Changes in the kitchen

I have a love/hate relationship with my kitchen.  Some days I find myself spending the entire day within its walls, grateful for this big space and all the memories it holds.  Other days I just want to walk away from the room and all the chores it holds.  Do you know what I mean?

I suppose I feel this way because the kitchen is the most-used room in my house, by far.  It serves as the cooking/dining/entertaining/bill-paying/writing/sewing/crafting/homework-doing/LEGO-building room, all rolled into one.

In an effort to freshen up this space, I've made some little changes to my kitchen recently, and I want to share them with you.

New wall color.  Some of you helped me out as I was trying to decide what color to paint this room.  I knew I wanted to stay with a green.  I decided to go for bold and chose Sherwin Williams' Sassy Green, which is kind of a pear/Granny smith apple color.  It's bright, but I like it!



New Roman shade.  I followed my own tutorial for a no-sew Roman shade and made a new one from a World Market tablecloth.  It's so fresh and cheerful!



New room arrangement.  This big room was originally intended to function as three rooms in one: kitchen, breakfast room, and keeping room.  When we first moved in we had a small eating table in the breakfast room space with a sofa and chairs in the keeping room space.

While that sounded really good on paper, that didn't really work out too well for our family--for the most part, the keeping room space was wasted.  So then we had a desk added to the end of the room and created a little sitting and office area for me.  I liked this arrangement, but again the space wasn't being used much.  We were always wishing that we just had more room for eating.  So we finally decided just to axe the idea of the sitting room at the end and make a really large eating space.  We already had a big table:  our breakfast table is 11 feet long with both leaves in place.  Now we're just keeping all the leaves in place and enjoying the huge table.

Told you it's a big table!

New chairs.  To go with the big table, my husband really wanted some captain's chairs at the ends of the table.  He likes to have a comfortable place to sit when we linger over meals.  I chose these chairs from Pottery Barn.  Believe me,  I emptied a can of Scotch Guard on each chair before putting them in place!



New chandelier.  After deciding to keep the big table in place, we wanted a big chandelier to illuminate the eating area.  Of course beautiful, sparkly chandeliers are all the rage right now, but our style in this room is very casual, so sparkly chandeliers weren't the look we were after.  We wanted something a little more rustic--but not too rustic.  We wanted something that would be good quality--but wouldn't cost an arm and a leg.  We wanted something that would be large enough to be in proportion with the huge table--but we didn't want to block the view to outside.  We're not picky at all, are we?  It took a while to find what we wanted, but we're happy with the Arturo chandelier from Ballard Designs.

Here it is all lit up:

All in all, we're enjoying our kitchen more than ever before.  We recently had a casual dinner party for 35, and we were so glad for our new arrangement!

What do you think?  Do you like the changes?  And tell me,  have you any updates to made to your kitchen recently?  Please share them!

**I'm joining these fun parties: 

Inspire Me Tuesday at A Stroll Thru Life 

Tutorials and Tips at Home Stories A to Z

Wow Us Wednesday at Savvy Southern Style
Weekend Bloggy Reading at Serenity Now