Welcome To My Kitchen....

Welcome to my kitchen!  This is the room that totally sold me on our house!  But let me start off this post with a flashback to when I was 10ish.  I had just discovered Food Network.  I was OBSESSED.  And ever since I have dreamed for years about my dream kitchen.  And I got it.  (This is the part where I do an embarrassing victory dance.)

Oh and have I ever mentioned in detail the kitchen that Ben and I first started out in?  We lived in what I lovingly call "the ghetto shack."  Don't get me wrong, I loved that place.  So many awesome memories.  So many ghetto features.  In one word: AWESOME.  The not so awesome part was our kitchen.  How much spare counter space did we have.... hmm... let me do some mental math..... maybe a good 2x feet.  And that was usually covered in old mail.  So I often had a cutting board in my lap on the sofa (that wasn't so awesome when I was preggers).  After living there I swore to myself I would have a kitchen with counter space to spare someday, and VOILA!  My dreams came true.

So here's the basic tour:

 The kids' craft table.  Thank you Ikea (also for the kitchen table/chairs and those awesome window panels covering our sliding glass door).

 The cabinets to the very left are the empty ones the kids play in.  The door on the far right (facing us) is the powder room.  To its left is the laundry room.  And to its left is another closet.

 The door to the right is my ginormous pantry (look below).  As you can see I dumped all of our junk next to the toaster oven.  Someday I will figure out where all of these things belong.  On the left you can see more junk in a heap on top of a built in desk.  To the left of that is the garage door.

Once again forgive me for the poor quality of pictures.  Once again they were taken at night.  Catching the pattern here?  I take pictures while the kids are in bed, or in other words, while it looks somewhat decent.

Now if I can make one complaint here it is.  Sure stainless steel appliances look awesome.  Sure they're "the thing" right now.  But do those people who decide what's fashionable have kids?  I'm guessing no, because my appliances are always covered in finger prints that wouldn't normally be as noticeable on white or black.  But really I shouldn't complain.  We managed to get them all for free.

So there you have it.  My favorite room.  So let this be my cheesy blog post about hopes and dreams.  Did I ever think I'd have it so good?  Nope.  I still want to hop on top of my island and give it a big hug every morning.  So if you have something you're hoping for right now, allow me to sing/write this song to you (please imagine Cinderella's voice, not mine, singing to you)

Have faith in your dreams and someday
Your rainbow will come smiling thru
No matter how your heart is grieving
If you keep on believing
the dream that you wish will come true

And there ends my super-weird blog post.  Until next time dear followers.