{Project Organize} The Pantry

So I have been working on Project Organize, I have been going through the house and making a list of everything I would like to work on. I have been on pinterest looking at various ideas and inspirations for a more organized home.

I am starting with the kitchen. I look through my kitchen cabinets and fortunately many of them are organized nicely and I am happy with it. However, there are a few areas that need a little help. So I took note:

• Spice cabinet: buy a lazy susan to easily get to spices
• White cabinet: find a good way to organize platters
• Bakeware cabinet: find a good way to organize bakeware
• Tupperware cabinet: get rid of unused Tupperware and organize

I did tackled one of the kitchen cabinets that was in need of help.  I organized the what I call the white cabinet, because it is white. I bought a platter organizer at Big Lots for a few of dollars. Now rather than stacking my platters on top of each other they are stored vertically. It is now much easier to get to them and actually gave more room in that cabinet. So great for a $3 investment.


Next, I organized the pantry over the weekend and I am done with the panty and food storage area.

So my pantry looked like this:



and this



As you can see it is not very large, but it is somewhat deep and I needed to do something so that what was in the back didn't get lost. I often could see what was back there and neglected it. As I cleaned the pantry out, I found some of the things in the back were expired and things I didn't even want to eat. So in the trash it went. I bought some baskets from Walmart, a drawer from Target, and made some labels and now my pantry looks like this...









It is so much better. All of Baby Bear's snacks and cereals are on the same shelf so that she can reach it. She just pulls out the basket to look for what she wants. I took the sugar and flour out of their packaging and pour them into the clear Snapware containers I already had. I bought them from Costco years ago. Then labeled them. It will make it much easier to see how much is left and to scoop out when baking. I don't know why I hadn't done it before.

I didn't spent a whole lot on this, about $25 for the baskets and drawer. So the pantry is done! Now on to finishing up the other kitchen cabinets. I am feeling good about my progress.

Our Kitchen: Refrigerator purchased

We bought our new refrigerator tonight. I am very excited and can't wait to use it in my new kitchen. We picked out the Samsung 28.0 Cu. Ft. French Door Refrigerator in Stainless-Steel. It is a really nice looking fridge and I really like the FlexZone drawer feature that will come in handy when Baby Bear is older. It will be a great place for her snacks and drinks. It has a lot of great features that we really liked. I hope it will work as well as we hope it will. It will be delivered next Tuesday!



Everything is starting to come together.

Our Kitchen: More progress

Lots of progress is being made very quickly. We are planning to host our annual Christmas party with a group of close friends. The evite went out on December 1st, so there is no turning back now. We are committed. We have been slated to host for years, but have put it off since we didn't have the space. This year we said we would be ready to host and Papa Bear is working very hard to get us there. These photos were taken last month and much more progress has been made since then. Here are a few photos of the kitchen.

The hardwood floors are in.



The glass tile backsplash was installed. It looks kind of green in the photo, but it is actually more of beige color in real life.



Since this picture was taken the dishwasher has been installed in that hole.



We are getting closer and closer every day.

Our Kitchen: Before and in progress

The granite counter tops are in!!! Here are some photos with the new cabinets (still need to get the backsplash in):





Some close-up photos of the granite. I love it!





We still have to get the glass tile backsplash up. We had a sample of the white glass tile backsplash, but I didn't like how it looked, it was too stark white with the granite. We just need a color that is closer to the color of the granite, an off-white or cream, which shouldn't be a problem. There is still much work to do, but we have come a long way. Take a look at some before shots of the kitchen:





Here is a picture of the kitchen after Mr. Bear tore out the wall joining the dining room and kitchen.

Our Kitchen: The granite

We went to Arizona Tile in Ontario, CA to pick out granite for our kitchen counter tops over the weekend. What a great showroom and a painless experience. I thought that I had an idea in my head of what I wanted. I wanted lighter colored granite. But after walking around and looking at all the beautiful granite, I started to become unsure. There were many options and they were all so beautiful. Granite really is beautiful. Papa Bear told me to pick out what ever I wanted and he said that there really was no way to go wrong with granite since it is just beautiful. So it really was up to me to find the right fit for our kitchen.

I had found one that I really liked and Papa Bear agreed it was very special, but it had a lot of variations within the slab. It was called Typhoon Bordeaux; it started off with some browns and golds with burgundy on the top half and then gradually changed to a cream with gray, burgundy, and gold on the bottom half. It was indeed beautiful with all the variations in the granite, but Papa Bear reminded me that we would be using about a 2 foot part of the slab for the counter tops so not all of the variations that I liked would show up (the slabs were really big, maybe 7-8 feet tall and 10 feet wide). I am glad he brought that up. I really liked the cream part of the slab especially since I was sure I wanted to go with light granite; but we would have to get the entire slab. A little disappointed, I walked around more to take another look while Papa Bear went off with Baby Bear. He went and talked to the sales person and he told the sales person what I was looking for. The sales person mentioned that he had some slabs of that same granite that was just the cream colored part. It was the same but the cut of granite only had the lighter part.

Meanwhile, I walked around and looked at all the granite again. I found two lighter colored granite styles that I kind of liked and asked Papa Bear to look at a couple of them. He mentioned that the original one we liked came in just the lighter variation of the granite. So we asked them to pull out a few different slabs so that I could take a better look at them and make a final decision. We picked the Typhoon Bordeaux that was all cream. I am so glad that Papa Bear mentioned to the sales person what I liked because they only had 3 slabs left. We need only need 2 slabs but they like to reserve 3 slab just in case something happens along the way. Granite can break and when working with the heavy large slabs you never know what will happen.

Here it is.



These pictures are from the website (the second photo shows it close up):

The pictures does not do it any justice, it is really beautiful with some burgundy, gold, and gray in it. It really is special and exactly what I was looking for. I thought it would be so much harder to pick something out. And before I saw this one; I had narrowed it down to 2 others that I liked but but did not love. Thank goodness Papa Bear likes to talk to people, because as soon as they brought this one out, I told Papa Bear: "That is it!." I had no doubts. I can't wait to see it with my cabinets.

Kitchen Design

Our new (new to us) custom kitchen cabinet are all in and Papa Bear purchased our cast iron kitchen sink and faucet. I am excited to have this large sink.



I have always loved the look of white cabinets with a white tile backsplash. But our cabinets are a beautiful cherry wood and so I had to do a little research on what look color counter tops to go with these cabinets. We will have oak wood floors put in to match our existing oak floors in the rest of the house. So that is a lot of wood and darkness especially considering that the kitchen doesn't have a lot of natural light; we only have one big garden window. So I thought that light colored granite counter tops would brighten up the kitchen and would go nicely with our cast iron sink.

I haven't found a picture of a kitchen that clearly depicts how I picture it in my head. This kitchen is fairly close. It has light colored counter tops and simple white tile backsplash, which is along the lines of what I am going for. Plus the island is white cabinets, which we have a cabinet that joins the kitchen and dining room that will also be white. This picture shows me that all those parts can go together.



I shared my thoughts with Papa Bear and while he like the idea of light granite to brighten up the darker woods, he wasn't too thrilled about the white tile backsplash. He had installed some under the cabinet lighting and he wanted a backsplash that would pick up the light and be a little more exciting. He wanted something a little more special.

He suggested glass tile. I wasn't quite sure about the glass tile backsplash, the glass tile I had seen are usually small and look like mosaics. While beautiful, it just wasn't my style nor was it the classic look that I was going for. Then he found this white glass tile backsplash (the white tiles beneath the cabinets in the picture below).



It is a white glass tile that is larger in size than the smaller tiles you usually see with glass tile. I love it. It brings a modern touch to a classic traditional white tile backsplash. Plus, the under the cabinet lighting will really make these tile pop and bring a little specialness to the whole design. Those are the ideas for now, as we go things may change as a I am sure they will. Papa Bear ordered some samples of the glass tile and soon we will go pick out granite. I may totally fall in love with something else as time goes by.

Home remodel back on track!

For three years, we have been living in the back apartment while the front house was undergoing a remodel. We put the remodel on hold when the recession started and Papa Bear's business slowed down. Then I got pregnant and we once again started on the remodel. But Papa Bear's work starting to pick up again and when there is work, Papa Bear has to work. We had hoped to be in the house by the time Baby Bear was born, but that did not happen since Papa Bear was pretty busy with work. It was a good thing that Papa Bear was busy because that meant income, which is important when you have a baby.

Now Baby Bear is a one year old and walking! Papa Bear is really motivated to get us in the front house and has told me that we will be there by Labor Day. Papa Bear has been working really hard the last few weeks and has taken some time off to devote to our home remodel (usually he is working on other people's homes, so our home usually falls down on the priority list).

Our house was built in 1913 and Papa Bear has had the electrical work redone in our garage, had the exterior paint touched up and finished, had the rock work on our chimney and porch fixed, and had our hardwood oak floors patched up. Papa Bear has made a lot of progress on our kitchen. Initially, we did not plan to replace our cabinets since that was out of our budget. So we were going to live with the old cabinets for the time being. But Papa Bear was able to get us some beautiful custom built cherry wood cabinets for our kitchen for almost free! A client was tearing out these beautiful kitchen cabinets and replacing them. Papa Bear offered to demolition the kitchen for free and in doing so was able to take the kitchen cabinets. So we got custom cabinets for the cost of labor to have some of his workers remove the cabinets. Papa Bear measured out all the cabinets and got out his trusty pencil, graph paper, and ruler to design a kitchen that would work with the cabinets and he did a wonderful job! It was almost as if those cabinets were custom made for our kitchen.

Over the weekend, Papa Bear demolished our existing kitchen cabinets with the help of his father and he installed the cabinets. The other day he purchased our new stainless steel LG kitchen appliances:




Aren't they beautiful. They go very nicely with the dishwasher that we got from the Ellen Show last year (which Papa Bear designed the cabinets around). I am so excited to have a beautiful kitchen. I can't wait to use them.

There is still much for Papa Bear to do: granite counter tops and tile backsplash, our bathroom, refinishing the hardwood floors, paint, etc. We are well underway. I will post some kitchen in progress pictures soon. I am so lucky to have such a talented husband.