Merry Christmas from the Ridge!

Hello all my little darlings!

I have pretty much wrapped up the Christmas decorating chaos here in our little house on Clover Ridge!  My home is full of twinkling lights and warm happy feelings!

I want to share a little of it with you, my friends!

So, come on in, welcome to my home! Be sure to stop in frequently in the near future as I share lots of the details......

like  this one!

Hello Bright, Light Kitchen!

Hey y'all,

I started this blog when my friends asked me to show them what I was doing step by step as I remodeled our kitchen by myself. It is a project I am really proud of and you can see it from start to finish in the first posts of my blog. Back in Jan/Feb of 2012.
 

Wow, I have been doing this 4 years now!! I have to admit after looking back thru my first posts that my tastes have changed a lot and so has my life in four years! When I started the blog the house was all warm colors, lots of brown. I loved it and believe me it was a huge improvement over the inside the womb pink color it was when we bought it! But as my life changed I needed something that felt lighter and brighter and was simpler. Things are always changing around here as the kids trash the place or as we upgrade from our found on the side of the road style to a little more contemporary. One of the biggest and most expensive upgrades we made was the addition of granite countertops in the kitchen. I am still in love with them! They are so easy to take care of and stunningly gorgeous!

love them!!

About two years ago I decided to paint the open shelving cream to match the beadboard backsplash and it really opened up that space and I was surprised what a difference it made. I toyed with the idea of going lighter with the cabinets  on and off but kept getting hung up on the black appliances. We put in new appliances when we bought the house and I had little, little kids and did not want to deal with fingerprints on stainless after seeing some nasty stainless appliances in houses we looked at, so I chose black for ease of care. It was a good choice and is still working in my favor now that I have big kids and they are taking over dishes and kitchen clean up tasks.

Open shelving, I added the bottom shelf this spring to increase our storage a bit but we had a little accident and the whole shelf toppled and broken glass was everywhere! Oops! But new brackets came from Amazon today so it will be going back up in a nice sturdy mount this time!

In comes Pinterest. Seriously you can type any color combo for a kitchen and pics pop up! I looked at lots of pics of white cabinets and black appliances while gathering up my courage. Last fall we made a change in the adjoining family room you might remember. We pulled out the nasty carpet and continued our beautiful laminate floors throughout the main floor. It was exactly what our house needed! The whole space felt instantly bigger! But having such gorgeous dark floors meant that our dark cabinets suddenly felt very dark. I had an idea but was worried it might be an issue for resae down the road so we invited our realtor out for coffee cake and picked his brain about the market and resale. We had more questions then just kitchen questions we had plenty of questions about the market and what really sells a house here. There are some improvements we would like to make but we don't want to end up upside down on the house down the line.

The realtor liked my idea so the next time hubs headed out on a plane I hightailed it to the store for supplies!

 This is what I had.



 First of all I painted the inside of the cabinets and relined them because that needed done.

As you can see, crowded and messy.

But fresh paint and paper make a world of difference!
Then I settled in for a bigger change. I painted my uppers a beautiful light cream color and it was like I added light to the room!

 

I loved the contrast so much I decided to double down and painted the base cabinets high gloss black!

Obviously this shot was still in the midst of the project. All the lower cabinets got contact paper and painted yellow inside also.

The upper cabinets turned out fabulous. I love the contrast and I am super happy with how it came out. I loved the contrast so much I decided the green chalkboard no longer made sense so it got a new coat of paint too!

I love the way it all came out. I will post an updated after picture when I get that shelf rehung with the new brackets so be sure to stop back in!

Pantry Troubles

The builder of our home was clearly a man, who didn't cook. Or have a clue how much food teen boys consume in a week.

Believe me when I say these guys can put away some serious quantities of food!


If I only kept food in my kitchen I would have to go back to the store every two days to restock. It is absolutely ridiculous. So one of the big goals I had when I remodeled my kitchen a few years ago was to add storage and to add better storage. Sometimes you have square inches in a cabinet but they are so hard to get to that it is unusable space. I had a lot of those bizarre awkward crevices in my kitchen when we bought this house. Tearing out the U shaped kitchen and adding in an island gave us better function and better storage but it still needed some tweaking. I really only store food in the pantry or in the basement and the other cabinets are all dishes and cookware and general kitchen stuff. I hate one use kitchen items and try to really limit all the little one use appliances, like waffle iron, electric can opener etc..

Every winter I try to clean out and reorganize my closed spaces. Closets, drawers, pantry. All the places that get crammed full during the course of daily life. I love new shelf liner and the fresh clean feel of newly organized space. This year I decided my kitchen cabinets and closed spaces needed a fresh coat of paint too. But I'll get to that in a different post.


Let's talk Pantry! Mine is teeny,weeny, tiny. But It can't be expanded with our floor plan so I need to maximize every inch!  And it needs to be easy access and easy to organize. And it doesn't hurt if it is cute.

So my pantry got a fresh look. Grey paint inside and I covered the stupid wire shelves. I hate that if something drips on the top shelf it drips all the way to the floor so I used foam core board and covered the shelf with it and covered the foam core in contact paper to make it easily wipeable.

I added a little drawer unit and some cute baskets too! 
 I forgot to take a before pic, as usual but I promise this is a huge improvement. This was like a cartoon closet where you opened it and everything including the kitchen sink fell out on the floor. The door is not a standard size door, it is tiny so I am still looking for storage I can attatch to the inside of the door but right now our chore list is taped there and the reusable bag holds our bags of cereal. Very important when your kids eat a bag a day. And check out my can storage!!! I am loving that thing!!

I keep onions and garlic and potatoes in the baskets on the floor and also a camp lantern if the power goes out. As you can see, it doesn't hold much but I am workin' with what I got. I am fully open to any suggestions for more storage options if y'all want to post them in the comments!!

But I like the fresh clean feel of the new contact paper shelves. It is an improvement and that makes me happy.

Spring Has Sprung On The Ridge!

Hello, my sun-starved, ready to run free wild darlings!

The sun has finally returned! It has been a long, cold, lonely winter but here comes the sun!!! I am so happy to see my warm old friend.

I did do a little more then hibernate this winter and I am ready to share some photos with my friends. But as I get ready to write those posts enjoy a few photos of our first signs of spring!

Tiny, brave green things peeking out in a cod, windy Ky spring

Cherry bush all bloomed out, it is so happy looking!

I will be back soon with posts of how I stayed busy to stave off cabin fever this winter!

Christmas In My Kitchen

My kitchen is full of the smells of cookies and delicious treats pretty frequently this time of year. But more then any food my Christmas decorations perk me up and make me feel cheery. This year my boys old toy trains are holding things down. This is an adorable new SILVER tree! I picked him up in the Antique Mall in the late summer and I like the way the metallic shimmers.
The only problem we are having is this

As you can see, not everyone in our house loves trains! This is Gingy the gingerbread cat, yes, that is actually his name. He's a King Kong style monster.

 I'll be sharing about our hot cocoa station next!!

Dining Room Christmas Tour Part 2

Welcome back, friends!
 I have gotten a little farther along my decorating path and thought I would share a few more photos with y'all!

Our dining room gets a ton of light but it makes it kinda tricky for an amateur photographer such as myself. I am going to try several different times of day so I can get better pictures for you. But for now, I added a love seat to one side of the table and my kids love it. I have leather covered chairs at the other spots and those fabulous Blessed cushion covers are a fall Hobby Lobby find.
I decided to switch out the more casual curtains I usually have in here for these black and gold ones that used to be in the living room. These added an incredible amount of drama and then I added some bead garland on top of the sheers for sparkle. I decided to go with a white tree in here this year for a change. I added only gold balls and a few new black wooden ornaments from Michaels. The home sign usually hangs in our front hall. The big gold star light hung over my bed last year and I love the patterns it throws all over the room in here in the evening. Just in time for dinner most nights.
I am still decorating and changing a few things around but here are some more photos

I used some printables from Pinterest and hand painted in the gold parts

my hutch has gold and white patterned paper on the back wall and is holding my new found cream and gold china and a few decorations. Check out my blog post on how to make these sweet little boxwood wreaths here

I found this sweet cardboard nativity in this stunning black and gold at HL at 50% off the other day and put them on top of my son's keyboard. I needed a tray big enough for all the pieces bu I was already using all of my bigger ones so I spray painted an old pizza pan gold and it works perfectly and when my son moves the tray I don't have to worry about him breaking these! He is practicing his song for his Christmas piano recital.

Much of my nutcracker collection is here on this shelf above my sideboard and wine rack. 

I placed my tree in a metal bound wooden crate and topped it with a grey fuzzy skirt tucked in all around the tree. I will add more clear and bright pics as the season continues! 

Thank you so much for dropping by and please come back!

Christmas House Tour Hallway

Hey y'all,

Welcome!!!! Come in! Today I thought I would share our hallway all decked out for the holidays with you! In retrospect I should have shared it first as you would be greeted here if you visited me but that requires more forethought then I generally apply to things, lol. Welcome, anyway and please come in!
 This year I decided to keep a consistent color story throughout the main floor of greys and neutrals with sparingly added spots of red. Here I kept the red to a few baubles and dogwood branches tucked into the garland. This Merry Christmas sign has been in my arsenal for about 9 years and this year he got a fresh color and a prime spot!
Our hallway is also our drop zone. This is, in theory, where my children would leave their school flotsam of instrument cases and backpacks,shoes,socks,jackets and because I have boys it could also mean socks and even pants. Though I refuse to hold a conversation with any child not wearing pants. Rules are important ;)
 Also our keys and sunglasses and items like that and hooks for anything I need to remember to leave with, which sometimes even works, are in our hallway.

 But more importantly, this is where I put all kinds of family photos. I have a couple of fabulously rustic ledges that hold a ton of frames full of my loved ones and our memories. I have an addiction to baby pictures, I can't help it.

 This is an area always in flux. I am constantly rotating out pictures, frames and tiny accessories on these shelves but my favorite time of year is when I load it heavy with Christmas memories! As you can see I leave not a square inch of space. Yes, it would probably be more decorator perfect if the frames matched and I pared it down but I don't care, I love every picture and hate to miss out on seeing any of them.

A few more photos of our hall decorations this year

Above the hall table I usually have a few small terrariums and glass bubbles with sedums inside but for Christmas I decided to switch them up with a faux chandelier thingy I saw on Pinterest. I used inexpensive shatterproof balls just in case it would fall or be smacked by a flying ball or sock.

Check back soon, I will be sharing our kitchen decorations very soon!!