers market and I picked up an orchid for our new place.

Farmers Market

Conveniently located right behind the farmers market is our favorite juice and smoothie spot, Juice & Java Express.

Juice & Java Pleasanton

I ordered a blueberry/orange/apple juice for me and a mango/pineapple smoothie for him. His turned out to be better and I might’ve “accidentally” drank half of it. Woops.

So the real highlight of the weekend was finally finishing unpacking and setting up the kitchen!

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I know it looks spacious but it’s actually a good deal smaller than our last kitchen because it doesn’t have a pantry. Finding a home for everything was a little challenging but with a few improvements, it worked out great.

Thanks to my incessant blog reading, I remembered Emily’s creative use of the IKEA Grundtal shelves and bought some for the back wall of our kitchen, next to the sign from our wedding cake table.

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I’m so excited because it allows me to easily access our most commonly used bulk items: legumes, grains, nuts, and seeds, and also see when we’re running low on certain things.

I used most of the larger 1/2 gallon jars for dry beans which I’m hoping will help steer me away from buying them canned.

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For the spices I found magnetic knife racks at IKEA to hang herb jars that I bought from The Container Store.

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I also got some helpful little labels in case I forget what’s inside.

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Then I found more space for our breakfast staples on top of the oven: oats, granola, Brandon’s motor oil {aka coffee}, hemp seeds and chia seeds.

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For the utensils I used bamboo drawer organizers that we brought with us from our old house.

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Those are also from The Container Store and they’re not only durable but also really easy to clean, so I picked up a few more to fit some of the produce on top of the refrigerator.

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I used the largest cabinet in place of the pantry, storing the more commonly used things like oil, vinegar, and nut butter at the bottom and baking items at the top.

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And of course the pantry wouldn’t be complete without Justin’s vanilla crack butter almond butter.

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Those bamboo shelves {another Container Store find} really help to create more space and make things easily accessible.

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The Tupperware, however, is another story. I have to stand on my tippy toes to get anything down from that shelf. It’s a good thing I’m tall!

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One benefit of this kitchen is the large amount counter space so I have plenty of room to display things like the beautiful cutting board that my dear friend Stacey got us as a wedding gift.

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It matches the kitchen perfectly!

I also have the new food processor Brandon randomly surprised me with last week.

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It’s my most used appliance and the old one I had was super small and made an ear-piercing noise so I was long overdue for a replacement. The funny thing is that he originally bought me the enormous 16-cup Proline Kitchen Aid Food Processor and when I came home and saw it on the counter, I instantly freaked out and told him we had to return it. It was huge!! He wasn’t too happy that I ruined the surprise {he says I’m the worst gift-receiver ever} but this one is a 9 cup and it suits my needs perfectly.

One last thing I want to show you is our entry way:

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I bought the dry erase calendar from Pottery Barn a few years ago and recently bought the matching coat hanger and key ring holder thingy. Having that much organization in my home makes me so unbelievably happy, I can’t even begin to explain.

Next to the entry is a console table that I got from Target. I set up the pretty orchid from the farmers market so that we can see it from all points of the room.

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The woman selling them said not to water it but instead to soak it in water for three hours, every two weeks. Wish me luck that I don’t kill it!

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It feels so good to have everything finished! I have a few final touches to make to our bedroom and then I should be completely done.

 

Are you an organization freak like me?

What’s your most used appliance?