DIY Decorating

Ever been intimidated by the prospect of decorating a room? I know I have.

Nearly five years ago, my husband and I discovered a house that was in the process of being built. We fell in love with it--the location, the size, the setting, the floor plan. . . so we bought it. And we were lucky enough to buy it before it was finished, so we got to choose many of the features and make some floor plan modifications.

I love our house, and I work hard to make it a home for us. But some of the spaces in this house have been challenging for me to decorate. This is by far the nicest place we've ever lived, and while I think I have good taste, I haven't always been sure that my decorating choices were quite right.

Here's an example. Most of the kitchen was already in place when we bought the house: the cabinets were in, the countertop was in, the appliances were in. I got to choose paint color, backsplash, and cabinet hardware. I was pleased with everything, until the builder showed us this little feature: the boxes at the top of the cabinets.


And then he proudly flipped a switch to show us this:


And I nearly threw up. He was so excited to offer us these cool shadowbox cabinets for display, but all I could think was "What the heck am I going to put in those?" I kept thinking that the shadowboxes looked like something I'd see in a magazine along with a caption explaining that the homeowner ordered those as a place to showcase her collection of Majolica. Friends, I've got no Majolica.

You wouldn't believe how much I stressed about this decorating decision. 15 shadow boxes I needed to fill, and I didn't have 15 of anything that I wanted to display. Then I remembered this:



This pitcher was a wedding gift to my mother and father back in 1960. It's one of the things I remember clearly from my childhood--no matter where we lived, that red pitcher was always on display somewhere.

The red pitcher got me to thinking, and I realized that I had several pretty pitchers. So I decided to go with pitchers for the shadow boxes. Of course, even though I had several pretty pitchers, I didn't have 15 of them. So off I went to TJMaxx and Marshall's. I'll admit that when I unloaded seven pitchers from my cart onto the counter at TJMaxx, I got a couple of odd looks. But I was pleased with what I found, and most of them cost less than $10.

And so those shadow boxes went from intimidating blank spaces to warm, appealing full spaces:



And in context in my kitchen:



I think I made a good decision! Here's what I learned: TRUST YOURSELF. I lost sleep wondering what I should put in those cabinets, but when I calmed down and gave it some thought, I chose something that would make me happy. And what makes me happy works great in my kitchen.

Here are a few more shots of my kitchen:

Facing the work area

Facing the eating and sitting areas

There's the dough cabinet I wrote about here

A desk and sitting area at the end of the room

So that's my kitchen--the heart of my home--with all its DIY decor. Hope you like it as much as I do!

Check out all the great projects at Kimba's!

P.S. The window treatment over my kitchen sink was yet another DIY project, based on Sarah's wonderful tutorial. I highly recommend this!