THE FARMHOUSE | A SHAKER STYLE KITCHEN

These days I find myself drawn to the kitchen more and more. It's my home base. My headquarters in our war on chaos and hobo spiders. :)

Every morning I rustle the boy from his sleep, pull on my slippers and robe, and make for my black and white checkered tile floors to start the day. Brew the coffee, pour the cereal, assemble the lunches. Our kitchen windows get all the best morning light, and the neighbor's chicken is usually out in the mornings pecking around for worms in our overgrown yard. She's a pretty little lady, and I have NO idea how she keeps getting in, but every morning I listen for her gurgling coo, and then I open the back door to tell her how pretty she looks and ask her how her day is going. Huck suspects she is checking to see if her friends Tiny Tim and Tiny Cuddles are here yet. Our coop isn't ready--give me another week or two--but I'm hoping to have our own hens in and clucking by October 1. The coop needs just a little sprucing. And a heat lamp too, probably. :)

After biking the boy to school, and lingering a minute outside the schoolyard fence while he plays, I bike back home and set up at the kitchen table, making out meal plans and grocery lists and answering emails as best I can before my A.D.D. gets the better of me and I am off researching rocking chairs for whoever knows why.

(I need one more rocking chair out back!! And then once I find it, it will snow.)  

I love the layout of this house! It's all connecting rooms and tiny spaces, with this giant working kitchen in the center--heavy on open space and very light on actual cabinet space. The layout reminds me of the historic homes I love to tour so much, so I decided we'd do her up all the way, and I'd embrace the life of a homebody without any Brooklyn or Manhattan adventures to distract me. 

One of the first things I did was install some shelving in the awkward space under our windows. Mixing bowls, serving pieces, our linens, the silverware. The shelves are not sturdy at all and they make my eyebrows go cross-looking when I notice them slumping.  

(That is a pineapple plant and it is hysterical.)

The second thing I did was install a row of pegs from the local hardware store along the area that I think is meant to be the dining area. I hang my watering cans for my Monday plant watering hullabaloos from it, I hang a few baskets filled with assorted odds and ends that would otherwise fill up a junk drawer, I hang my nice scissors that I don't want getting sticky from opening Otter Pops, and I hang my market baskets that I try to remember to take with me grocery shopping because the people at the Co-Op are NOT messing around about bringing your own bags. 

It is my tendency to hang everything but the kitchen sink on these suckers because I am a recovering clutterholic. This is the opposite of the point of a Shaker kitchen, but what can I say. I am a work in progress. 

(The pegs and table a few iterations ago.)

(And what it looks like now.)

I sort of love this spot the most at the moment. 

The kitchen doesn't feel completely finished. I walk in and pause every time, like something off but I can't quite nail it down. I'd like a second work table or kitchen island by the windows for working out pie crusts and letting bread dough rise, and homes still need to be found for some of my things that don't need to be out all of the time (I've done a fair amount of squiggling about with the location of this bench too, for example), but I like the way it's going. We're headed the right direction.