Getting Inspired About Decorating: Kitchen

As we embark on our journey together as a family, my instinct to send down roots has been growing strong. Evidence? I cannot stop looking at design blogs/magazines and thinking about our home. I really want it to be the cleanest, prettiest, homiest, happiest place ever.

We have an apartment. A really nice one. And it is FUN thinking about how to put it together. All of those fabulous wedding presents are finding a place (you know, "a place for everything and everything in its place"--look Ma, I learned!). However, the kitchen is a tough one. It's shockingly tiny cozily quaint. I mean really cozy and maybe less quaint. And there's a desk in it, taking up needed cabinet and counter space (I don't know why).

But I love kitchen gadgets and dishes and cooking (because I love food). Our wedding registry was fun, but really hard. We had no idea where we were going to be living or what it would look like or how many bedrooms or bathrooms we would have we registered blind. For a LOT of things. Here are the fabulous kitchen things we got from our registry that I love: red KitchenAid mixer and several attachments (I got it! Yay! #1 reason to get married**), red and yellow Fiesta dishes and lots of accessories (that's fourteen place settings of Fiesta dishes--thanks, mom-in-law!), an ice cream maker, a set of new pots and pans, 12 Fiesta glasses, wine glasses (see the footnote here for more about those wine glasses), cookbooks, and, ahem, etc.

Back to that tiny kitchen...

What's a girl with fabulous new kitchen necessities, accessories, and appliances to do with her ridiculously small for such a large apartment quaint kitchen?

I'm not quite sure, actually. For now, I've made an inspiration board:

Sources and info for Mosaic:
Left picture: found here, don't know about the original source. Lovely BIG kitchen. Ahem.
From top to bottom: 1) The perfect kitchen fabric from Michael Miller (red mixer! smiling stove! :-) from Home Grown Pillows Etsy Shop), that I may use for a type of "curtain" to cover up the desk shelves. 2) Organized pantry (guess how big ours is...) from Real Simple (how I love you, Real Simple). 3) Ornamental Chilly Chili. I fell in love with these at Andy's apartment complex, where they grew so beautifully that it took everything I had not to rip one up from the ground and take it with me. The picture is from Homes and Gardens, but I found a really useful chili article on the Better Homes and Garden site with some other lovelies.

Maybe this will be helpful. Maybe it's just fun to entertain me for now.

**I'll tell you later about an embarrassing moment using this phrase at my bridal shower. Think twice about making these kind of statements in a public place.