Tour De Home...the Kitchen and Pantry

Finally some house pictures!  We're starting with the kitchen because that is where I started this:

When we started this whole moving thing, a dear friend from church sent me a link from A Bowl Full of Lemons about moving and how to organize.  It was awesome.  And it totally worked.  As long as I remembered to label the boxes with the right stuff!  But, I loved and still love my moving binder.

Anyway,  I started this 14 week challenge two weeks late.  I figured I would catch the other two rooms/areas at the end.  Actually, we started on Week 2, the garage, but had to stop because the yard tools needed a home.  That home is sitting in our back yard waiting to be built by Super-Husband.

Oh, you guys want to see my house, huh?  Well, here are some more pictures of the kitchen. Here's what we love about it: 
1.  It's open to the great room.  It's so nice to be able to see the kids, talk to others who are lounging around, and in general just be a part of the action. 
2.  The bar area-While it was too high for our bar stools from the old house, it is a perfect height and length to have a buffet line.  Already tested that out with our "thank you for helping us move in the monsoon*" party.
3.  The sink faucet has the sprayer attached to the main nozzle.  So awesome and easily accessible.  It's the little things people.
4.  There's a pantry and the cabinets are way deep!  Storage.  It's all about the storage.
5.  The color.  That's all mine.  The whole house was done in flat paint.  Please tell me you all know what a house with flat paint and seven children, two dogs, and a rabbit looks like.  Anyway, we decided to paint a few of the rooms.  I'm still trying to decide on colors for some of the other rooms.  The pain color is Royal Palm from the Olympic line.  Sometimes it looks really green and others it looks more blue.  But what is best about it is that it took only one coat.  I fought with the kids' bathroom color and after four coats and complete coverage was no where in sight, gave up.  So, by the time I got to the kitchen, I was done.  I was giddy though when it only took one coat. 

That dog's not dead.  We took Sunny on a walk the day we took these pictures and wore her slap out.  Actually, the kids took turns taking her on a run.

And yes, my stove does not match the rest of the appliances.  That is our stove from the old house.  There was no way I could part with my super large oven, five heating elements, and convection no less.  We were willing to compromise some and asked the builder if he could swap out for a convection oven but he said no.  So, we swapped instead.  I'm so glad we did.  That oven so deserved a new kitchen and use by our large family. 

We decided to put one of our computers in here.  It gives the kids a get away from the regular school bustle, if needed.

On to the pantry.  Ya'll I have never had a pantry since our second apartment.  I was so excited to get it too!  I didn't realize how nice it would be.  So, without further adeiu...

This is the "before" shot.  I already had some baskets up and a shelf stadium for my cans.  But, this organizing challenge made me push to finish the rest of the pantry.

Here's the after:

 Mark hung hooks up for the kids aprons and for mine.

I studied all the week of the challenge and learned a lot from the Organizational Challenge Facebook page.  With knowledge in hand, we headed to a dollar store. All the baskets you see before you were purchased there!  I believe I spent about $16.  Add in another $7 stadium shelf (of course I used my 20% off coupon) and the room was near done.  I used my handy dandy labeler to make labels for the solid containers.  Someone had suggested using 2x4s for the shelves.  We happened to have four or so laying around the house so I tried it out.  They worked great on these wire shelves.  They gave stability and more height to the canned goods.  We're going to add another two shelves above our top shelf to keep emergency supplies but that was not top priority this week.

I basically just groupeed like things together and threw them in baskets or beside each other.  A friends said that baskets can some times take up more space than actually putting them on the shelves.  I found that to be totally true.  But for bags and a few things here and there they work great!  And they look cute too!