Apartment tour: Kitchen

For months and months, I have been blogging in anticipation of sharing photos of my new space. As anyone who moves knows, it's stressful and it takes a while to get everything in its proper place. So even though Ryan and I have been theoretically moved in (meaning the boxes were all out of the truck and into the apartment) for a week and three days...our apartment is still a work in progress. Most of the boxes are empty, but now they are flattened and stored in our dining room until we can get them to the recycling center. Most of the major furniture has been purchased, delivered, and placed (save a pear green reclining chair for the living room, but more to come on that later). Most of my decorative accents have been positioned on tables, countertops, or bookcases. We have little moments in our apartment that are exactly as I wanted them--stylish little vignettes. But unlike the living spaces in the catalogs or inspirational photos, we actually live in our apartment, and it's bound to get a little messy.

With that being said, I am not 100% ready to share photos of every room's every detail....so I am going to take this slow and reveal one room at a time! And as we settle in further and get the finishing touches, like that pear chair or the black floating shelves I'm imagining over Ryan's workspace or our bedding (yeah, we don't even have bedding yet...we are stubborn and can't find what we like), I will continue to post some fabulous before and afters that show the final product of each room!

So here are the oh-so-blah befores of the kitchen:

And here's one of me fretting about fitting all my stuff in:

And here I present the room as it is now, stocked full of my bright gadgets and goodies :) Here are some shots of the rooms overall:

We're still looking for a mirror to go in the awkward empty space above the sink...

And here are the close-ups of my favorite spots :)

The tall shelf was originally stationed in Ryan's townhouse bathroom. We decided that it matched our kitchen cabinets very well, so we placed it in the dining room for overflow kitchen storage! Now it houses our cute towels, some snacks, and a few decorative items.

Under the cabinets, there's an "over-the-sink" shelf that I nabbed for 6 bucks from Big Lots. It didn't fit over the sink, so we just stuck it there to stash more doodads! And the wood also matches the cabinetry, luckily. Here's a close-up of those doodads...

Which include my aqua bread box (imperative because Belle likes to tear open the bread bag with her teeth and lick the crusts...she is a silly kitty), flower measuring cups from Pier1, and some Ball mason jars. (Oh, and see that cutting board type thing on the counter? Yeah, that's my cheese slicer...also imperative as I am a big cheese fan. hahaha). And in addition to the glass jars on that shelf, you might have noticed the collection on top of the cabinet....

Originally these were arranged on top of the fridge, but Belle decided that she wanted to jump on top of that frequently to climb to the super-high upper cabinets, so these had to be moved. Since this cabinet is far from the fridge, I can sleep safe knowing she won't knock them down. Speaking of the fridge, it is bedecked with photos and magnets. Here's a picture of it, pre-removal of the jars and pre-addition of pictures of Ryan's friends:

And here's a picture of Belle in her spot, along with the DIY art I created (originally for the living room) that matches the kitchen colors nicely, and adds interest to the whiteness above the cabinets:

And now to another corner of the kitchen, where we keep our utensils, wine, and baking cannisters:

I love this space! All the colors are tying together well, and you can't really tell that the utensil holders, wine rack, and orange shelf were all bought/made on the cheap :) In the close-up, you can really see my cork collection (stashed in a cute glass from Goodwill). And there's some delicious Montana wine stashed in the wine rack.

And here is a close-up of the other section, with the shelf, patterned "Y" (on sale from Anthropologie -- it doesn't stand for anything, I'm just aiming to collect all letters of the alphabet in different styles) and the mismatched canisters. I got the blue ones in a 3-piece set from Target, and later found the lime green one with the spoon at Pier1, so I simply put the smallest blue one elsewhere in the kitchen (can you spy where?) and plopped the green one in the middle to round out the set!

And for the last major area in the kitchen...my tea and coffee station!

Since there isn't really a convenient place to stash our keys near the door, we also put our key rack there. Notice my dollar store tiered tray is next to my coffeemaker, where I can stash my coffee and hot chocolate cups!

And now, moving on to the adjacent dining space. Here's the before:

And now the after:

We have the fun, bright table and chairs from Echo, Echo and other thrift stores, as well as, against the wall, my craigslist-scored sofa table. (Turns out it looked dwarfed behind the futon, so we relocated it to serve as a buffet in the dining room!) And here's a closer look at that table with its decor:

I tried not to overcrowd the table, as I intend to use it for serving extra food and just don't want it to get cluttered. The candlesticks were nabbed at Ross in Missoula, the tablecloth was gifted by my future mother-in-law, and the framed "art" is actually color-coordinating scrapbook paper that I put in on-sale shadowboxes from Target.

You might remember from my previous kitchen post that I painted some shelves which I intended to put in the dining area. After looking at the space, however, I decided adding them would just over-crowd the room. I did hang the orange one in a nook in the kitchen, as pictured in the photos above.

So, what do you think of my colorful kitchen and dining room? Let me know in the comments and come back to tour the rest of the place! :)