The Kitchen Tour!

This post is dedicated to my sweet 13-year old daughter Caroline, who has a heart of gold. We saw Kelly's blog today and thought it would be fun since we love seeing other people's kitchens. However, we had one major problem in doing that. Our kitchen was not what you'd call, ahem, photo ready. In fact it rarely is. Just keeping it real here! We have four children, and three of them are teenagers. Our kitchen is the center of our home...we live in it! And I generallly have papers, papers everywhere (one of the "joys" of homeschooling, for sure!). I wish each of you had a Caroline in your home. She's not the kind of kid who needs to be asked or told to do anything -- she sees a need and takes care of it. So after seeing Kelly's post she said "Let's do it!" We put some fun music on and went to work -- the two of us got the kitchen ready for pictures and in doing so we were able to give our kitchen one big Spring cleaning! And now it is looking fine and what a joy to prepare a wonderful meal to enjoy when Alan gets home from work. On second thought, the kitchen's so clean I think we should eat out!

We live in a 200-year old farmhouse in the heart of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and I love our old brick house. The only problem with it when we bought it was the kitchen was a TINY galley-style kitchen and the six of us would continually bump into each other. So after saving up for it for 7 years we had plenty of time to read all those kitchen magazines and dream about what I wanted. Finally in 2004 we did it! It was hard to make the addition blend in to keep it looking like it was always part of the farmhouse but I was really pleased with how it turned out. And it's so funny now, when people come to our home for the first time they say, "Oh this is what I love about old farmhouses -- the huge kitchens!" And I smile and show them what the "real" kitchen was for this old farmhouse - a tiny room that is now my mudroom, which I'd love to show you pictures of, but then you'd see all the papers I just took out of the kitchen to make it look so sparkly clean! Haha....Kelly, maybe sometime you could do a tour of mudrooms so I could get that photo-ready as well!

I love my black buffet...bought it and the frame above it from Ballard Designs. Since I don't have the type of fridge that you can cover with pictures I love posting them all on our bulletin board. I save the pictures from all the Christmas cards and love to be reminded of my friends & their families when I see their pictures.

Coleman wrote "Bless God" on our blackboard a year or two ago and I can't bear to erase it. So many people say "God Bless" and I always tell my kids to Bless God!

Enjoy this May weekend everyone!

Fiffer