Yay for Contact Paper!

Almost 2 years ago, I found a few of these boxes at Target:

I liked the shape and size so I grabbed some and took them home with me, but I was not thrilled about the color. I love green, but this shade was not jiving with me. However since they were only $2.50 a piece I figured I'd come up with something to do later. I didn't know later would be 2 years, but hey.

I found some super cute contact paper at Marshall's. It's from the Macbeth collection and it was $5.99 for 2 rolls and I knew that I could finally conquer the ugly green box.

Voila!

Since it was contact paper, it made this bad boy super easy to cover. Now I have it sitting on my kitchen counter to contain all of my paper clutter that I really should sort through, but somehow never make the time to... (Please tell me I'm not the only one)

I love how well it goes with the dining room! :)

I pretty much love it. :)

New Kitchen Light

Happy happy joy joy. I can actually see in my kitchen at night! For 2 years I have lived with a small, sad kitchen light that barely put off any light. I finally got over to Ikea back in June and while I was there I picked up the Alang fixture to rectify the situation.

This is the only picture I could find that showed the old fixture. Isn't it oogly? It also shows how different my kitchen looks now!

Voila! The new light!

And switched on! I love it!

The new light is fantastic and at $40 it's a steal! :)

New Appliances

 
I am so so happy!! Because now my appliances all match. :) Whoop whoop! After saving up for a while, I finally got around to getting a new stove and dishwasher. The stove and dishwasher that came with the house were black and the dishwasher was particularly horrible.

Here's the old stove - I couldn't find one of the awful dishwasher.

Check out my new and improved kitchen!

I bought the stove and dishwasher from Lowes (gotta love free next-day shipping), but I got them price-matched from Best Buy prices. If you get an appliance at Lowes price-matched, they give you an extra 10% off that price (well at least at my Lowes). I was very pleased with the final prices. Very reasonable.

The new appliances work so much better than the old ones! I love them.

If you need me, I'll be here staring at my "new" kitchen. :)

Behind Closed Doors

Let's talk about the space underneath kitchen sinks. When we moved in I threw a bunch of stuff under there and didn't give it a second thought. It was just a jumbled mess of cleaning supplies and miscellaneous items. I "cleaned it up" at one point and this is what I had.

At Target the other day I saw this adorable contact paper and I was inspired.

Plus I had a Target gift card so what could I do? I had to get it.

Tada!

I found that hanging thing (that's a technical term) on clearance at Marshall's one day - I love getting things out of the way so that I can store the big amount of nothing that I have...

At least it looks better under there and there's some cute contact paper to look at!

Oh, and I also got this hand towel holder. It's quite convenient as it's right underneath the sink.

It's the little things that make me happy. =)

Kitchen Jewelry

This past weekend I finally got around to buying some hardware for the kitchen cabinets. I've lived in this house for a year and a half now, so why did it take me so long? I really don't know... Indecision? Laziness? Whatever the reason I have finally defeated it because there is now hardware on the cabinets! Woo-hoo!

Here is the kitchen before:

And now after all the handles were put on:

I bought both kinds of pulls from Target and they were pretty inexpensive, but exactly what I was looking for. Love that! 

Yes, I could have removed those receipts from the fridge for the pictures, but they are my "trophies" so I leave them so I can admire them when I walk by.

You can also see how under-decorated the kitchen is (under-decorated? Well, that's now a word in my dictionary). Actually, let's just call it minimalist - that sounds better. =)

I love how much more polished the kitchen feels just by adding one little touch.

The Neighbors Can Stop Worrying Now

In the kitchen we have these doors that lead out to the patio. Blinds are on the windows, but I still had these doors that were uncovered. I was getting paranoid about people seeing me through the doors at night so I came up with a solution.

I knew I couldn't do blinds on them or anything hanging directly on the doors, because it's a slider. So I just decided to hang up curtains to leave open during the day and shut once it gets dark.

The best part is the curtains and curtain rod were free because I had a gift card. I'm really happy with how it turned out. But now I can't stop thinking about PAINTING!

In other news, I've finally been able to start cooking regularly again. Nothing fancy yet, but I'm glad to have some semi-homemade meals =]

I'm a vegetarian so that's soy 'chicken'. The pasta is an old favorite of mine.

It's pasta with vegetables and the 'sauce' is olive oil with salt, pepper and basil. It's amazing.

I'm Legit Now

Gotta lot going on, but thought I'd share a few pics!

Pre-race food! As I mentioned a few posts ago, my friend Matt and I raced in a 10k about 2 weeks ago. This is the meal we had the night before. Carb-ilicious! And of course vegetables cause we wanna be healthy. The morning of, we got together at 5:45 am (ugh I was tired) and ate bagels with peanut butter.

We also managed to snap the photo above. The race went fine, but man it was tough.

But we survived!

Onto the house! This is the kitchen on the day that I closed. As you can see there is just a hood above the range and no microwave in sight. Well, Eric is an awesome handyman and decided that he would put an over the range microwave in himself (with the help of his father).

The After shot:

I think it looks great! And those fingerprints all over it are so endearing.... (Ok, you caught me, I have no idea how to clean them off yet). We also got a stainless steel fridge, but I haven't taken a picture of it yet. I can say this though, it's gorgeous (yes, it has fingerprints all over it too...)!

As you can see in the background, Eric put up most of the blinds too. And yes, I actually did some work. I put up the shower curtain rod!

And I put the first food item in the pantry -- a bottle of olive oil leftover from college! =]

Well, that's it for now, but the big table reveal is coming soon!